Trotter’s Tribute To His Mother / VIRGINIA ISAACS TROTTER / April 25, 1842—October 16, 1919 / MOTHER /
Mother love she had for her children in all its tenderness and sternness, in all its earnestness and pleasantry, in all its ambitiousness and indulgence, in all its love and leniency, yet with hope and strong appeal for their rectitude and achievement.
As all real mothers do, she labored for them and with them, holding high the standard for private life and public attitude. Born in her [line or lines evidently left out] from her saintly mother was her devotion to God and to moral ideals, and from her father, Tucker Isaacs, brave devotion to liberty and equality without the insult of restriction because of color. Her husband held racial self-respect and assertion of rights above all else.
Thus it was she taught her son to stand against any denial of right because of race as a principle of self-respect. It was not strange she encouraged him when he entered the lists against race discrimination as only a true mother can, daily offered him cheer and confidence, and backed him for organ and organization with her earthly means. The strength she gave him in the battle never can be his as when she maintained her aid and interest until heart and mind were stilled by death itself. That her sacrifice may not have been in vain we fight on. God give us strength and success and give her bliss above.
Her son, / WM. MONROE TROTTER. October 16, 1930. (Philadelphia Tribune, 7 Apr. 1932)