Story highlights Roxanne Jones: My mother knew about the predators who prey on black children and she made it her mission to protect us

We understood early the lesson that it was best for black folks to try and take care of their own, she writes

Roxanne Jones, a founding editor of ESPN Magazine and former vice president at ESPN, has worked as a producer, reporter and editor at the New York Daily News and The Philadelphia Inquirer. Jones is co-author of "Say it Loud: An Illustrated History of the Black Athlete." She talks politics, sports and culture weekly on Philadelphia's 900AM-WURD. The views expressed here are solely hers.

(CNN) We were scared. Mommy was crying, something we rarely saw her do as kids. But my little sister was missing and our mom was terrified. She knew how evil the world could be to little black girls. My sister had walked to a friend's house earlier that day and never returned home. It was dark outside and she hadn't called. No one had seen her.

Roxanne Jones

All of us -- Mommy, my younger brother and I -- were all piled in the car driving around town to find her, which we did, eventually. We were blessed.

This scene repeated itself more than once while I was growing up in small-town New England. One of us broke curfew, lost track of time, snuck off to a party and didn't call home. Mom would be out there searching for her chicks, knocking on doors, calling neighbors, screaming our names, threatening us if we didn't get in the house. Neighborhood kids mocked us for our overbearing mother. It was embarrassing.

She knew too much about the predators who prey on black children when no one is watching and she made it her mission to protect us as best she could.

But she never called our all-white local police department for help. It was the 1980s and maybe she feared that police would look at our mostly black neighborhood and stereotype her as just another irresponsible single black mother. It wouldn't matter that her kids were just doing what all healthy teenagers do, testing the limits of their freedom, challenging authority.

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