This Program Gives Black Single Moms $1,000 a Month for a Year. The Results Are Undeniable

Three months after giving birth to her son, Amaya Jones moved into a new apartment complex. She knew no one else in the building, but it was a fresh start for her and her two children. One day, someone put up a flyer on her unit’s door, notifying her about a program called the Magnolia Mother’s Trust (MMT).

Launched in 2018, the MMT is the longest-running guaranteed income program in the country, and the first to target extremely low-income families headed by Black mothers in Jackson, Mississippi. With no strings attached, the program provides mothers with $1,000 a month for 12 months.

While she was pregnant, Jones experienced homelessness. She applied for the program, knowing that it could be life-changing. When she found out that she had been selected for that year’s cohort, Jones “burst out into tears”, she said. “I went from full-time to part-time to barely making ends meet. I was like: ‘Oh, my God. Lord, you hear my cry.’ It was rainbows after bad weather.”

When Jones’s son was younger, he was frequently sick, and the family was living paycheck to paycheck. Missing a day of work, even to care for an infant, meant that her check would be short, and Jones struggled to ensure she was covering the day-to- day expenses for her children.

Now, she’s able to exceed it.

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The MMT is an initiative from Springboard to Opportunities, a non-profit organization that Aisha Nyandoro, from Mississippi, co-founded in 2013. Springboard works directly with families who live in federally supported affordable housing in Jackson. Nyandoro calls it a “radically resident-driven approach”.

But by 2017, Nyandoro became concerned that Springboard wasn’t moving the needle enough on poverty. Though the organization has after-school programs, workforce development, reading circles and other programing, she started wondering what else they needed to offer.

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A year later, in December 2018, Springboard launched the first cohort of the Magnolia Mother’s Trust program, with 20 moms participating.

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The MMT is unapologetic about being specifically for Black mothers.

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This year’s cohort, launched in May, faces unique challenges. The program sustained itself in 2020, through the first year of the Covid pandemic, and in 2023, when the supreme court’s decision reversing affirmation action sent destructive waves of anti-diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) governmental, educational and social policies through the country. Those issues have since compounded and families are also facing an affordability crisis and an increasingly unstable economy.

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