In Letitia James Case, Some Black Women See Their Own Family Sacrifices

To some Black families, it was an intimately familiar arrangement.

A woman whose parents fled a life of sharecropping in the South was among the first in her family to achieve a prestigious career. She extended her help to relatives who had less, even buying a home for a grandniece in need of stability.

The house sits at the center of the indictment of Letitia James, the New York attorney general, by the Justice Department. She was accused of misrepresenting the purpose of the property, a $137,000 home in Norfolk, Va., when she purchased it in 2020.

The prosecutor who secured the indictment, a Trump loyalist who once served as his defense attorney, said that the charges chronicle “intentional, criminal acts and tremendous breaches of the public’s trust.” Ms. James faces the possibility of decades in prison if convicted. On Friday, she pleaded not guilty to those charges in federal court in Norfolk, Va.

But in some ways, the basic contours of the case illuminate another story about the experience of Black women in America, a story that rang familiar to a small contingent of influential Black women leaders who began privately rallying around Ms. James in the hours after her indictment.

Millions of U.S. adults provide care for relatives and friends, and many more pitch in to help loved ones by providing money, housing, child care and other needs in moments of hardship. It is often a defining practice for Black women, academics and economists say.

Across the country, working women have increasingly emerged as the breadwinners for their immediate households over the last half-century. Black women in particular, data consistently shows, are more likely than any other racial or ethnic group to serve as the primary earners for families.