Vivian was the firstborn of the Baxter children. At the kitchen table, she amused her children by whirling her braids like ropes and then later sitting on them.Īlthough Vivian’s mother’s people were Irish, she had been raised by German adoptive parents, and she spoke with a decided German accent. She was called an octoroon, meaning that she had one- eighth Negro blood. No one explained to him that simply wanting to be a citizen was not enough to make him one.Ĭontrasting with her father’s dark chocolate complexion, her mother was light- colored enough to pass for white.
He spoke often and loudly with pride at being an American citizen. Her father, a Trinidadian with a heavy Caribbean accent, had jumped from a banana boat in Tampa, Florida, and evaded immigration agents successfully all his life. As a grown woman she would be known as the butter-colored lady with the blowback hair.
Later she would grow up and be called beautiful. Louis, Missouri, but Vivian Baxter was born black and poor, to black and poor parents.
The first decade of the twentieth century was not a great time to be born black and poor and female in St. The following excerpts are from Chapters One and Two of “Mom & Me & Mom”:
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