Olivia Mitchell was born in Evansville, Indiana. For the first several years of her life, she lived with her sister in Foster Care. Once her father had gotten her back in his care, her family moved to Los Angeles, CA in 1956. Growing up, Olivia got to know a lot of diverse people thanks to […]
Janet Clark was born and raised in Los Angeles. Her parents and grandparents were part of the Great Migration from the American South to Los Angeles to escape racial discrimination. Her early childhood was marked by instability and food insecurity before her parents separated and Janet and her brother moved in with her grandparents. Her […]
Cliff Johson grew up in Abilene, Texas in a working-class, segregated Black community. He attended Carter G. Woodson Junior Senior high school where he was an honor student and class president. At twelve years old, after being given a tour of the bank where his mother worked as a cook, Cliff decided that he wanted […]
Tim Watkins grew up in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. His father was sent to Los Angeles from Mississippi at the age of thirteen to escape being lynched. He met Tim’s mother, a white woman from San Francisco, after his first wife passed away from tuberculosis. Tim’s parents were married in Mexico because it […]
Ozie Gonzaque and her four sisters grew up in Louisiana where her grandfather worked as a farmer and her father worked as a laborer for a gas station. While her parents were respected in the community, after an incident where her father couldn’t get the deed to his own property, the family decided to move […]