Our Stories Have History

My mother’s story began in 1939. After her father's death, she and her siblings were placed into the care of Sarah Murphy’s orphanage sometime around 1940 or 1941. After a fire destroyed part of the orphanage in December 1950, the three younger siblings were reunited with their biological mother sometime around 1951.

In 1976, my mother’s siblings got together for their one and only family reunion. On the surface, everything appeared normal. It was a chance to meet my mother’s immediate family. For many years, I had no idea my mother had been placed in an orphanage. It was not until I was nearly twenty that the subject even surfaced.

Why does all this matter?

My mother's fate led her and her siblings to Sarah Murphy, one of the most influential black women of her time. Sarah was educated but was not rich. Sarah's ability to network statewide and secure funding for her orphanage and its children for nearly two decades could never be duplicated. After she died in 1953, the orphanage failed to thrive.

The game-changer came when my brother discovered a newspaper article about Sarah Murphy's orphanage. At that time, my mother was able to identify herself and her friends in the photograph. That picture became an important part of our family history and one of the first pieces of evidence that my mother had lived in the orphanage.

As Alzheimer's began to affect my mother's memory, she often asked, "Who am I?" Before my mother passed away, I promised her I would tell her story so future generations would know who she was and why our family history mattered. After her death, that promise became my four-year research project, which I named the Who Am I Project. Through that project, I worked to reconnect with my ancestry, document our family stories, and verify our history. The purpose was simple: to preserve what I found and pass it down to future generations.

The end goal is to write my mother's memoir, The Butterfly Who Freed Me: Mae Emma Speaks.