Helen was born in Cleveland in 1931. Her family came North from Alabama.

“In the summer we would go South. The cotton and the watermelon. We all went to the same church there in the area. Most of the family at the time were members of the Primitive Baptist Church. It was all African American. We were so close together. It wasn’t like white on the street, black on the street. Our whole neighborhood was black. It was very much segregated in those days. We were happy at the time. That was our way of life at that time.

On living under segregation: “You knew it, but it wasn’t a thing that accompanied us every day. It wasn’t like that. We knew it existed. We knew where we belonged and where we lived, and we adhered to that.”