A Supercentenarian: Brunette Washington Celebrates her 110th Birthday
Sharon Kirkland-Gordon, Grand-daughter of Brunette Washington
Supercentenarian: Brunette Washington
What is a supercentenarian? According to the Oxford Dictionary, a supercentenarian is “a person significantly older than 100 years of age, typically one who has reached the age of 110. The New England Supercentenarian Study, based at the Boston University School of Medicine, estimates that there are approximately 60 supercentenarians in the United States and an estimated 200 to 300 worldwide. This unique class of esteemed elders is extremely rare.
Brunette Washington who resides in Buffalo, New York, will be celebrating her 110th birthday with family and friends on June 6, 2024. A newly minted supercentenarian, she has shared many stories of her remarkable life over the years, filled with personal and historical experiences that span generations. These stories were captured during kitchen table conversations, interviews, and videos. It is a story worth telling.
Brunette Evans was born on June 6, 1914, in the small town of Forkland, Alabama. Forkland is in Greene County, 100 miles south of Birmingham. She is the daughter of Martha Merriweather Evans and Woodson Evans, Sr., and the second youngest of six children. She was given the name “Brunette” after a crop inspector visited the family farm and told Martha if she had a son and named him “Brue” he would give her something for the child. Once Brunette was born, her mother creatively named her after her sister, Annette and combined it with “Brue”, hence the name “Brunette”.
Brunette, and her five siblings, Mary, Jo Willie, Mansfield, Peter, and Woodson, Jr., were raised primarily by their mother on the 80-acre farm that she inherited from her husband, Woodson Evans, Sr. after he died of complications from pneumonia. Brunette was only 2 years old when he passed away. Woodson was an accomplished man, who worked as a schoolteacher, farmer, and store owner. Another tragic loss occurred when Brunette’s youngest brother Woodson, Jr. died from a cold at the age of 5. In those days it was common for Black people to die from a variety of conditions due to lack of access and racial barriers to healthcare.
Despite these significant losses, Brunette holds fond memories of her life as a young child growing up in rural Alabama. She is especially grateful to her mother, whom she admires the most. She proudly remarked, “My mother did some of everything. She farmed the field, chopped cotton and sugarcane, and was a master seamstress who could sew anything she saw. She would just draw it out and make it.” When it came to buying her children’s shoes, she used string as a tool to measure their shoe size, and took those pieces of string to Demopolis, a city across the river to buy them shoes. Like her mother-in-law, she was also a midwife.
Brunette recalled wearing a big hat to shield her from the hot Alabama sun as she picked cotton, and emptied and refilled the sack as she hauled it over her shoulder. Her memories often bring a smile to her face, as she described hitching a mule used to plow the fields, sweeping floors with a metal broom, and cooking in a big stove fueled by firewood. She loved the taste of cake and bread cooked on that stove. On the family farm, her father and uncle owned a small store, a clean water pump, several crops, fruit trees, and a variety of farm animals.
While there were many enjoyable experiences, Brunette grew up fearing whites because of the traumatic racial encounters she would hear about from her relatives. She shared vivid recollections of her maternal grandmother, Mary Mays talking about Brunette’s great-grandfather who was sold as a slave on an auction block, even though the practice of enslaving people at the time was illegal. She was an older child when she heard about a Black man named “Henderson”, who killed a white man, by the name of “Tarver”. With a hint of uneasiness, she stated, “There was a big uproar, and the people of Forkland were terrified; afraid to leave their homes.” Seared into her memory is a crowd of white men coming to their home and the homes of other Black people in the town looking for Henderson. Her brother-in-law, Alan, was not afraid to speak up and tell the men that they had no information. It was common practice for white men to lynch, torture, or kill by other means, Black men who stood up to them.
At the age of 16, Brunette began “courting” James Washington, a childhood friend, who would become her husband. She described him as “a nice man with nice hair and brown skin.” Once they married and began a family, like millions of Black people, they decided to migrate north to escape the pain of the Jim Crow South and to seek better job opportunities. James secured a job first, and later sent for Brunette and their two daughters, Willie and Winona. She traveled by train to Lackawanna, New York with her husband’s grandparents John and Wynonie Baker, Cousin Hattie Baker and her four children, and a huge box of food. As Brunette reminisced, she said, “I was so excited because it was my first train ride and I thought things would be a lot different up north.” It was not long before she realized that racism was systemic and pervasive. The reality was that in the north, a Black man could get a better job, rather than farming, but racial prejudice saw no boundaries.
One of her first experiences with the northern brand of racism occurred in Lackawanna. Her eldest daughter Willie, who was about 8 years old, was a playmate of the daughter of their white neighbor. One day Brunette agreed to allow Willie to go to the movie theater with the girl, accompanied by the girl’s mother. When the movie ended and it was time to return home, Brunette only saw the girl and her father return. They left 8-year-old Willie alone at the theater because the white father refused to bring this Black child home. After running to retrieve Willie from the theater, Brunette immediately severed the relationship between the girls.
James was employed at Bethlehem Steel and worked there until he retired. He was also a master barber, who owned “Jimmy’s Barber Shop” on Sycamore and Herman streets in Buffalo. During their marriage, they bought their first home on Very Street and eventually purchased two other homes on Buffalo’s east side. They were married for 70 years until his passing in 2001. Together, they raised four children, Willie, Winona, Israel and Marvis, in a household where values of love, faith, education, and hard work were instilled and practiced.
Over the course of her life, Brunette has generously served others through her family ties, church, and community affiliations. While she was a homemaker for most of her life, during World War II, she worked as a metal stamper for Michael Electric and made airplane and gun parts for Curtis Wright. Of the jobs she held, she thoroughly enjoyed working as a door-to-door salesperson for the Charis Corporation, selling women’s girdles and undergarments.
Brunette gives praise to God for all that she has accomplished. Frequently you will hear her say, “I could do nothing without him!” She is very proud of the fact that at the age of 8, she confessed “Jesus as her personal savior” and was baptized in a creek outside of the Lloyd Baptist Church in Forkland. She was among the first members of the Second Baptist Church of Lackawanna, New York, and New Hope in Depew, New York. When New Hope relocated to Buffalo it was renamed Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church. For most of her adult life, Brunette has been a faithful, dedicated, and active member of the Macedonia Baptist Church, formally known as the Michigan Street Baptist Church, which is a historical site and local stop for the Underground Railroad. The church now resides on East North Street in Buffalo. Respectfully known as “Mother Washington”, she was present at church service every Sunday, attended weekly prayer and bible study, and served in many capacities in the church including, the Nurses Guild, President of the Mission Society, Sunday school teacher, and the church choir. She was also a member of the American Baptist Association and The Order of the Eastern Star.
Brunette has a generous heart and a love for helping others. She is known for ministering to the sick, poor, adolescents, young adults, and a variety of people who need an empathic and supportive ear. She regularly volunteered her time to fundraising, where she collected donations door-to-door for the American Heart Association, the Easter Seals Foundation, and the United Way. She belonged to three senior citizens centers, where she socialized and participated in arts and crafts, and other activities.
A believer that it is “never too late to achieve your dreams”, at 50 years old she learned to drive and obtained her driver’s license. As a child growing up in the segregated south, access to an education beyond the 7th grade for Black children was limited. It was her life-long dream to go back to school, so in her 60’s she enrolled in the 8th grade at a neighborhood school and continued until she graduated with her diploma from Bennett High School.
In 2016, Brunette was featured in “The Centenarians – We Have a Story to Tell,” a documentary of African American women over the age of 100 in Buffalo, NY. Her story includes voting for the first time in 1937, and she still votes faithfully in every election. She proudly spoke about voting for President Obama and prayed for him daily while he was in office. In 2015, at the age of 100, she toured the inside of the White House for the first time, which was especially memorable for her, even though she did not have an opportunity to see President Obama as she had hoped.
Brunette Washington tells everyone she meets about the power and love of God. She frequently remarks, “We’ve got to love one another as He says we ought to love……and if you have anything in your heart against someone pray to God and he will remove it!” When asked what she attributes to her long life, she says, “I don’t know why he does it, but he keeps me alive and I thank him, I thank him, I thank him!”
A supercentenarian, Brunette Washington is an extraordinary woman who is loved, adored, and admired by her family for her wise and wonderful teachings of love, faith, family, and the journey of life. She is the mother of four, grandmother of nine, great – grandmother of nine, great-great grandmother of ten, and the great-great-great grandmother of one. She is a blessing to everyone she meets and an example that it is never too late to achieve your dreams and goals.
Sharon Kirkland-Gordon, Grand-daughter of Brunette Washington
Footnote: This article includes excerpts from the 2016 documentary, The Centenarians: We Have a Story to Tell