Mae Street Kidd

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Mae Street Kidd : biography

February 8, 1904 – October 20, 1999

For a number of years Kidd was a frequent presence in civil-rights marches and events in her state. She was also known for speaking her mind. Mervin Aubespin, associate editor of Louisville’s Courier-Journal, told a reporter for the paper that early in her political career Kidd never hesitated to call the paper over its political coverage, especially when a reporter’s article included quotes only from white males. "She would call up and say ‘I was there and nobody asked me.’ She raised holy sin…. She figured that people who voted for her needed to know what her position was on a number of issues that came though the legislature."

End of career

Kidd was active in a number of charitable organizations throughout her life, including the Lincoln Foundation, which helped disadvantaged children at the facility that had once schooled her.

Toward the end of her life, she lost her eyesight. She died in Louisville on October 20, 1999.

Her biography, based on nearly 40 oral history interview by Wade Hall, appeared two years before her death, and its title, Passing for Black, reflected her mixed heritage and the conflicts she often experienced because of it. "Most of us, whether white or black, are mixtures of many races and nationalities," she pointed out. "We all have tangled roots." She noted that though times had changed considerably, her childhood was particularly difficult. She likened it to "living in a no-man’s-land where I belonged to neither race. Because I was neither completely white nor completely black, I’ve been stigmatized and penalized by both races."

Biography

Born on February 8, 1904, in Millersburg, Kentucky to Anna Belle Leer (1883–1984) who worked for a well-to-do white family with a large farm in central Kentucky. Kidd’s father, Charles Robert Jones (February 6, 1875 – March 15, 1972), was the son of her mother’s employers; and, she was their second child together. Her older brother was George William Jones (July 18, 1901 – July 6, 1986). As a girl she was called Minne Mae Jones. She attended Springfield Institute from 1948–50, University of Louisville, and American University, 1966-67.

Kidd spent her early years in Millersburg, a town in Bourbon County. When she was two, her mother married a tobacco farmer, James W. (Willie) Taylor (1881–1959), who later became a chicken breeder. Kidd’s mother, meanwhile, had a thriving catering business and often served as a local midwife. Kidd knew that her real father had married and began a family of his own, "and they and their mother used to come visit my mother, who was very friendly with his white family," she recalled in an oral history interview with Wade Hall. "But I never wanted anything to do with them. I was hurt that he couldn’t–or wouldn’t–acknowledge me openly as his daughter. It was a painful part of my childhood, but I got over it."

Millersburg’s blacks lived in a section of the town called Shippsville, and Kidd went to school there until the eighth grade. As a youngster, she realized that her light skin made it possible for her to skirt the Jim Crow laws that were a feature of life in the American South at the time: under these acts, blacks were restricted to certain schools, seating areas of public transportation, and even drinking fountains and rest rooms. She recalled that she liked to go into the Millersburg millinery shops and try on hats as a little girl, and pointed out that all in the town knew that she was of mixed heritage. Kidd’s mother eventually moved the family to Millersburg proper after asking her cousin, who was white, to purchase the house and have the deed transferred to her.

Both Kidd’s mother and stepfather worked hard to provide a solid home for the children, which included two more of their own: Kidd’s half brother Webster Demetrius Taylor, and a half sister, Mary Evelyn Taylor. As a teenager, Kidd wanted to contribute to the household herself, but her mother refused to let her work for white families, telling her, "Mae, I have to serve other people because I don’t have a choice. I want you to have a choice when you grow up." Since her school only went up to the eighth grade, it was decided that she would be sent away to the Lincoln Institute in Simpsonville, created to provide a better educational opportunity in the Jim Crow era. She was 15 years old when she left home in 1919, and spent two years there before her family’s financial circumstances forced her to return home.