Photo Collection: Baby Michele 1950s

Baby Michele, originally uploaded by olympia2x.

This picture of Aunt Barbara represents very much the way she was, somebody who confronted the camera, who was there to meet it. She adored me from my birth, she had told me endless times. In 1952 on Edgecombe Avenue in Harlem, what a beautiful baby I was with a beautiful aunt. Beauty was a pretty big thing for Aunt Barbara and God had blessed her with great beauty for much of her life. Here she is, somehow, very much as I remember her from the 50s. And me as the fat faced, big headed baby, alert and alive to the attentions of these beautiful women. This may have been the day upon which I was christened at Abyssinian Baptist Church with Mr. Morrison as my godfather and Aunt Doris as my godmother. Momma T had come from Guam in particular to see me. Everybody know a man's child, my mother reports she said upon seeing me. My mother was only 22 and already in need of a divorce from her musician husband, Earl Wallace, 25 years old.