Dorothy and John Brooks' Home in Coleman, MD
Still Image
CH_CA_2024_SC_014_032
Community Archive
Dorothy and John Brooks' Home in Coleman, MD. The home did not have any indoor plumbing or running water and no bathroom. The house had two bedrooms upstairs and a third very small room which were shared between the two parents and four children. The road in front of the house was a dirt road. Most of the houses in Coleman during this time were two stories high and had a porch- basically the same architectural design. Carolyn Brooks, John and Dorothy's youngest child, remembers recognizing the different types of neighborhoods in their area, specifically where white and African American families lived, at a very young age. Carolyn says that though they were poor, she was a happy child. However, she was not happy to see her mother coming home tired from working everyday with white children and their families who enjoyed bigger homes, running water, and nicer furniture than their own. Carolyn and her younger brother made a pact that they would buy their parents a nice home with running water, a bathroom, and a nice kitchen for their mother to cook in. On the back of the photo "The Brooks' home the Summer of 1959." 1959
English
black-and-white photographs
Black Communities - Coleman, The Lives and Families of Chesapeake Heartland Oral History Initiative
African Americans--Housing, Rural African Americans
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