MY TAKE From the Editor and Publisher
For Mom at 99 This special issue of BAVUAL is inspired by my mother, Queenie Birkett, who turns 99 on May 20th. She embodies the 20th century black woman—a person who has struggled and sacrificed above and beyond to raise and protect her family and community. Her friends know her as “Queen B” or “Gamma Sugar.” This remarkable woman, born in 1923, went from poverty in the Virginia countryside during Jim Crow to a split-level home on suburban Long Island and prosperity. Raised in a one room shack by her mother Mammy, a widow with 11 children, Queen Luana Taylor overcame immense adversity to become the mother of five children, the grandmother of three, the great-grandmother of eight and the great-great-grandmother of five. The wife of pioneering inventor and businessman Earl Birkett, who passed away in 2014, she was a well-known civic leader in our community of Lakeview, West Hempstead, responsible among many other things for the paving of the main thoroughfare (and our street) Pinebrook Avenue and serving as a hostess par excellence, a den mother in the Cub Scouts and a businesswoman in her own right, as owner of Queen B’s Fashion & Beauty Shop in Lakeview. Truly a great lady. Hat’s off to you, Mom, and to all our great black women.
The Birkett family, c. 1973: Earl, Mother Queenie, Dad Earl, Sister Erlanda
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BAVUAL:
The African Heritage Magazine
| Spring 2022
