“My time had come”

Mattie King’s Story

by Eve Silberman

posted 1/20/2009

“It’s time for Mattie to share her story with the world,” says Gratia Lousma. Mattie King, eighty-seven, moved to Ann Arbor from North Carolina in 1950, escaping the humiliations of Jim Crow. Gratia was just thirteen when they met as neighbors on Joy Road. They kept in touch during the years when Gratia was moving around the country with her astronaut husband,

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