Set against the backdrop of the Great Depression in the farmlands of Eastern North Carolina, Hattie Wellington was not supposed to live past infancy. Even in her mother's womb death stalked her life. Had she not lived as her mother expected, her story might've been the inconsequential end of a sick baby girl born to poor, uneducated, alcoholic, migrant sharecroppers. Neighbors would've talked about how the mother pulled the blanket over the dying baby's head so she wouldn't have to watch her die. Then, the story would've wafted through time as the requiem for destiny snatched from the bosom of hope.However, in her candid account of the first twenty one years of her life in Stokestown, Hattie Wellington tells the story of not only surviving sickness, but of overcoming extraordinary childhood challenges- poverty, child labor, sexual abuse, hunger, Jim Crow Laws, substandard education, dishonest landowners, and nasty predators.She sharecropped and worked domestics alongside her mother, picked cotton, pulled the sucklings from tobacco and cucumbers from the vines. She enjoyed a fairly typical childhood for that day and time for poor black families; except, behind closed doors, there were burdens no child should ever have to bear. So, when her dreams were shattered from within, she became a high school dropout, married and became a teen mom. Had she given up, it would've been better that she had died in the womb, but she persevered against almost insurmountable odds to realize her dream of a better life. At forty-eight, with eleven children graduated from high school, she earned her GED. At fifty-four, she received her first college degree and went on to enroll in Howard University. At seventy-two, she was accepted at Spelman, her dream college. There she was featured in the book project: Their Memories, Our Treasures: Conversations with African American Women of Wisdom, 2004.The story of her commitment to family values and her perseverance can be read in Tales out of School, by Patrick Welsh, 1986-condensed for Reader's Digest the same year.At seventy-seven, she voted in the historic election of the first African-American President of the United States of American and at eighty-one she voted for his reelection. As a daughter born from her sacrifices, I want readers to know that what doesn't kill you, will build faith, character and an enduring legacy of hope for those who dream.
Hattie Wellington, 84, the mother of eleven, penned her autobiography as testimonial to the strength and resilience of the human spirit and to show that in spite of the poverty and abuse she was birthed into, God had a plan for her life and that she's living proof that regardless of the place of our pain, we have the power within us to overcome, if we don't give up. At forty-nine she earned her GED and at Fifty-four she received her first college degree. She went on to attend Howard University and was accepted into Spelman College at age seventy-three. Her warrior spirit is noted in Tales out of School, Patrick Welsh, 1986; Their Memories, Our Treasures: Conversations with African American Women of Wisdom, Spelman Independent Scholars, 2004; and The River God Runs through Her: Praise for an Unlikely Champion, Doris Wellington, 2015. Stokestown is a triumph because this mother, grandmother and great-great grandmother believes it is against her true nature to give up. Hattie Wellington resides in Loganville, GA.
