Our Centenarians

Ann Nixon Cooper -- Age 107 -- Community Leader & Activist

Atlanta, Georgia

In 1902, the first college football bowl game, the Rose Bowl, was played; The Carnegie Institution was founded; the first movie theater, the Electric Theater, opened in Los Angeles; Theodore Roosevelt became the first American President to ride in an automobile; Kid Curry Logan – the second in command of Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch, was sentenced to 20 years hard labor and, in Shelbyville, TN, Ann Nixon Cooper was born.

Mrs. Ann Nixon Cooper, activist and community leader, grew up in Nashville with uncles and an aunt who worked as “domestics” for wealthy whites. Twenty years old, she married the late Albert Berry Cooper, a dentist from Nashville. The couple moved to Atlanta where Dr. Cooper opened his dental practice and Anne raised their four children.

The longtime socialite and community leader’s home was a center of Atlanta's black society. Celebrities, including the late singer Nat King Cole, often dropped in. Another time a young student from Morehouse College visited. He had dreams of becoming a filmmaker. That man was Spike Lee. Cooper and her husband counted as their friends or acquaintances leaders and activists of the black community such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Lugenia Burns Hope and John Hope Franklin, Benjamin E. Mays and E. Franklin Frazier.

As an awarded community leader and activist, Cooper has worked to improve conditions for African Americans for most of her life. She co-founded a Girls Club for African-American youth, and taught community residents to read in a tutoring program at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King, Jr. preached. She knew King when he was just a boy and was close with his mother. Mrs. Cooper has outlived 3 of her children and has 14 grandchildren and more great and great-great grandchildren then she wants to count. Until the age of 103 the lively centenarian still danced the electric slide.

On November 4, 2008, Barrack Obama mentioned Mrs. Cooper in his Presidential acceptance speech: “America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves - if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?” Mrs. Cooper, along with all of our featured centenarians, are living proof of the change and progress we all seek in this country, in our lifetime.

-----------------------------

Otis Clark Age-- Age 106 --World's Oldest Traveling Evangelist

Seattle, Washington

Otis “Dad” Clark was born in 1902, the year the first teddy bear was made; the first modern World Series was played; Orville Wright flew the first sustained, motorized aircraft in Kitty Hawk, NC; the first west-east transatlantic radio broadcast was made from the United States to England; Cuba leased Guantanamo Bay to the United States in perpetuity; Dr. Ernst Pfenning of Chicago became the first owner of a Ford Model A Car; fhe first box of Crayola crayons was made and sold for 5 cents; the year Lawrence Welk, Clare Booth Luce, Elliot Ness, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Lou Gehrig and civil rights activist Virginia Foster Durr were born and Paul Gaugin and Calamity Jane died.

Otis Clark was born in 1903 in the Native American Territory that 4 years later became Oklahoma. He grew up in Greenwood near Tulsa with his mother, grandmother and a grandfather who was part Indian. Tulsa was a wealthy city, an oil city, and Greenwood’s black community prospered. They had a busy main street with a theater and a candy shop. When a black man was wrongly accused of sexually harassing a white woman the locals, many of whom were black WWI veterans, came out to protect him. The resulting 1921 Tulsa Race Riot was arguably the worse race riot in our country’s history. The African-American community was burned to the ground. Otis lost his home, family and friends. “I never saw my stepfather again. They even killed our bulldog Bob,” Otis remembers.

Otis fled Oklahoma with just the clothes on his back, hopped a train and rode it all the way to California. In Los Angeles he befriended Steppin Fetchit, the first black actor to become a millionaire, met Clark Gable, Charley Chaplin and worked as a butler for Joan Crawford. While selling liquor – “corn whiskey” that he learned to make as a youngster in Oklahoma - during the Prohibition Era he was thrown in jail where the Salvation Army converted him to Christianity.

Today Otis is the world’s oldest traveling evangelist. He took his first mission trip to Africa at the age of 103 and the second at 104. Otis still has all of his teeth except for one, which he says was pulled out by a dentist that didn’t know what he was doing!

----------------------------------------------

Gertrude Baines -- Age 115 --World's Oldest Living Person

Los Angeles, CA

In 1894 the American flag had 44 stars; Grover Cleveland who was America’s only president to serve two non-consecutive terms – the 22nd and 24th Presidencies – was in office for the second time; the International Olympic Committee was formed; West Palm Beach, FL was incorporated as a city; Motion picture film was patented; Coca-Cola was first sold in bottles. Robert Louis Stephenson died. Norman Rockwell, Martha Graham, E.E. Cummings and Gertrude Baines were born.

At “Mother” Baines’ 115th birthday party on April 6^th, the Guiness Book of World Records presented with an official certificate as “The Oldest Person in the World”. Gertrude Baines’ parents were born into slavery although her father was a judge by the time she came along. She grew up in Shellman, GA and one of her earliest memories is of taking a horse and buggy to church with her mother, Amelia, and her father, Jordan Baines. “It sure was different from my first ride in a car”, she remembers. Mrs. Baines married once but left her husband Sam Conly. They lost their only child, Annabelle, to typhoid when she was just a toddler.

Living in Connecticut and in Ohio, Gertrude worked as a maid and a cafeteria worker before moving to Los Angeles “to find a better life.” She lived alone and took care of herself until she was 105. Today, at 115, she has a fondness for sweets, fancy hats, crispy bacon and the Bible. Although she was born 34 years before the first television set today she loves to watch daytime TV, especially “The Price Is Right” and “The Jerry Springer Show.”

Gertrude followed the last presidential election on her television expectantly. Prior to voting for Barrack Obama, she had voted only once before - for John F. Kennedy. Although she laughs trying to pronounce his name, Gertrude cast her ballot this time for Obama “because he’s for the colored people.” She said she never thought she’d live long enough to see a black man in the White house. “We all are the same although our skin is dark and theirs is white.

------------------------------

Bucky Williams --Age 103--Oldest Living Member of Negro Baseball League

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Wallace Ignatius "Bucky" Williams was born in 1906. It was the year of the first radio broadcast; the year the first Victrola was manufactured; the world's first feature film, "The Story of the Kelly Gang," was released, Upton Sinclair published "The Jungle"; the San Francisco Earthquake destroyed much of that city; the Race riots in Atlanta killed 27 people and severely damaged the black-owned business district; President Theodore Roosevelt was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and the year he proclaimed Devils Tower the nation's first National Monument; the same year American gangster Bugsy Siegel was born and that Susan B. Anthony died.

Growing up in Pittsburgh's East End, Wallace "Bucky" Williams dropped out of school before he reached his teens. At 21 he began playing baseball. A lifetime .340 hitter, Williams played third base and shortstop, first for the Pittsburg Crawfords from 1927 – 1932. The Crawfords’ owner, black entrepreneur Gus Greenlee, used his gambling profits to create the best-financed team in black baseball during its early years. Insulted that his players were not allowed to use the dressing rooms at white venues he opened GreenLee Field in 1932, the first black-owned and black-built baseball field in America. Bucky left Greenlee’s Crawfords in 1932 but he returned in 1936 to play for The Pittsburg Grays, a team that started in 1900 as a group of black steelworkers.

Pittsburgh played a major role in the Negro Leagues and in baseball history. No city in America boasted as many stellar players. Bucky played with the baseball greats Josh Gibson, "Cool" Papa Bell, Judy Johnson, Buck Leonard, Cuban great Martin Dihigo, Oscar Charleston, Buck O’Neil, pitcher Leroy “Satchell” Paige, as well as pitcher "Smokey" Joe Williams - who once struck out 27 batters in a 12-inning game. "Not many people got hits off Satchel," smiles Williams, remembering his. “He always told us the story of how he just closed his eyes and swung the bat," said Williams' son, David. Another time he squared off against the infamous “Cool Papa” Bell. Williams nailed Bell with a barehanded strike to first. “He wasn’t as fast as he thought he was.”

It was an era before Jackie Robinson, when the color line prevented these players - some of the best players in the world - from playing in the National and American leagues. The black players couldn’t play on the same fields, use the same water fountains or eat in the same restaurants. Bucky used to tell the story of the time he and a fellow player were approached by female fans but didn’t speak to the women for fear of being lynched. But Bucky remembers the good times too. “You didn't make any money. Some of us might have made $10 or $15. But we had what you call fun."

Williams is the second oldest surviving member of the Negro Baseball League. He was inducted into the Negro League Hall of Fame is its oldest living member.

----------------------------------------------------

Ruby Muhammad -- Age 111 -- Mother of the Nation of Islam

Rancho Cordova, California

Ruby Muhammad Pittman, “the Mother of the Nation of Islam,” was born in 1897 - the year William McKinley became President; the Oldsmobile was founded; Jack London joined the Klondike Gold Rush where he wrote his first successful stories; the year America’s first subway opened in Boston;J.J. Thomson discovered the electron and the same year that Thornton Wilder, William Faulkner and – coincidentally – Elijah Muhammad, the co-founder of the Nation of Islam, were all born.

Ruby Muhammad Pttman grew up in Americus, Ga., an orphan with no ties to any family. Her mother passed away when she was young; she didn’t know her father until she was a mother herself. When she joined The Muslim community in 1946 they became the family she never had. She had spent her childhood working the fields and never went to school, but the Nation of Islam encouraged her to pursue her education and at the age of 50 she began attending classes at night. She wrote poems and even published a book of poetry that sold more than 200 copies.

Minister Louis Farrakhan named her the Mother of the Nation of Islam in 1986. Islam it not a religion for her but a way of life. “It is the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me. It taught me that you can be anything you want to be and do anything you want to do. I grew up not knowing any member of my family, now here I am, the Mother of the Nation of Islam.” Ruby is very proud to be a mother and grandmother and even has 2 great-great-great granddaughters. She now lives in California with her daughter and grandchildren: “The family I created.” She still exercises every day and takes care of herself. At 109 she said she planned “to be the oldest black women walking the planet without a wheelchair!”

---------------------------------------------------

Other Centenarians to Interview

109 year old Mae Etta Castain, an early Civil Rights activist who as a young teacher was the subject of a landmark Civil Rights case, argued by Thurgood Marshall, over equal pay for black and white teachers and who lost her job after winning the case but remained an educator for 51 years.

Beatrice Robinson, a former sharecropper who at 104 has been dipping tobacco for 94 years.

Hattie LaFayette who at 112 has outlived her 21 siblings, husband and two daughters, and has lived to see a seventh generation.

102 year old Mamie Reardon who got her driver's license and started her career in social work at the age of 65.

Maggie Renfro, Rosie Thornton Warren and Carrie Thornton who at 114, 107 and 103 are the world's oldest living siblings.

Eugene Florence, the 104 year old Southern Baptist Preacher who was denied her Masters of Divinity Degree because of his race until 2004 --12 years after he retired-- and who has outlived 5 wives.

108 year old Gladys Cowen Kennedy, one of the first women to organize debutante balls for young African-American women and teach them proper etiquette, how to sing, play piano and deliver a speech.

For More Info visit:

www.ineffectfilms.com