segregation Archives » Michelle Trauring

Inside the Herb McCarthy estate, Tom Edmonds pulled two canvases out from a closet in the late 19th-century mansion and took a step back. He turned to his companion, Sheila Guidera, in disbelief.

“Oh my God, how interesting,” he murmured to himself, adding the folk-like paintings to the treasure trove of donations headed for the Southampton History Museum, where he is executive director.

But that is where his wonderment started and, temporarily, stopped.

Without much of a second thought, Mr. Edmonds took the 18-inch-by-24-inch paintings back to the Rogers Mansion and stuffed them into another closet, where they lived for the past 10 years — until their recent rediscovery this past fall, not to mention the piece of forgotten history they represent.

Lance Gumbs was on a mission to find misplaced beadwork in his mother’s shop last week when he saw them — the thick stack of files piled high on her desk.

It was like she had planned it.

Abandoning his original quest, Mr. Gumbs sat down, opened the first file and started to read. And for four and a half hours, he didn’t stop. When he closed the last one, he saw his mother and her legacy in a new light, her many accomplishments — a handful of which he never knew about — shining bright.

In those hours, he had come as close as he ever would to talking to her again.

Harriett Crippen Brown Gumbs, the matriarch and oldest female of the Shinnecock Indian Nation — a woman who lived her life as an educator, activist, feminist and historian — died on November 25 of natural causes. She was 99.

Posts tagged segregation

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Shinnecock Matriarch Harriett Crippen Brown Gumbs Blazed Path Forward, Dies At 99