San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Sharecropper’s daughter danced with Obamas in White House
Virginia McLaurin, who was born into a family of Black sharecroppers in the Jim Crow South and took a star turn as a centenarian when she danced with the Obamas at the White House, died Monday.
McLaurin had been receiving hospice care and died peacefully in Maryland, where her son lives, according to a statement from her family and Deborah Menkart, a friend who helped arrange her White House meeting with the Obamas. She was 113 by her own accounting but did not have a birth certificate.
McLaurin was born in South Carolina, married three times and had three children, Menkart said in a phone interview late Tuesday.
She is survived by her son Felipe Cardoso, her daughter Idamae Streeter and at least 50 other descendants, including a greatgreat-great-grandchild, her family said. Another son, Willie Johnson Jr., died decades ago, Cardoso said.
Cardoso, 49, of Olney, Md., said McLaurin took him in when he was 3 years old and later adopted him.
McLaurin lived quietly in Washington, D.C., for decades before her life took an unexpected turn in February 2016, when she joined a star-studded list of guests attending a Black History Month reception at the White House.
Upon entering a room where the Obamas were waiting to greet her, she raised her hands and yelled “Hi!” As President Barack Obama held her arms, she began dancing in place, supported by her cane.
“How are you?” Obama asked. “I’m fine!” McLaurin said, her head bobbing with excitement.
As Obama led her across the room to his wife, Michelle Obama, he implored the centenarian to take it easy. “Slow down now,” he said affectionately. “Don’t go too quick!”
In the center of the room, McLaurin danced with Michelle Obama for a moment. Then, with a president on one arm and a first lady on the other, she paused to consider the setting — and her place in American history.
“I thought I would never live to get in the White House,” she said, slowly and carefully, as the Obamas chirped encouragement. She added that she was “so happy” to have a Black couple living there.
“You have just made our day,” Michelle Obama said. “You know that? That energy, man.”
“Well, you made my day,” McLaurin replied.
“People focus on her dancing” with the Obamas, Menkart said Tuesday. “But she also spoke — and drove the conversation in a way that many people would not have known how to do.”
Virginia Lugenia McLaurin’s exact birth date is unclear. She said she believed it had been recorded in a family Bible as March 12, 1909, the Washington Post reported. According to a 2016 letter from a vital records department in South Carolina, which Menkart provided to the New York Times, she was said to have been born March 12, 1916. But the letter also noted that no birth records for her had been found between the years 1915 and 1920.
What is clear is that McLaurin’s hometown was Cheraw, S.C.
Her father, John Oliver Campbell, died when she was 1, according to Menkart. Her mother, Flora Ella McQueen, taught her to sew.
She said her grandfather was a Methodist minister and that her stepfather was a Baptist.
She would walk 10 miles to school, on one pair of shoes a year, she said. And she dropped out when she was in the eighth grade to get married.
Her first husband died in a bar fight over money, and she would marry twice more, Menkart said.
McLaurin moved to Washington around 1939 as part of the Great Migration. She worked in a laundry and at a shipyard, among other places.
In her retirement, she devoted much of her time to volunteering in local schools, her family said.
McLaurin was eager to put the clout that she earned to good use.
One of her passions was voting. In videos that she recorded ahead of the 2016 election, she encouraged young people to vote.
McLaurin also used her public perch to draw attention to her inability to obtain the government identification she would need to board an airplane. Getting a nondriver photo ID would have required a birth certificate.
Days after her Catch-22 was publicized, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser announced a new regulation that modified the requirements for getting the ID for people 70 and older. She also visited McLaurin’s home and stood by as she signed paperwork.