"Big Sister" is what Susie's younger brothers and sisters had always called her, and they continued to call her that even after they were full-grown. Her husband William, whom she married in 1929, even called her Sister throughout the 61 years of their married life. And "Big Sister" she was. Born March 11, 1902, in Sumter, South Carolina, Susie Bracey White was the oldest of 13 children of James and Sarah Bracey. Her formal education ended after the eighth grade, as it did for most poor, Colored children in those days, and she went to work alongside her mother who took in laundry for white families in the surrounding community.

Shortly after their marriage, Susie and William bought a four-bedroom row-house in North Philadelphia. An industrious woman, Susie ran a thriving laundry business from the basement of her house. She only laundered flat-goods (sheets, pillow cases, and table linen) because she considered those items the cream-of-the-crop their owners the kind of people who she wanted to do business with. Her home quickly became the safe harbor to which each of her siblings and their families came carrying a suitcase and a dream. Before they went off to World War II, my uncles, Jack and Herman, both lived with Aunt Susie while they worked at the Philadelphia Seed Company.

The only member of Susie's family who she could not persuade to com e north was my mother, her baby sister Roberta. So, from the distance, my mother's "Big Sister" became my family's guardian angel. When times were hard, she wired money. At holidays and birthdays, she sent presents. When my parents separated and there was no one to care for me while my mother returned to her job in the classroom, Aunt Susie took me to live with her in Philadelphia.

From the time I was nine months old until I was five-and-a-half, Aunt Susie lavished me with both material and spiritual goods. On Thursdays, her designated day off, we would get dressed in our Sunday finery and ride the subway downtown to shop and have lunch at John Wanamaker Department Store. Aunt Susie was successful and everybody respected her. My life with her was markedly different from my mother's and sisters' lives in South Carolina, and when it came time for me to return south to my family and enroll in school, the memory of that life would sustain me while I chafed under southern segregation. I knew that I too could one day escape from the south and live a life like Aunt Susie's. No matter how degrading white people in Sumter treated my mother, or my sisters or me, I knew that they were wrong in their assessments of us. My Aunt Susie had made me sure of my personal worth. No one could take that from me.

"When I was a child my friends prayed to God or wrote to Santa Claus when they wanted something. I prayed and wrote to my Aunt Susie. That way, I was sure to get it."

Aunt Susie never had any children of her own. After her adopted daughter Loretta died, she devoted her time, energy and resources to her nieces and her nephew and a number of foster children with whom she developed a strong bond of love and devotion. Her life was a reflection of her love of God, her church, devotion to her family and friends and being a good neighbor on Smedley Street.