Flossie Fuller Carothers Branchcomb Biography

Flossie Fuller Carothers Branchcomb was born in Norfolk, Virginia to Benjamin and Susan Fuller. As a child she didn’t experience many effects of living in the Jim Crow south due to a very protective father who often shielded her and her sibling from that. It wasn’t until her adult years that she began to notice the magnitude of the Jim Crow south. This new revelation pushed her to join the movement of African American people fighting for equal rights and opportunities for the people of their race. As a child, Flossie lived in the Campestella section of Norfolk, Virginia along with her mother, father, and sixteen other brothers and sisters. Flossie’s father worked as a laborer and helped construct the Naval Operating Base in Norfolk. While …show more content…
Flossie attended R.A. Tucker from the first to fourth grade. R.A. Tucker was a small four room school with a wood burning fire place in order to keep it warm during the cold months. She switched schools for fifth grade and attended Abraham Lincoln due to R.A Tucker being torn down and rebuilt. The Abraham Lincoln school was located in Berkley which was further than R.A Tucker was from her house. Once the new R.A Tucker was built in the Oak Leaf and Diggs Park section of Norfolk, she returned back to that school where she would spend the second half of her fifth and sixth grade year. After sixth grade, Flossie began attending Booker T. Washington High School, which was the only African American high school in Norfolk, Virginia at that time, due to the segregation of the school …show more content…
If you couldn’t afford these punches, just as Flossie’s couldn’t majority of the time, you would have to walk to school. On Flossie’s walks to school, she would have to jump a ditch that was full of snakes which was very scary. When it would rain this ditch would fill with water and her and her siblings would have to jump this ditch; sometimes when they landed their feet would be muddy. Also, during their walks to school, they had to travel through a white neighborhood which was very dangerous. Flossie would usually travel in a group, but if a child woke up late and had to walk alone, it was a terrifying experience. These children would always have to be cautious when going through these neighborhoods and had to travel quickly to decrease the likelihood of them being attacked. When Flossie would ride the bus, she experienced her first physical display of racism and hatred toward the black race. While the bus drove through this white neighborhood white children threw rocks at the bus as it passed through. Some of the black boys sometimes retaliated by bringing rocks on the bus and throwing them back at the white children as they rode through the neighborhood. The ladies, on the other hand, were very scared and often began to