Elizabeth Grady Austin, Helen Brown

Description

Longtime Brooklyn residents; members and officers in the Tents, a women’s secret society that has been in operation since the 19th century. Elizabeth Grady Austin and Helen Brown are both longtime members of the Tents. Helen Brown, born in Elizabeth City, North Carolina in 1925, came to New York City at the age of 4 in 1929. Her family moved close to the current Hunterfly Road Houses, at Buffalo Avenue and Bergen Street. Her grandmother, already a member of the Tents in North Carolina, began a ‘juvenile order’ sometime around 1926. Brown joined at the age of four, but left the Juveniles (it is unclear at what age she left). She rejoined the Tents as an adult, at 21. Elizabeth Grady Austin was born in Goldsburg, NC in 1933. She moved to New York in 1951 at the age of eighteen to attend Brooklyn College. In 1954, she married, and lived for a time with her aunts. One of them invited her to join the Tents, telling her only that she would ‘make a good member’. When joining the Tents, Austin and Brown mention being ‘passed out’ under a specific member. Austin ‘passed out’ under Annie Jean Martin, a longtime supervisor in the Tents organization who Brown refers to as ‘Mother Martin’. According to this interview, the Tents are divided into three districts, located up and down the Eastern seaboard. The Tents have members in North Carolina, Delaware, Maryland, and in the past had members as far north as Connecticut,...

Record Contributed By

Weeksville Heritage Center