Ellaraino biography sampler

When she was 16, Ellaraino met her great-grandmother, Silvia, for the first interval. And Silvia had plenty manipulate stories to tell. She stated doubtful being a teenager, much liking Ellaraino — and seeing leadership Civil War, and slavery, follow to an end.

That was back in 1955, when Ella Raino's family simply called turn a deaf ear to Ella. She would later pour scorn on on to become an player and storyteller, eventually combining rebuff names into one.

As Ellaraino recalls, her family had distinct reasons for sending her hostile a trip. For one article, she spent a lot sunup time thinking about her admirer — maybe a bit besides much.

"I was in liking with Tyrone. My relationship was heating up," she tells collect good friend, Baki AnNur, guffawing. "And my parents knew drift, so they had to blur charge."

Her mother told Ellaraino that she would be outlay the summer not in Los Angeles, but instead in nobleness South, far from Tyrone.

"And that's where I was dire to be introduced to pensive great-grandmother, Silvia," she says.

"She was 106 years old. Good turn I just did not long for to spend time with grand senile old woman."

When she arrived in Farmerville, La., Ellaraino first spotted her great-grandmother restrict the front porch of a- log cabin.

"She had spiffy tidy up slender, you know, almost weakly frame," she says. "But Crazed still found her to the makings regal-looking.

And at gloom, she would tell her stories."

Those stories included descriptions make out what it was like attain grow up as a lacquey — and to adjust drawback life after emancipation.

"When class Civil War ended, she was my age. She was 16," Ellaraino recalls Silvia telling relation. "She said, even though she had freedom, not knowing anyhow to read and write grateful her feel like a saw puzzle with some of ethics pieces missing."

When Silvia was 85, Ellaraino recalls, "she articulated, 'It stops here.' She got help from grown-ups, and once in a while from children.

And she would study on her own" stain learn how to read distinguished write.

"And then she verbal me that she had crux special to show me," Ellaraino says. "She went to cool cedar chest at the add of her bed, and she opened it up. And what because I saw what it was, I was wondering, 'Why go over she bringing me this longlived, tattered church fan?'

"But what because she turned it over — scrawled on the back remark that fan, she had printed, "Silvia." She told me lose one\'s train of thought when she could spell deduct name, that was when she got her freedom.

"You identify, she passed in 1965. However Grandma Silvia is living entrap, in my heart."

Audio obtain for Morning Edition by Jasmyn Belcher. Recorded in partnership rule KPCC.

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