Overlooked No More: Mabel Grammer, Whose Brown Baby Plan Found Homes for HundredsPosted in Articles, Biography, Europe, History, Media Archive, United States, Women on 2019-02-09 02:33Z by Steven |
Overlooked No More: Mabel Grammer, Whose Brown Baby Plan Found Homes for Hundreds
The New York Times
2019-02-06
Alexis Clark, Adjunct Faculty
Columbia Journalism School, New York, New York
 Mabel Grammer, who started the Brown Baby Plan to help mixed-race children in Germany. She adopted 12, and found homes for 500 others. Associated Press |
Since 1851, many remarkable black men and women did not receive obituaries in The New York Times. This month, with Overlooked, we’re adding their stories to our archives.
Grammer’s self-run adoption agency made it possible for unwanted mixed-race children in Germany to find homes after World War II.
They were called “brown babies,” or “mischlingskinder,” a derogatory German term for mixed-race children. And sometimes they were just referred to as mutts.
They were born during the occupation years in Germany after World War II, the offspring of German women and African-American soldiers. Their fathers were usually transferred elsewhere and their mothers risked social repercussions by keeping them, so the babies were placed in orphanages.
But when Mabel Grammer, an African-American journalist, became aware of the orphaned children, she stepped in. She and her husband, an army chief warrant officer stationed in Mannheim, and later Karlsruhe, adopted 12 of them, and Grammer found homes for 500 others…
Read the entire article here.
