BIOGRAPHY

Mamie Kirkland was born in Ellisville, Mississippi, USA, on 3 September 1908. She was the second of five children born to Edward Lang, a laborer and aspiring minister, and Rochelle Moore, who managed the family’s rented home. She remembered the large peach tree in their yard and the peculiar remedy crafted by her grandmother—a brew that saved her life when she was near death from typhomalarial fever at the age of five.

Even in her later years, she vividly recalled the events of 1915 at her family’s home, when her father and his friend, John Hartfield, returned with an urgent warning: they needed to flee from an approaching lynch mob. The family resettled in East St. Louis, Illinois, where they endured the anti-Black riots of 1917. Later, they migrated to Alliance, Ohio, seeking safety as the Red Summer of racial violence erupted in 1919. John Hartfield became one of the victims of that violent era.

At 15, she married Albert Kirkland, an itinerant railroad worker, and the couple relocated to Buffalo, New York. Albert secured a job as a grinder at the Pratt & Letchworth plant, while she gave birth to nine children, six of whom survived into adulthood. She also became deeply involved in the First Shiloh Baptist Church, where she was a foundational member. After her husband’s passing in 1959, she worked as a domestic helper and babysitter before transitioning to a role as a door-to-door saleswoman for Avon.

Kirkland never learned to drive and often credited her longevity to her unwavering faith and the many years she spent walking the streets of Buffalo, selling beauty products.

In 1995, at the age of 87, she was recognized as one of the “Magnificent Seven,” an award established by Coordinated Care to honor individuals across Western New York who embody the principles of successful aging.

On 3 September 2015, she celebrated her 107th birthday in Buffalo, New York, surrounded by family and friends. Just days later, on 9 September, she embarked on a momentous journey to revisit her birthplace for the first time in 100 years.

In 2016, the Equal Justice Initiative honored her at a fundraising gala in Manhattan. She and her son spent weeks crafting her brief but impactful speech, in which she planned to urge the young people in the audience to keep stories like hers alive. She emphasized that these stories were just as vital today as they were a century ago, speaking from the perspective of someone who had lived through it all. “I left Mississippi a scared little girl of 7 years old. Now I’m 107 — and I’m not frightened anymore,” she declared.

Mamie Kirkland passed away in Buffalo, New York, on 28 December 2019, at the age of 111 years, 116 days.

RECOGNITION

Her age has not been validated.

ATTRIBUTION

* Mamie’s Story – 100 Years from Mississippi

* “Meet Mamie Kirkland, (almost) 105” – The Buffalo News, 1 September 2013

* “Horror Drove Her From South. 100 Years Later, She Returned” – New York Times, 19 September 2015

* “Mamie Kirkland, Witness to an Era of Racial Terror, Dies at 111” – New York Times, 9 January 2020

GALLERY