The seventh child

by Freddie Mae Baxter

Told with the irrepressible warmth and humor of a natural-born storyteller, The Seventh Child is the chronicle of a remarkable woman's life, and of three generations of an African-American family. The seventh of eight children, Freddie Mae Baxter was born in 1923 in rural South Carolina. When her father left the family, her mother had to raise the children alone, and Freddie Mae went to work - first picking cotton, then cooking for the white families in town. At seventeen, she decided to go up North in search of new horizons and a better life. Now, Freddie Mae shares with us the wisdom of her seventy-five years, and some vivid memories: from her childhood in the South ("Two cents was money in those days. . .") to her life in Harlem, where she played saxophone in an all-girl band ("We just jammed!") and danced at all the hot clubs ("Anyplace that there was music, you could find me"). Through good times, bad times, and the enormous changes she's lived through, Freddie Mae has remained st