Beatrice Martin Hawkins was born on March 31, 1896, and died on October 15, 1967, in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina. Her father was James Madison Hawkins, a slave owner in Halifax County, North Carolina and her mother was Tula Hawkins, a slave. Beatrice Martin Hawkins is our great great grandmother and the reason us and our family are where we are today.  

At an early age, Beatrice Martin Hawkins married Lewis Martin and from this marriage, they had 23 children. One of these children was Helen Goodwin Martin, our great-grandmother and mother to Cozie M. Goodwin Lassiter, our grandmother. Our grandmother was raised by Beatrice Martin Hawkins. Beatrice Martin was a sharecropper and lived in a four-room shack with 14 members of her family. This shack had wooden floors, no toilets, heat, or running water. In a single room, there were at least 8 family members who slept in one bed. When our great-great-grandmother was low on food, sugar, and flour, she would wash laundry for the sharecropper’s wife, but was never given money for her work; rather rations such as sacks of flour and sugar. As children, our grandmother and her siblings’ days were spent in the cotton, tobacco, and peanut fields, especially during picking season, where after they were dismissed from school, they would head to the fields. 

Our grandmother, Cozie M. Goodwin Lassiter, attended a two-room schoolhouse. One of the classrooms had grades 1, 2, and 3 and the second had grades 4, 5, and 6. Ultimately, she moved to Baltimore, Maryland to live with her mother. When our grandmother was promoted from the 3rd grade to the 4th grade, she had an opportunity to move to the second classroom where there was a library located in the cloakroom. If she finished her desk work, her teacher would allow students to go to the cloakroom and read. There were only 12 books in the cloakroom/library and she read and reread all of them. To this day, our grandmother continues to have a passion for reading. 

Her life living in a shack located in the woods was routine and confining, but nonetheless, enjoyable. And this was all due to Beatrice Martin. This routine involved working in the fields, walking two miles each day to school, going to church on Sundays, and occasionally going with her grandmother to the master’s house to do laundry for his wife and family. Beatrice Martin was our grandmother’s role model, mentor, and angel. She had all the characteristics needed to make our grandmother the person she is today. Although she was from a poor family, Beatrice Martin showed her love. Her grandmother taught her how to get up early each morning, get dressed, and go to work, school, or church. The outside world did not exist for her at that time and in retrospect, she was glad it didn’t. She was happy and grateful for the family she had. There was never sadness or tears in their shack/household. Not once did Beatrice Martin yell at her family members, threaten them, or complain about running out of food. She always found a way to make ends meet. Beatrice Martin was a quiet person and had a heart of gold, love, and care for everyone. She never uttered a bad word or expression. 

Although our grandmother did not have the resources to attend a reputable high school that was not located in a low-socioeconomic community, she found her way through and attended Western Female High School in Baltimore, Maryland. Upon graduation, she attended college to earn her undergraduate degree and then graduated from school to earn her graduate degree and certification in administration and technology. She then continued to share her knowledge by becoming an educator teaching students in a variety of countries like Japan, Iceland, England, and Germany. Beatrice Martin was our grandmother’s saving grace and throughout their time together, she helped our grandmother gain the tools she needed to become the person she is today. This allowed her to provide a good life for her children so they too could grow up to do something great and provide an even better life for their children. Because of what Beatrice Martin taught our grandmother, she was able to pass along knowledge to our mother, who grew up to be an intelligent lawyer. In our family, on our mother’s side, we have Beatrice Martin to thank for the wonderful life we now live, pursuing our dreams as actresses in Los Angeles, California.