Nora's Place

Summary:

My name is Irish Lewis-Massey, and I am asking you to help me restore my mother's home that I recently purchased. I plan to use her home and land to provide transitional housing for single mothers. When my mother was living, she and my father provided housing for students who came to town to help African-Americans gain voting rights. Unfortunately, when the students were trying to return home, they got stuck in the mud. While my father was rescuing them, his tractor overturned and killed him instantly. They were both honored posthumously by the Benjamin J. Hooks Institute for Social Change in Memphis, TN. I would love to continue my parents' legacy of service by restoring her house to help the community. Thanks in advance for any donations.

 

Full Story:

In 1965, Nora was the wife of a sharecropper, Albert Sylvester (Dump) Lewis, and she lived in Fayette County, Tennessee. She was also a stay-at-home mom with seven children who ranged from the ages of two to sixteen. Both Nora and her husband were civil rights activists working with Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) during the voter registration movement. They allowed three college students from New York to stay in our two-room shack during the summer to help get blacks registered to vote. On September 3, 1965, her husband was killed when his tractor overturned as he tried to pull the students’ car from the mud. Nora had to grieve, plan a funeral, take care of seven children and harvest the crops to get to the local gin before winter. As a condition of sharecropping, the occupants of the land were able to stay in a home as long they worked on the land and produced crops. During this period, she heavily relied upon her family. Her mother, Arena Hunter-Brooks, who inherited land from her family, gave her two acres of land to help her leave the land in which she worked as a sharecropper.

 

Nora had heart, tenacity, and big dreams of building a home to improve her family’s quality of life. She worked hard for about three years, and she convinced the county to help her qualify for a construction loan. Eventually, she began construction on a home with three bedrooms and one bathroom in 1969. At the time, no woman of color in Fayette County had ever achieved this feat. As a result of Nora’s outstanding achievement, she began sharing her knowledge with other sharecroppers about how they too could qualify for a loan, build a house, and leave the land in which owners ruled over them, and so many followed her advice. She worked hard for thirty years to rear all seven children. She also fought segregation by enrolling her children into a desegregated school. In 1999, she was able to pay off the loan and get a free and clear ownership deed. This was her most monumental milestone, of which she was so proud.

 

She retired in 2000, and in 2004, she was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. Ultimately in April 2005, she lost her battle. Both Albert and Nora Lewis were posthumously honored by the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change with the Social Justice Award for their dedication to Fayette County Civil Rights Movement. As a pioneer during this country’s dark history, Nora’s legacy is remembered as one of great strength, perseverance, tenacity, and hard work.

 

Through great financial hardship, one of her children, Irish Lewis-Massey, bought the home from an auction in September 2021 to ensure that Nora’s family legacy, sacrifice, and hard work would be remembered for many generations to come. However, due to much-needed repair and improvement, there is a great need for funding to help restore and bring her home back to its glory, as she would want. Therefore, her daughter, Irish Lewis-Massey, is asking for help to bring her dream to reality and name the home “Nora’s Place” as a tribute to her life and tenacious legacy.

 

Currently, there are two acres of land, which her daughter plans to build homes to give single mothers escaping abusive and homeless conditions new beginnings for themselves and their children.

 

Thank you in advance for your donations and support in helping me to honor Nora Brooks-Lewis!