NANA BROOKS: To mark the 101st birthday of Evelyn Brooks, the Stoutsburg Sourland African American Museum in Skillman premiered a special interview that is accessible on the museum’s website and YouTube channel.

By Anne Levin

Evelyn “Nana” Brooks has had 11 children, 24 grandchildren, 45 great-grandchildren, and seven great-great-grandchildren. The youngest of the brood just turned 1.

But the longtime Sourland Mountain resident, who turned 101 February 27, is more than the matriarch of an expansive family. “Over the course of the last century, Mrs. Brooks has lived through the Great Depression, World War II, the civil rights movement, and all of the change and turmoil of modern politics,” reads a release from the Stoutsburg Sourland African American Museum (SSAAM) announcing a new video interview with Brooks on the museum’s YouTube channel. The video is part of the museum’s 2022 Black History Month programming.

Brooks was interviewed and filmed at her home by SSAAM Executive Director Donnetta Johnson, along with Brooks’ granddaughter Catherine Fulmer-Hogan, who is on the museum’s board. She speaks candidly about raising Black children in a predominantly white community in the 1940s-50s, on marriage and true partnership, and on living well and longevity. She talks about staying involved in daily life. As she answers questions, she crochets. She likes to be busy.

“That was a lot of filming,” said Fulmer-Hogan. “And she is incredibly sharp — actually sharper than she comes across. I keep hoping, fingers crossed, that this is genetic.”

Born in 1921, Evelyn Dunn Brooks grew up in Bronxville, N.Y. She recalls enjoying musical acts at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem, including seeing a young Ella Fitzgerald perform at the beginning of her career. She was 19 when she married Ira Brooks, whose family lived in Hopewell. In 1948, the couple bought a 10-room house on a 28-acre plot of land on the Sourland Mountain, one of only three families then living on Mountain Church Road.

“It cost a whopping $5,000,” said Fulmer-Hogan. “The interesting thing is that they were renting at that time and were actively looking for a home to purchase, because by then they had seven kids and the house wasn’t big enough. They liked this house, but a realtor told them, ‘That’s not a house that you can buy’ — because they were Black. But the realtor couldn’t have known that the owner of the house was Jewish, and he knew about discrimination. He went to see them, and sold to them. Understanding that getting a mortgage would be difficult, he held the mortgage and they paid him monthly.”

The house remained in the family for generations and has since been sold. Brooks lives nearby with one of her sons and his wife.

“I grew up there, and all of my kids lived there,” said Fulmer-Hogan of the family home. “We left there when my youngest was 2.”

Brooks and her husband farmed the “sour” rocky soil while raising their family on the mountain. “Evelyn was known for her quick wit and intelligence, and she and her husband were known for their selflessness and generosity,” reads the SSAAM release. “At times, local farmers would leave extra produce on the Brooks family’s front porch. ‘In those days,’ Brooks is quoted, ‘people were always helping each other.’”

She also recalls the prejudice she encountered as a young wife and mother. On one occasion in 1943, she took her young son to Ashton’s restaurant in Hopewell to buy ice cream. She was turned away from the counter and told to wait on the front porch. “After that I didn’t bother to go back ever again and made sure I told all my Black friends,” she said in a 2015 interview. A hairdresser who catered to white women said she would do Brooks’ hair if she came to the salon at night and enter through the back door.

Fulmer-Hogan credits her grandmother with introducing her to history from the standpoint of personal narrative. In addition to serving on the SSAAM board, Fulmer-Hogan founded Hopewell Valley Heritage Week, which will be held this year from May 22-31. “My grandmother is really the one who planted that seed with me,” she said. “It has now become the work that I do with the Hopewell Museum, with Stoutsburg, and more. That seed she planted with me is about the power in those stories.”

Brooks counts her faith as a sustaining factor in her long life. “I was brought up in the church, and to me, what is to be is to be,” she says in the video. “It’s God’s will. Just like me being here now. I don’t know why he is keeping me here, but there is something that I’m supposed to be doing that I’m doing.”

To access the video, visit Ssaamuseum.org.