McQueen, Butterfly
(08 January 1911–22 December 1995)
- Ann T. Keene
Extract
McQueen, Butterfly (08 January 1911–22 December 1995), actress, was born Thelma McQueen in Tampa, Florida, to African American parents Wallace McQueen, a stevedore, and Mary Richardson, a domestic worker. After her father deserted the family in 1916, her mother left five-year-old Thelma with an aunt in Augusta, Georgia, and moved North, where she continued to work as a domestic. McQueen attended schools in Tampa and Augusta before rejoining her mother in New York as a teenager. After graduating from high school in Babylon, on Long Island, she studied nursing at the Lincoln Training School in the Bronx and later worked at various domestic jobs....
