Support Doris's Legacy with a Memorial

Born June 25, 1899, Doris Rheubottom Hackley was a star of stage and film in a time when such a path for Black artists was rare. She knew Billie Holiday, Pearl Bailey, and was even praised by Count Basie for her voice. She and her husband Crackshot Hackley once even owned a club during the swing era of jazz in Newark, New Jersey ... but you wouldn't know any of this by where she was buried.

She rests next to her mother in Clearview Cemetery, a historically black cemetery in Uniontown, PA, with no marker. In fact, there are only two people who remember exactly where she is buried.

We want to change that. After recording an episode of Generational Archives, Dr. Norma D. Thomas (her great niece) and Dr. Raina J. León (her great-great niece), decided that she should have a burial memorial. She should be remembered as a pride of Uniontown. While we still remember her bright spirit, swagger, ceaseless joy, and welcome and now have learned so much about her from watching a film (preserved in the Library of Congress!) and reading newspaper clipping after newspaper clipping about her, others should know about her.

She was so determined to be an artist that she would run away from home, riding the bus from Uniontown to Pittsburgh and earning pennies along the way! What her life teaches us about being committed to your art and what it meant to also give back. She never ceased to return home to Uniontown, sharing stories and financial resources with her family and community. She didn't leave and forget home; she always came back.

Help us remember her now and for future generations by supporting the placement of a gravestone, which, when ready, will also be a fall program of the new Fayette County African American Museum and Cultural Center opening Juneteenth 2024! Let's celebrate her 125th birthday through remembering her song and her work!

The museum and cultural center was founded by Dr. Norma D. Thomas and Mr. Eddie León, to share the history of the African American community in rural PA, Affrilachia, a history that extends over 200 years in the region that has been mostly untold.

Check out the podcast episode on Aunt Doris here!