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1950 Television Shows
58
Jackie "MOMS" Mabley!
Jackie "Moms" Mabley, born Loretta Mary Aiken
When Jackie Mabley was growing up one child of many in a poor Southern family, her mother told her she would have to leave North Carolina in order to make something of herself. Mabley took her mother's advice to heart, overcoming great odds to become not only a widely recognized and successful stand-up comic, but also the unforgettable "Moms," an African-American archetype with too much common sense and sensuality to take herself too seriously. Dressed in her flamboyant signature outfit of Hawaiian shirt over a housedress with bright socks, floppy slippers, and a hat she crocheted herself, Moms Mabley called her audience her "children." She entertained them with raunchy jokes and devilish playfulness, punctuating her act with bulging eyes and a toothless leer. In an entertainment industry where African-American women continue to receive little recognition, Moms Mabley's 60-year career stands as a role model.
Mabley was born into a family of twenty children in Brevard, North Carolina, in 1894. Her father, James P. Aiken, owned and operated several businesses, while her mother, Mary, kept house and took in boarders. Her father died an accidental death when she was eleven. In 1910, her mother took over their primary business, a general store.
Mabley had been raped at the age of eleven by an older black man and then again two years later by the town's white sheriff. Both rapes resulted in pregnancies and the children were given away for adoption. More hardship followed when Mabley's father, who was also a volunteer fireman, was killed when a fire engine exploded and her mother was run over by a truck while returning home from church on Christmas Day.
By the age of fifteen, Mabley had been raped twice and had two children who were given up for adoption. She was pressured by her stepfather to marry a much older man, but was encouraged by her grandmother to strike out on her own. Mabley ran away to Cleveland, Ohio, joining a traveling minstrel show, where she sang and entertained.
She took her stage name, Jackie Mabley, from an early boyfriend, commenting to Ebony in a 1970s interview that he'd taken so much from her, it was the least she could do to take his name. Later she became known as "Moms" because she was indeed a "Mom" to many other comedians on the circuit in the 1950s and '60s.
She came out as a lesbian at the age of twenty-seven, becoming one of the first triple-X rated comedians on the comedy circuit.
March 19, 1894 – May 23, 1975