 Born Mamie Elizabeth Carthan on November 23, 1921, in Webb, Mississippi, Mamie and her brother John - along with her parents, Nash and Alma Carthan - decided to leave the South, during the same time period when millions of black Southerners migrated to the industrial North during the Great Migration to escape racial violence and Jim Crow laws.In 1922 her father moved to Argo, Illinois, near Chicago, shortly after her birth.In Argo, a small industrial town, he found work at the Argo Corn Products Refining Company.