The Yellow House Major Figures

Sarah Broom

Sarah Monique Broom (born 1979) is the youngest of the 12 children of Ivory Mae. Her father, Simon, died when she was just an infant, but she grew up in a full household. She was named for the woman who was a mother figure to her mother, Sarah McCutcheon, and who acted as a grandmother to all of Ivory Mae’s children.

From an early age, Sarah, known by her middle name Monique, was fascinated with words and stories. She developed the habit of writing down conversations she heard around her. Sarah’s mother dictated that she be called Sarah at school. Broom’s poor eyesight, not discovered until age 10, contributed to her poor behavior at school, an effort to distract from her lack of understanding. When Broom began to skip school, Ivory Mae, in an effort to improve her daughter’s education, moved Broom to a private school their family could ill afford.

As Broom grew up, her family’s home, the Yellow House, fell into disrepair. It had holes in the walls and rats under the sink. As much as she loved her family, she was ashamed of the home. Visitors were kept away. Crime increased in her neighborhood, and instances of police corruption and brutality left her afraid. She witnessed rampant drug addiction. One of her brothers became a drug addict and stole from the family. A close friend, Alvin, was killed in a car accident while high. The neighborhood began to empty as people who could afford to move away left. It was a place she felt tied to but also longed to escape.

Broom felt some relief when she went to college and made her dorm room comfortable and pretty. After graduate school, Sarah worked as a journalist. She lived in New York with one of her sisters and took a job as an editor for O Magazine. It was while in New York that Hurricane Katrina struck, and Sarah felt guilty for being so far away. She used her writing skills as a director of a nonprofit in Africa and as a speechwriter for the New Orleans mayor, but she was captivated by her family’s story, the role of the Yellow House, and the ways in which their experience was the American experience. She moved back to New Orleans to research and write this memoir.

Ivory Mae

Ivory Mae (born 1941) was born to Amelia “Lolo” Gant and Lionel Soule (who was married to someone else). Ivory Mae imagined her father must be dead since he was so absent, and she ran from him in fear the one time he tried to visit. Lolo’s own mother, Roseanna Perry, disappeared during Lolo’s adolescence, and Lolo came to call a family friend, Sarah McCutcheon, mother. It was from McCutcheon that Lolo inherited a sense of style, preoccupation with cleanliness, and culinary talent, all traits she instilled in Ivory Mae. For a time, Ivory Mae and her two siblings were raised by relatives while Lolo lived in Chicago before returning, perhaps too much reminded of her own childhood upheavals.

When Ivory Mae was in high school, she became pregnant by her friend and neighbor named Webb. Although it was no love match, the two married and had two children. Ivory Mae was not allowed to return to school. She was ambitious, though, and like Lolo before her, studied to become a nurse to support her children after Webb was tragically killed in a hit-and-run accident. With the money from his life insurance, she bought a home that she hoped would provide the stability for her family she lacked as a child. She married Simon Broom, and he took on her children as his own. The two had several more children until the family peaked at 12 total. Ivory Mae took on the role of sole breadwinner and parent after Simon’s sudden death.

She kept her home as spotless as possible and prided herself in the meals and clothing she made for her family, ensuring they appeared to have more means than they did. As the home became more and more derelict, it became a source of shame to Ivory Mae, something to be hidden from outsiders. Ivory Mae is a woman of faith. She thinks of herself as “God’s kid.”

Simon

Simon Broom (died 1980) was a tall, handsome man with a dark complexion. He served in the Navy during World War II (1939–45). He met Ivory Mae, 19 years his junior, when they were both married to other people, before Webb’s death. Broom was a groundskeeper and maintenance worker for NASA’s (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) manufacturing plant in New Orleans who played trombone and other instruments in a jazz band on his own time. He had three children with his first wife, Carrie Howard, before they separated. He later married Ivory Mae, and the two had several more children together. The large family lived in New Orleans East in a shotgun house to which Simon made an addition.

Simon died suddenly of an aneurysm when the author was just six months old. Simon’s absence significantly impacted the family and the author in particular. She knew so little of her father’s appearance that she misidentified him in video footage while researching her memoir. Simon notably left a number of home improvement projects incomplete, and after his death Ivory Mae did not have the resources or skills to stop the home from sliding into decay.

The Yellow House

What Broom refers to as the Yellow House or, sometimes, by its address, 4121 Wilson Avenue, was originally a green 25-by-160-foot shotgun house, bought by Ivory Mae in 1961. She used the life insurance money from the death of her first husband, Webb, to purchase the home, the first woman in her family to own one. Located in New Orleans’s third district, the home sat in a part of the city known as New Orleans East, which was originally a swamp.

In the 1940s, wealthy developers from out of state planned to capitalize on the unused region by draining it and selling its land for lucrative city expansion, predicting it would be home to 175,000 residents. Advertising from the 1960s likened New Orleans East to a frontier dream where anything was possible. A NASA rocket manufacturing plant established in the area attracted other industry, and property development boomed. At that time, New Orleans East was mostly white. As the decades passed and the city failed to provide necessary infrastructure, the inherent unsuitability of the land began to make itself evident. Property values sank along with foundations into the spongy soil.

4121 Wilson Avenue was left with unfinished projects at the death of Simon Broom and suffered significant damage during Hurricane Betsy in 1965. After the storm, the home was clad in green siding, which only served to cover rotting walls. A single mother to 12, Ivory Mae lacked the resources to repair or maintain the home, and it fell into dereliction. The home, which was once a source of pride, became a source of discomfort and embarrassment. After Hurricane Katrina, the home was not salvageable, and the city tore it down without giving the family notice. It took 12 years for Ivory Mae to receive compensation for the home, an amount insufficient to rebuild. It is telling that a structure that no longer exists remains the touch point for the Broom family and symbolic of the struggles of the disenfranchised.

Carl

Carl Broom is the fourth child of Ivory Mae and her first with her second husband, Simon. When his father died, Carl was only 16, yet he assumed the role of man of the house, calling himself “Mr. Broom number two.” Nicknamed Rabbit, he grew up in the Yellow House and was so attached to the place that he acted as its caretaker long after it had been destroyed. After working his maintenance job at NASA, like his father, he spent most evenings mowing the grass or just sitting in a chair on the empty property. Sarah Broom chose to begin and end her memoir with the image of her brother Carl standing watch at the home, symbolic of the family’s enduring ties to the complicated legacy it represents.