People

Warren Dorsey is 101 years old. He was born in November of 1920 in an old farmhouse without light or running water in the Oklahoma Hill section of Sykesville, where the black people lived. 

His grandmother delivered him in the kitchen under those crude conditions. Her name was Catherine Dorsey. She was born a slave and lived as a slave until 1864, when the state of Maryland altered its constitution to finally outlaw the practice. 

Everyone called her Aunt Kitty. She was the daughter of a slave and a slave dealer. She appeared to be a white girl, a white slave. 

Warren's mother was Carrie Dorsey. Carrie was Aunt Kitty's ninth child. Warren was Carrie's ninth child. Warren was born small and weak and premature. Kitty and Carrie did not expect him to survive and Carrie waited two weeks before finally naming him Warren Gamaliel Dorsey, after the newly elected President. 

Warren grew up in great poverty, but eventually fought his way beyond his circumstances. He graduated from Morgan College in Baltimore. He served in the army. He worked many years as a microbiologist at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland, and eventually became a school teacher and then a school principal. 

He and his mother Carrie are the main subject of Jack McBride White's book, "In Carrie's Footprints, the Long Walk of Warren Dorsey."

You can buy the book here.