Laurice James Butler, who worked as a shoeshine man, and Octavia Margaret Butler, who worked as a live-in domestic servant, were married on May 17, 1931, in Los Angeles, California. On June 22, 1947, in Pasadena, California, they gave birth to a baby girl whom they named Octavia Estelle Butler.
Laurice died on February 16, 1951, when Octavia was almost four years old. She knew very little about her father. She was raised by her mother and grandmother—two hardworking and God-fearing matriarchs. For a brief period, she also lived with her two uncles, each like a father to her.
Octavia Margaret Butler, her mother, was the greatest constant in her life. She was born in Louisiana in 1914 and lived on a sugarcane plantation before migrating with her family—and hundreds of thousands of other African Americans—to Southern California as part of the Great Migration that was reshaping cities in the North and West.
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