1950 Census - Grover Brown's Family

The United States has the "72-Year Rule" concerning information about individuals collected during the decennial US Census. Thus the information from the 1950 US Census was released on 1 April 2022.

Recently, I found my mother's family in the census records.

She was living with her parents, paternal grandmother and her brother and sister.  They lived at 639 East Walnut Street, Louisville, Jefferson Co., Kentucky. Below is an extract from the record.

Name	Relationship	Age	Birthplace
Brown, Grover	Head	30	Kentucky
Brown, Millicent M.	Wife	32	Michigan
Brown, Linda L.	Daughter	7	Kentucky
Brown, Peter G.	Son	5	Kentucky
Brown, Julia A.	Daughter	4	Kentucky
Brown, Margie	Mother	49	Kentucky

Some interesting finds (at least to me):

• Grover was not working. He answered "Ot" (meaning Other) to the question, "What was this person doing most of last week?" He did not have a job, and he was not looking for work. 
• Millicent was working part-time as a waitress at an ice cream fountain. She had worked 17 hours the previous week and she worked 44 weeks in 1949, earning $1,980 for the year.
• Margie was living with them and she was the main wage earner as she worked full time as a beautician.

I talked to my mom, Aunt Julie and Uncle Pete about these findings and they had the following comments:

• Grover could not or would not hold a job. He tended bar and he had drinking and gambling problems.
• The Walnut Street house was in a housing project.
• They don't remember their grandmother, Margie Brown (nee Mokley), living with them. Maybe it was a temporary situation at the time that the census was taken.

I confirmed that the house was indeed in the projects, the Clarksdale Housing Complex. Those buildings were demolished in 2005 and a new housing project is there now, Liberty Green.

Another interesting fact, Walnut Street is now called Muhammad Ali Boulevard. The street was renamed in 1978.

You can view the original census page here.