cora mae evans
1928-1989
Life Story
Early Life in Newton County
Cora Mae Evans was born around December 19, 1928, in Newton County, Mississippi, to Albert Evans and Rosie Mitchell Evans, who was later known as Rosie Mitchell Smith.
Cora spent her earliest years in Beat 4 of Newton County as part of a large African American farming family. By the 1930 Federal Census, one-year-old Cora was living with her parents and older brothers and sisters, including Josie, Earnest, Maggie Lee, Bernice, and Amos.
Her childhood unfolded during the Great Depression, when agriculture remained central to the livelihood of Black families throughout the Lawrence community.
By 1940, Cora’s family circumstances had changed. Her parents had separated and divorced, and her father, Albert Evans, had remarried Francis Wheaton. Twelve-year-old Cora was living in Albert and Francis’s household along with siblings who included Maggie, Bernice, James, and Lottie Mae.
The 1940 census records that Cora had completed the fourth grade. Like her brothers and sisters, she grew up in a household where education existed alongside the responsibilities and demands of rural farm life.
From Mississippi to Detroit
As a young woman, Cora eventually left Mississippi and joined several members of her family who had migrated north to Michigan.
Her journey became part of the larger Great Migration, during which millions of African Americans left Southern communities for northern and western cities in search of expanded economic and social opportunities.
For the Evans family, Detroit became particularly important. Cora was not migrating into an entirely disconnected world. Several of her brothers and sisters also established their adult lives in metropolitan Detroit, creating a family network hundreds of miles from the farms of Newton County.
Cora eventually married into the Arrington family and spent much of her adult life in Detroit.
From Cora Mae to Corrine
One particularly interesting feature of Cora’s documentary history is the evolution of her given name.
Mississippi records identify her as Cora Mae Evans. Later records from Michigan contain variations including Carrine May Arrington and Corrine Arrington.
In June 1960, Social Security records documented her as Carrine May Arrington and identified her parents as Albert Evans and Rosie Mitchell, firmly connecting her later Michigan identity with the Cora Mae Evans who had grown up in Newton County.
The surviving records do not presently explain why her given name changed or whether Corrine or Carrine represented a name she deliberately adopted, a preferred form of her name, or simply variations introduced in different records.
Rather than treating these variations as separate individuals, the combination of parental information and other family evidence allows the records to be connected to the same woman.
Family Connections Across State Lines
Although Cora established her adult life in Michigan, Mississippi records continued to document her place within the Mitchell-Evans family.
On April 26 and May 3, 1978, The Newton Record published legal notices concerning a Newton County Chancery Court proceeding involving the partition of property associated with the estate of Randle Mitchell.
The summons identified her as Cora Mae Arrington, one of the heirs through her mother, Rosie Mitchell Smith. She was named alongside siblings who included Josie V. Treadwell, Earnest Evans, Maggie Lee Sankey, Amos Evans, Bernice Williams, and James Evans.
Significantly, the legal notice listed Cora at 5144 Iroquois Street in Detroit, the same address associated with her sister Maggie Lee Sankey.
That address provides another small but meaningful piece of the Evans family’s Great Migration story. Decades after leaving Mississippi, members of Albert and Rosie’s family remained connected not only through kinship but through residences, inheritance, and legal interests stretching between Detroit and Newton County.
The family had moved North, but Mississippi remained part of their story.
Later Years in Detroit
Public records continued to document Cora in Detroit during her later years, including residences on Delmar Street and West Lantz Street.
By then, her life had traveled a considerable distance from the rural world into which she had been born. The little girl who attended elementary school in Newton County during the Great Depression had become part of an extended Mississippi family whose northern branch was firmly established in Detroit.
Her life also illustrates how migration often occurred through family networks rather than as a single isolated journey. Cora’s story overlaps with those of her siblings Josie, Maggie Lee, Bernice, and Amos, whose records similarly trace paths from Newton County to metropolitan Detroit.
Death and Legacy
Corrine Arrington, born Cora Mae Evans, passed away in October 1989 at approximately sixty years of age in Detroit, Michigan.
Her life represents another chapter in the transformation of the Evans family during the twentieth century—from an African American farming family rooted in Beat 4 of Newton County to a multistate family whose descendants established new lives hundreds of miles away.
Yet perhaps the most revealing evidence of that transformation can be found in something as ordinary as an address.
5144 Iroquois Street, Detroit, Michigan.
The same address appears in connection with more than one member of the family in the 1978 Mississippi court proceedings. It demonstrates that even after migration separated the Evans children geographically from the land where they had been raised, family connections continued to bind them together.
Cora Mae Evans left Mississippi and became known in later records as Carrine or Corrine Arrington. But throughout those changes in name and place, surviving documents continued to connect her to the same family story that began in the Lawrence community of Newton County, Mississippi.
Resting Place
Unknown
Photos/Albums
Sources
- 1930 U.S. Census, Newton County, Mississippi, Beat 4, population schedule, Albert Evans household, Cora Evans; National Archives microfilm publication T626.
- 1940 U.S. Census, Newton County, Mississippi, population schedule, Albert Evans household, Cora M. Evans; National Archives microfilm publication T627. The census records twelve-year-old Cora living with her father, stepmother Francis, and other members of the Evans household and having completed the fourth grade.
- Social Security Administration, Applications and Claims Index, Cora Mae Evans/Carrine May Arrington, name entry dated June 1960; identifying her parents as Albert Evans and Rosie Mitchell. This record provides an important documentary connection between Cora Mae Evans of Newton County and the later Carrine May Arrington of Michigan.
- The Newton Record (Newton, Miss.), April 26, 1978, legal notice concerning Newton County Chancery Court proceedings for the partition of property associated with the estate of Randle Mitchell; naming Cora Mae Arrington and other descendants of Rosie Mitchell Smith among the heirs.
- The Newton Record (Newton, Miss.), May 3, 1978, continuation or republication of the legal notice concerning the Randle Mitchell estate and heirs of Rosie Mitchell Smith. The notice identifies Cora Mae Arrington at 5144 Iroquois Street, Detroit, Michigan, an address also associated with her sister Maggie Lee Sankey.
- Detroit city directories and public residence records, Cora Mae/Carrine/Corrine Arrington, Detroit, Michigan; documenting residences including Delmar Street and West Lantz Street.
- Social Security Death Index, Corrine Arrington, died October 1989, Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan.
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