Lorraine Orr

A CHILDHOOD IN AMERICA’S NEWLY-INTEGRATED SOUTH PREPARED HER FOR A LEADING ROLE IN ONE OF THE LARGEST ADVOCACY ORGANIZATIONS IN THE COUNTRY. THIS LEADER CONTINUES THE CYCLE OF SHAPING TOMORROW’S ADVOCATES, BUT WITH HER OWN RULES THAT REALLY ARE JUST BLACK AND WHITE.

The conversation begins here:

Can you tell me a little bit about what that was like in the ‘60s as a young Black woman? You’ve mentioned in the past that your mother and your grandmother were big parts of your life. 

Yeah absolutely. I was born in 1966 and I was the first person in my family born into an integrated hospital. Which was, as I learned later in life, a pretty traumatic event for my mom. And I am probably one of the only people you will find with two birthdays. I was born premature. My mom tells the story about the doctor coming in that night and telling her to brace herself because “that girl you just delivered is not going to make it through the night.” So, I was born on September 28th, but since I lived 24 hours they documented my birth on September 29th. My Mom used to call me to sing happy birthday to me on September 28th. When that doctor finally passed away, I remember her sitting in the living room crying and saying “I’m glad he’s gone.”  

My mom was a teenager when I was born. I was the third of five kids. She was 15 or 16 when she and my dad were married. My brother is the oldest and I have another older sister and they [were] both born in segregated hospitals. I have a couple of other sisters that came after me. So we’re a big family in the South and just like many southern black families it was always church on Sundays and big dinners. We didn’t have a lot coming up. The first time I slept in a bed by myself was when I was in college. Three of us shared a bed. 

The South was an interesting place. I didn’t really understand a lot of it until I got older. There were things that happened throughout our childhood that showed us that we were different. We grew up in a really small town called Mint Hill, North Carolina. It’s not that small anymore, but when we were growing up it was dirt roads and I remember when the first stop light was put in. The street we grew up on was probably 10 or 12 houses or mobile homes on one side of the street were all family. My dad’s dad lived next to us and my dad’s brother lived on the other side of us. Aunts, uncles, cousins lived all the way up the street. We were all there, we grew up together and just ran paths between houses as kids. Generally, we were the only family of color because it was a pretty white community outside of the Orrs and a couple of other families. 

We were a close-knit family, all of us into sports. We grew up watching my dad play baseball almost every weekend. When it came my time to play sports, I gravitated to baseball and was the only girl on the baseball team until middle school. Being athletes shielded us from a lot of things that other people of color were dealing with in the South. But we had our situations as well.

My dad  was just a strong, quiet human being who worked hard to provide for his family. He worked hard but never missed one ball game. Baseball, softball, soccer, basketball, Dad never missed a ball game. He was a huge influence for all of us. Both of our parents were. Especially about what family really is. 

“This one afternoon I remember, three of us in the backseat of the car, Dad driving us down to the little square in town. There was a KKK rally there. They used to recruit openly in some parts of the South in the early ‘70s. I remember him looking at us in the rearview mirror and saying, “Put your heads down and don’t say anything.” It wasn’t fear, it was anger and this need to protect his children who were watching that. ”

And his eyes, as he looked at us and looked down and there’s a guy in the hood throwing pieces of paper at him and calling him “boy.”’ And I just remember when we drove out of that intersection just how angry he was. I’ve seen my dad cry a couple of times. The other one was when his dad died. 

“This one afternoon I remember, three of us in the backseat of the car, Dad driving us down to the little square in town. There was a KKK rally there. They used to recruit openly in some parts of the South in the early ‘70s. I remember him looking at us in the rearview mirror and saying, “Put your heads down and don’t say anything.” It wasn’t fear, it was anger and this need to protect his children...”

There were other times when we were riding our bikes down to the neighborhood dime store where people would run us off the road or people would throw firecrackers at us. But I will say through all the bad, our parents taught us to be strong, to be honest, and to believe in family. And that’s how I live today. I am a strong individual, connected to family. Not only my family—my dad is gone now, my mom is still living, my siblings all live in Charlotte with all of my nieces and nephews. I probably speak with my mom every other day and I talk to my sisters and brothers regularly. We stay well connected as a family because that was something that was ingrained in us. Again, we didn’t have a lot, but today it gives us something to laugh about. Most of us have done well for ourselves and are giving back in our own ways to a cause or career and to our families. 

It sounds like you did have a lot. What strikes me is your description of growing up with your family around you, big Christmases, cousins as best friends. This is a very American story. But living in the South now, in 2021, has the South changed?

I would say it has, but here are still challenges. My wife is a  blonde, blue-eyed person, who moved here from LA (and still struggles living here). We have two children, a boy and a girl, twin who turned 4 in October. There are still some issues as a gay, interracial couple, raising mixed children in the South. For example, recently, we took the kids to a pumpkin patch out in North Georgia. The kids start breaking down because they’re hungry and so we go get food and there was a communal place where everyone sat and there was an elderly white woman who was sitting next to us. She just stared at us. Finally she looks over at me and asks, “How long have you been taking care of the kids?” 

And I said, “Well, they’re mine. That’s their other Mom. But, they’re mine.” She sat there and thought about it for a second and then she looked at Candice and said, “How long has she been helping you with your kids?”

Do you think she didn’t understand or didn’t want to accept it? 

I think it’s a little bit of both. And we still get some of that. Not so much in the city of Atlanta. But when we go out to the northern parts of Georgia and other places people yell, they don’t understand the family so much. Although we had a mixed race donor, my kids present as white. But they have big curly hair. So people have a hard time understanding that depending on where we are. Usually here in Atlanta, some people will make the mistake and say, “Oh, where is your dad?” and they will say, “That’s my mama and my mommy.” So we still see some of that. But for the most part, in our circle in our community at work, people know us and we are accepted. I will say it’s still challenging, particularly after last year with the racial reckoning that happened. It was a surprise to many but not to most black folk because we knew it was under the surface. Last year brought a lot to the surface and it was a reckoning for everybody and it was interesting to watch. 

Even in our own organization—our staff has north of 200 people—we’ve been on a journey of understanding our place in the work of racial equity. Part of it is understanding our own unconscious bias and that’s just not with white people—we’ve all internalized racism in crazy ways. But being able to recognize them I think is what has changed in recent years. 

“And my experience as a Black woman who is also gay in the South has brought up some issues of intersectionality. ”

My mom and dad knew I was gay, but it was nothing we ever really talked about as a family; nobody said anything about it. My partners would come and they knew my family. I’m so grateful it’s different now and that people can speak their truths more freely. 

I have been working in Boys & Girls Clubs for north of 30 years now and being able to live my authentic self at work only happened probably 10 years ago or 11 years ago. My wife and I were just dating at the time and I wanted to keep it quiet. She just said, “I don’t live my life like that.” She coached me, “Don’t make a big deal out of it. Just say Candice and I did this over the weekend. I guarantee that it will not be a big deal for everybody else.” But it’s a big deal for me. 

And she was right. As a person born in the mid ‘60s, I had hangups I never thought I would outgrow. Then you think about the South or even our country today, and kids today are very fluid in how they think about relationships. But for a person born in the mid ‘60s, we all had a different dynamic, right? 

I always wanted to be a parent, but never really thought that having children was an option. But my wife always knew she wanted to be a mom. In her mid 20’s she had a dream about having two kids andknew their names already. We tried IVF several times, and we lost our son, Jackson, to a miscarriage at five months.   After that loss, it was so hard on the both of us and we considered adoption, but surrogacy just felt right. I’d heard about it and now most people know about it, but when I was coming up, it was something that celebrities did. But we found a wonderful young woman who carried for us in California. So our kids were born there in October 2017. 

Our kids, they ask questions. They ask about how most of the kids in school have a mommy and daddy. We explain how our family is different. They just say “cool.” And I’m sure they’ll have questions as they get older, but our job is to prepare them to be able to maneuver the world they’re in— in their reality. I have no doubt that they will do just fine. All of this is to say that the world is such a different place now. I think it’s a world that is more accepting. Is it a world that still has its own spot in the dark places? Absolutely. But I think the opportunity and the access I now have and what my children will have is a hell of a lot better than it was 50 years ago, right? 

Today, you’re a mom, an educated woman, a wife and your scope has changed. Do you find yourself feeling what your father did that day in the car?

Yes, I would imagine so. I seem to look at the world through a different lens, and that is, if people don’t understand then I have a responsibility to share my truths, right? My beliefs, my reality? I mean, not to the point where I’m going to sit people down and preach at them. Just to be authentic and honest. And there’s some people I will say whom I’ve met throughout my career who simply just didn’t know. I remember a really powerful conversation with a white woman from the South who called me in the height of everything after George Floyd’s murder and said, “Lorraine, I feel like my whole life was a lie, because the things that I’m learning now about the history of this country and what people went through — nobody ever shared that.” 

“There are some real haters out there, right? That are just this is the way our nation should look and no one else belongs here. You can pretty much sense those people. But what I’ve found is that I try to find the good in everybody. And with my kids, I try to help them understand where people may be coming from to a point, but also how to recognize red flags and how to trust themselves, because I think all women have that flag that goes up, right? ”

But yes, some anger. But, like I said, I also tend to try to educate [people] even kids. When I started my career in Clubs, I started in public housing communities in Greensboro, North Carolina. Most of those kids look like me, and many had the same upbringing that I did in terms of not really having a lot apart from families that loved them. And the responsibility was helping young people maneuver a world that sometimes would not be fair to them. But my mom, my dad, my grandmother, they all taught us that we can do whatever we wanted to do as long as were were honest. My mom, she would tell us, “I’m always going to believe you until you give me a reason not to.”

Unless, back in our day the principal would just swing by the house [laughing]. The town we lived in was really small and our elementary school principal would drive by. He would always toot the horn and wave at my mom. My mom, she was — is — strong when it came to her children. My brother had a hearing problem and I rememberone of the teachers said something to my brother like, “Are you dumb or something?” And I remember I was still at home that day while my mom drove her car down there and literally almost parked the car on the sidewalk and went and had a conversation with that principal. The respect for her and her children changed from that very moment. [laughing]. So she’s a little more aggressive than maybe I would be, but a strong woman who raised her five children and instilled great values.

She’s the youngest of twelve and is the only one living now. And just the tragedy she dealt with. Her brother, Jack, he had fallen out of a tree he was playing in as a kid and was in the hospital. In the old Black hospitals, they had bunked beds and in the middle of the night he rolled over onto the cement floor and died. And her sister was hit killed in a  a hit-and-run. He was a white man. He killed her and faced no consequences. This guy literally would drive up and down past where they grew up. It would always just wreck her every time this car drove by. We never knew what it was as kids. She never told us until we got a bit older what happened to her sister, Francis. What happened to her brother, Jack. 

You think about a woman that was born in 1945, and  my dad who was born in 1942, my mom’s mom was born in 1900. It is just so interesting listening to the stories of the other family and all of the things that they dealt with as sharecroppers. And then as families who found their way. My mom was high school educated. My dad was high school educated and went through the first year of college at Johnson C. Smith and then just left to take care of  his family and worked hard his entire life. My mom stayed home with us until I was in elementary school before she ever went to work and then, when the two other sisters came, she was working, but my grandmother was there. And every afternoon when we came home, my grandmother was there. She cooked a hot meal before and after school, and back then you just put your book bag down and pretended to do your homework and then you were out the door. That was us. People laugh about it now, but you stayed away until the street lights came on when we came home or before the street lights when you heard the grandmother calling your name. Everybody knew whose mom was calling. You dropped what you were doing and everybody took off running and  you went home and ate dinner and went to bed. 

But I always think about all the things we don’t know, didn’t know, that our parents even protected us from. In terms of the challenges they had, growing up in the ‘40s and ‘50s in the segregated South in the ‘60s. 

What would your grandmother say right now looking at you sitting where you are talking as the leader of one of the largest advocacy organizations in the country? Influencing kids that look like you and kids who don’t look like you. And what does your mom say?

Very proud. I have a hard time talking about all that I do, with family — with anybody really. It’s more about doing the right thing and really working hard to make a difference for others than it is about Lorraine Orr, the COO of Boys & Girls Clubs of America. But my mom tells me all the time how proud she is of me. But for me, it’s more about making sure that she has what she needs. 

You said when you first started in the organization you were working with kids who look like you. What do they look like today? 

“Those systemic barriers are still there, but I would say there is certainly a hell of a lot more opportunity for young people today than 50 years ago. ”

Our nation has changed in terms of demographics and we always had a nice balance of Caucasian and Black kids, but now more of a global mix of young people. When I worked in the Clubs, yes, there were home situations that were bad — there was abuse, there may have been some drug use—but nothing like it is today. The onset of social media, wow. There was bullying in the school when I was a kid. When I was in elementary school we were — my family and extended family — we were the majority of Black children in the school before busing. We grew up in a small town. We had gardens. That was me and my mom’s favorite activity. She would go to the farmers market and buy a bushel of peas and we would sit on my front porch and shell peas. 

[laughing] About four years years ago I finally talked her into doing the math on how much time we spent doing that versus 20 bucks I could pay that dude with the machine to shake them all out and then they come in a bag! Anyway, that’s for another story.

So for us in elementary school, the bullying looked a little bit different. It was our accent, our little bit of a southern drawl. It was our clothes, we didn’t have the right tennis shoes. We used to call them cheapers, the ones you could buy in the grocery store. We still laugh about the ones with the rubber bottoms. 

But today what kids deal with. The onset of social media, the proliferation of all of the things around them, not to mention the last 18 months with the pandemic and the increase of mental health crisis. When we were in school we had school counselors, nobody liked to go in there, but it was somebody that was there for you. Now, when we think about the lack of access for services for young people, it exacerbates the challenges that many of our young people are facing today. And I would say this is a dilemma or crisis for the nation, not just for young people. Not just based on zip code or socioeconomic status. This is impacting everyone, some in a much more significant way, but the effects, I believe, will be felt for decades. Particularly the increase in mental health [issues]. 

Think about the larger school districts; during the pandemic, one out of every three kids didn’t come to school at all. What that means from a standpoint of literacy and academic success? The number of young people who will not get to that magic reading at a third grade level—what are the predictions for those young people? And the issues impacting them today are so much more significant than what we faced. Regardless of how the inequities in systemic issues were created or what makes access hard for some. What kids today are dealing with, it is so much more significant. Those systemic barriers are still there, but I would say there is certainly a hell of a lot more opportunity for young people today than 50 years ago. 

So how does that change the way you approach your mission? And have you identified another Lorraine or a future leader, who is coming up in the Club now? I am using you as an adjective. [laughing]

I’ve been called worse! Mentorship today in my role is very different than it was when I was working with kids. It just so happened that recently, a young woman, Sabrina — who has to be in her 30s now — reached out to me. I met Sabrina when I opened a public housing club in 1990.  Just an amazingly talented person in her music ability and how she expressed herself. I just love this kid. I haven’t heard from Sabrina since I left 20 years ago. But recently, someone connected me to Greensboro Housing Authority for a project that I worked on and I get this note from Sabrina. It makes me cry. It says:

Good morning Ms. Orr. When I saw your name on an email that was sent to me this morning, I was elated and wanted to simply say “hello” and a few other things. You don’t understand the impact you made in my life as a child growing up in Morningside Homes.  Thank you so much for being a shining light in my life and for molding me into the woman that I am today... I love you and I’ll continue to do my best to be a mentor in the lives of underserved youth as you were to me.  Please enjoy the rest of your day!

Those are the stories, right? We’re doing this thousands of times, over and over and over. One kid at a time. You see something in them and our job is to move them along the continuum and help them remove the barriers that are there, and help them see the beauty of what this world could be. Regardless of traumatic events. But when you can help them find that ‘thing’ that propels them. For me, I don’t know what that thing was. 

For instance, I thought college was out of reach for me. I never really thought about it until my junior year or senior year in high school. I was a basketball player. A coach, Jean Lojko, from a small college in North Carolina came to recruit our point guard and talked to me afterwards. I was scared to death, but because Jean was interested in fostering my potential, I went to Greensboro College. 

I’d never been away from my family other than for softball tournaments over the weekend. Frankly, I didn’t do a great job like most of the first year, but I pulled it together. They asked me to leave because my grades are so bad aand I called another player, Carol. We met at the library and she called the president and said, “I’ll tutor Lorraine.” That was a wake up call. The coach knew I needed extra care and she and the team provided it. If I fell asleep in the classroom, she knew it by the time I got to the court that afternoon and not only did I pay for it, but the whole team paid for it. Once you make everyone pay for it, you learn quickly what you can’t do anymore!  I never had another academic issue. 

Just this past May I was the commencement speaker at the college and I am joining the board of trustees in January. My coach through college is still a very dear friend and an amazing woman and another person who was invested in me as a person not only as an athlete. 

But this note from Sabrina, it really does solidify why we do what we do at Boys & Girls Clubs professionally. And it’s not just me, there are tens of thousands of us who show up every day for the right reasons. And that is to make sure that every child that comes into the Boys & Girls Clubs has an opportunity. And it is an opportunity, right? You have to, just like me, figure out the gifts and not squander them away. 

Every kid is going to have to find that and to lean into that. And I see that happen every day with our young people. I lead with integrity —tough, but I’m fair and consistent. And I remind people every day that there are not many people in America who get to wake up everyday and have the opportunity to change the trajectory of a nation. We have that opportunity. The question is, what am I going to do with it? I know it can feel like it puts pressure, and I like the right amount of pressure, that is going to make things move. So mentorship today is also about the leaders that I leave behind in this organization and how they lead. My job is to prepare them, and my legacy to this organization is going to be what I’ll leave behind. “What has Lorraine done?” I ask myself this question all the time. 

When I am done, is this organization going to be better because of my leadership? That’s the legacy move. And it has to be about what I do with the people and how I position this organization going forward. The strategy part of it, the constant pivoting around how the organization should function — some people call it a constant state of change — but it’s a constant evolution because young people and their needs evolve every day. Our affiliates don’t have time to wait for us to get our stuff together. We have to lead. That’s what I teach my team to do every day. Lead with integrity, lead with purpose. And this is all about the mission. Every decision I make, every decision, is through one lens. And that is: What is best for kids? And that’s from hiring to firing, to strategy, to operations. I will never ever waver from that. 

Lorraine Orr serves as Chief Operations Officer for the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. She leads field services and activities across the Boys & Girls Club Movement, with a focus on strengthening the capacity and sustainability of Clubs. She is also responsible for the Movement-wide advancement of youth and Club metrics; programs; and child safety and protection strategies. In addition, she oversees leadership development for Clubs and BGCA national staff.