rufustfirefly:

If people were familiar with her mother, they “wanted to know why I wasn’t as black as my mother, more or less,” she said. “I didn’t seem as culturally black.” They also knew that her mother was gone. “It really didn’t help that it was a public experience,” Rudolph said, of growing up in the aftermath of her death. Two months after the event, Rudolph appeared on the cover of Jet magazine alongside her father and brother; an inside spread featured photographs and a detailed description of her motherless seventh-birthday pool party. “It was weird to grow up that way, thinking, I’m the kid whose mom died, and everybody knows it — or at least you feel like everybody knows it.” (x)