Barbara “Bobbie” Reaux
Barbara āBobbieā Reaux was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia, the only child of what she later learned were adoptive parents, Beulah Harris Flournoy and Washington Cary Flournoy, both native Virginians. She attended all-Black schools, and graduated from high school in 1966, before Richmond schools were integrated.
She married Roosevelt Reaux, Jr., and had a son, Jason Alexis Reaux. After only two years of marriage, her husband was killed by a hit and run driver. With a boyfriend, she had a daughter, Desiree Maresia Reaux, who tragically died at age 28, and by whom she has three grandsons.
Bobbie Reaux came out as a lesbian after her second child was born. She trained first as a hairstylist and later as a computer operator. In 1996, she found her birth mother, Helen Barbara Esau, who was sixteen years old when she had Bobbie. Helen Esau had put Bobbie in foster care as an infant.
The Flournoys fostered Bobbie from the age of one month, formally adopting her when she was between five and seven years old. After finding her birth mother, Bobbie reconnected with siblings from her birth parentsā marriages. There were five siblings from her birth motherās three marriages; and there were two from her birth fatherās marriage (one of them a son, who had died in childhood). James Bartholomew Jones, Sr., from Tidewater, Virginia, was her birth father. He had died before Bobbie found her birth family.
Bobbie Reaux was active in Richmond Lesbian Feminists. She participated in many different kinds of activism, including Pride marches and social events, especially lesbian dances and parties.