Barbara “Bobbie” Reaux
Barbara “Bobbie” 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 died at age 28, and by whom she has three grandsons.
Bobbie 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 put Bobbie in foster care as an infant.
The Flournoys fostered Bobbie from the age of one month and formally adopted her when she was between five and seven years old. After finding her birth mother, Bobbie reconnected with siblings from her birth parents’ marriages–five siblings from her birth mother’s three marriages, and two from her birth father’s marriage (a son 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 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.