Sipping Lemonade With A Queen: What Mrs. Lucia Bacote James Taught Me on the Legacy Lives Podcast About Legacy, Faith, and Aging in Full Bloom

There is a moment in Growing Together: Legacy Lives, a podcast hosted by the brilliant mother-daughter duo Dr. Jenée and Dr. Chloé Walker, who have West Virginia roots of their own, when the host describes listening to Mrs. Lucia Bacote James as sitting on a grand porch in Atlanta, sipping lemonade from crystal glasses. I know exactly what she means. When I first pressed play on the episode, “Generational Wisdom: Aging with Grace,” I didn’t realize I was about to receive a masterclass, not just in aging gracefully, but in living fully, loving fiercely, and leaving something behind that matters.

I have known Mrs. James for years. She is among the most elegant and beautiful women I have ever encountered, a true queen in every sense of the word. She is the kind of woman who walks into a room and the room adjusts. She doesn’t ask for attention; she simply has it. The first thing she ever told me about public speaking was simple: get a microphone. That’s Mrs. James. She knows your voice deserves to be heard, because she has always known her own. Listening to her in this conversation felt like coming home.

The Woman Behind the Legacy

Mrs. Lucia Bacote James is one of West Virginia’s unsung heroes and a dedicated keeper of our history. Born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, she is the daughter of Dr. Clarence A. Bacote, one of the most consequential Black historians and political activists of the twentieth century, and she carries forward his powerful legacy of scholarship and service.

For nearly fifty years, her father served on the faculty of Atlanta University, the crown jewel of the Atlanta University Center, the largest consortium of African American educational institutions in the world. He was close friends with W.E.B. Du Bois and served as the university’s official historian. In 1946, as chair of the Atlanta All-Citizens Registration Committee, he helped grow the number of registered Black voters in Atlanta from 6,976 to 21,244 in less than five months. Mrs. James grew up surrounded by greatness, and she absorbed every bit of it.

Now in her ninth decade of life, she carries that inheritance with breathtaking grace. She is a mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, and in this episode she makes clear that her life’s work has always been the same: to pour into the people around her and trust that it takes root.

“I would encourage younger people to trust. I grew up trusting God and trusting the teachings of my church and trusting the teachings of Jesus, and the things we were doing down here inculcated those teachings.”

– Mrs. Lucia Bacote James

Proximity to Greatness, in Mrs. James’ Words

One of the most quietly powerful moments of this conversation comes when Mrs. James reflects on what it means to have been surrounded by people who made history. Names like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Sidney Poitier come up naturally, almost incidentally, the way you mention a neighbor. She doesn’t linger on them for effect. That restraint is the lesson. She doesn’t need to argue or debate or prove anything. When you know what you know, you don’t need to fuss about it. That kind of settled confidence is a precious gem, and in today’s political climate, where so much energy is spent fighting just to be seen, her quiet assurance feels almost radical.

I have seen it with my own eyes. Some years back, I visited her in Atlanta, and it was quite the occasion. She invited me to her table at an Atlanta jazz event, and around that table sat West Virginia royalty: judges and accomplished leaders with deep West Virginia roots, alongside civil rights legend Ambassador Andrew Young and his wife, Carolyn McClain Young. Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms was in the room. And at the center of it all was Mrs. James: gracious, unbothered, completely herself. She didn’t need to work that room. It was her room. In another era, she would have held court at Bricktop’s club, but that’s another story. I sat there so proud, watching West Virginia shine in Atlanta, gathered by the woman who knew we belonged at that table all along.

She also offers something else: the reminder that proximity to greatness doesn’t diminish us. It reveals what was already there. She gently pushes back on the idea that change is out of reach, or that we haven’t already made a difference in people’s lives. We have. And when we accept that, the path forward feels less impossible.

“I would say to younger people to go on and take a chance. And it doesn’t have to be perfect, but if it’s something that goes along with your values, your life values and if it helps somebody else, just go on and and just try it.”

– Mrs. Lucia Bacote James

The Secret of Her Beauty is Not What You Think

Mrs. James is stunningly beautiful, with the kind of beauty that comes from a woman who truly cares for herself: her skin, her style, her spirit, all tended with intention. When asked about her beauty, her answer is simple and unwavering: faith. She speaks of a woman she knew, a beauty and a party girl, from whom she learned a great deal. But the deepest lesson wasn’t about cosmetics or style. It was enough to work on your smile, to be joyful, because God made you. That theology of delight, the belief that your radiance is an act of worship, is something I am still sitting with.

“I just know that God made me and God made me for a purpose. And if I might not know the purpose, but I’m put here to do something and it’s it, it could be something that no one else has even dreamed of.”

– Mrs. Lucia Bacote James

Piano Lessons and a Sheltered Upbringing

She speaks of piano lessons with the kind of detail that transports you. I listened with a friend, Leslie “Lekieli” Dean, who was also deeply shaped by Mrs. James, and we both remarked on how it surfaced memories of our own sheltered upbringings: the things we were protected from and the things that shaped us without our knowing. Mrs. James carries the sophistication of a woman raised in the house of a scholar and activist, and she wears it effortlessly. Real class, as she demonstrates, doesn’t announce itself.

Entering Her Ninth Decade, Following Her Mother to 105

Mrs. James speaks of her mother, who lived to 105, with such grace and fun and joy, celebrating a woman who lived on her own terms, fiercely independent to the very end. You can hear the daughter in her voice, and you can hear that she is not done either. She has not finished her story. In fact, she has been writing it: she has been working on a book for a long time, and when it’s done, it will be a treasure for the archive. She has a carefree consciousness about aging, something earned, full of life and peace. She is thriving, laughing, and giving sound life advice: Don’t get into trouble, and you won’t have to get out.

When she moved from her house into an apartment, she told me, she hired a designer to help. The designer did what designers do for elders: tried to recreate the old house, every familiar comfort squeezed into a smaller space. Mrs. James said no. She wanted it all white. She said she had been living with that stuff for 60 years. That is aging in full bloom. Not clinging to the past, but making room for what’s next.

Her home and her way of living inspired me so much that I wrote an entire TV show treatment. Think The Golden Girls meets The Cosby Show: Black excellence at the senior center, full of style, wit and history. And the hard, real moments too, like when the elders who lived through segregation begin to forget it. That’s real. And it’s a story only women like Mrs. James could inspire.

“I used to be afraid that I wouldn’t get it right and now I don’t care. It is right, it’s my way.”

– Mrs. Lucia Bacote James

The West Virginia Thread That Runs Through Everything

Here is where this story becomes ours.

Mrs. James married Charles H. James II, the son of one of West Virginia’s most storied Black families. The C.H. James Company, founded in Charleston in 1883 by her husband’s grandfather, Charles H. James, is widely recognized as one of the oldest African American-owned businesses in the United States. The founder and his brothers, sons of Francis James, a free Black man from Ohio, walked the coalfields of southern West Virginia as peddlers, trading goods for produce. The family built a warehouse on Virginia Street in Charleston, and the founder exchanged letters with President Theodore Roosevelt. Mrs. James’s late husband, Charles II, modernized that business. Their son, Charles H. James III, a Charleston native, Charleston High School graduate, Morehouse College alumnus, and Wharton MBA, grew it into a $60 million food distribution company before his passing in 2021.

Wherever she goes, Mrs. James carries West Virginia with her. In 2016, she traveled to Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard to speak at Della Hardman Day, the island’s annual celebration of her late friend Della Brown Hardman, the Charleston-born artist and educator who taught at West Virginia State for 30 years before making the Vineyard her second home. Trying to settle on just one story about her friend, Mrs. James compared Della to a bag of potato chips: “You can’t stop at one,” the Vineyard Gazette reported. Then she told the crowd where Della came from: a proud daughter of Charleston, raised by her father, Anderson H. Brown, who worked to desegregate the Charleston library and helped organize the March on Washington. Beside her that day was Della’s daughter, Andrea L. Taylor, who carries her mother’s celebration forward. Even on an island hundreds of miles from home, Mrs. James was telling West Virginia’s story.

This summer, BBG’s own Traci Phillips made that same trip to Martha’s Vineyard and told Della’s story again. Let me hype her for a minute, because she deserves it. Traci is a dope reporter on the rise, and she’s that girl. She’s a mother, a wife, a sister, a friend, and loyal to her core. She is exactly what we want West Virginia to look like in this media world. While she was there, she sat in the room with the one and only Mara Brock Akil, the genius behind Girlfriends, Being Mary Jane and Netflix’s Forever, as Akil read from her debut novel, The Revelation of Dionne Daphne. And wouldn’t you know it, West Virginia made it into the book. I’ll spoil it: the passage calls it “bumf*** West Virginia,” a place with no Black people. Read aloud in a room full of Black excellence, at a celebration that began with a Black West Virginian. Ha! Oh, if they only knew. That’s exactly why we tell our own stories, and Traci stood up and asked Akil how she could tell a better West Virginia story. Akil answered: “It is so important for us to be in the practice of telling our story.” Legacy in motion.

Back home, Mrs. James’s investment in West Virginia continues through the Charles H. James II & Lucia Bacote James Scholarship, administered through the Greater Kanawha Valley Foundation. It supports West Virginia students from Baptist churches who study business, science, technology, and math, with special consideration for members of First Baptist Church of Charleston, the Charleston Black Ministerial Alliance, and the Charleston-Institute Chapter of The Links, Incorporated.

She has always been giving to West Virginia in many ways.  Quietly, faithfully, generously.

Make no mistake: Mrs. James doesn’t pour into people because she needs anything back. She does it because that is who she is. She has told me stories I cannot tell here. She has walked with grace through every room, every decade, every season. She sees people, truly sees them, and that is rare. Mrs. Lucia James is the standard: the model, the example, the woman so many of us measure our steps against. And living by her principles isn’t a burden. It is simply a good way to live.

Even as I write this, I realize I haven’t called her lately. Part of me wanted to wait until I had something big to report. But that’s not how Mrs. James works, and it’s not what she’d want. Her message to all of us, young and old, is the same: go on and do it.

“Some older people think, well, I don’t have anything to offer… But everything that you have has kept you here and it’s kept you going and it’s valuable.”

– Mrs. Lucia Bacote James

So this is my small contribution to her enduring legacy. Mrs. Lucia Bacote James carries the very best of Black American life: the dignity of the generations who built schools, businesses and churches when the world told them they couldn’t; the respect she gives freely and receives without asking; and the creative humor that lets her compare a beloved friend to a bag of potato chips, or tell a designer that after 60 years, she’d like it all white, thank you. She is graceful with a wink. Dignity with a twinkle. A woman who has never once needed a crown, because she has always carried herself like a queen.