Jasmine Barnes is the 101 year old fictitious author of and main character in The Tallahassee Civil Rights Story as told by Miss Jasmine. Miss Jasmine‘s persona is an amalgamation of various “anonymous”African-American women born around 1920 and raised in Tallahassee, Florida. In addition to her Tallahassee Civil Rights Story, Miss Jasmine has also translated the Brazilian classic Barren Lives into English, although the translation is unpublished and remains in draft form in a handwritten notebook in her bookshelf drawer, read by and cherished by those close to her.
Miss Jasmine‘s life was impacted by historical events such as the Tallahassee lynching of 1937, the bus boycott of 1956, the lunch counter sit-ins of the 1960s, and the tragic death of her husband Leopold Barnes from an allergic reaction to anesthesia days before she gave birth to their first child in 1950.
However, the biggest influence on her life was being raised in the home of the county sheriff who due to circumstances explained in the novel, was fluent in Portuguese and passed that knowledge down to Miss Jasmine before the break in their relationship.
Aside from these events, Miss Jasmine’s life has been bolstered by the twenty year companionship with her dog Whale, and her two boarders who she refers to as “welfare projects.” The Tallahassee Civil Rights Story is not necessarily Miss Jasmine‘s greatest achievement, which rather is being a kind and decent human being, to which her novel serves as a testament and is also a solid storehouse of her life events.