gifted in their own right. My brothers were excellent football players: Allen, the high school quarterback in a predominantly white high school, and Don, who excelled in college and went on to a short career in the pros.
The world we grew up in was Southern, segregated, and insular. We lived in public housing until I was fifteen. School, church, buses, the eating establishments that we could frequent, and our hospital were all black. The mailman, the bus driver, the teachers, local shop keepers, the staff at movie theaters , amusement parks, beaches—everything and everyone was all black except the white department stores downtown and of course everything on television. We were aware of the white world, which we had to interact with from time to time. This was always anxiety-provoking because you knew that they had the best of the best (they showed that on TV) and ultimately all the power over you. Nonetheless, we were happy. My father had his own business and was able to support his family. We grew up safe and protected in the projects. We had a car, a sandbox and picnic table in the back yard, a three-foot-deep plastic swimming pool, a green Plymouth convertible, a pickup truck, a console radio and record player, and a television when they became available.
This was a time when people who were black middle-class lived side by side with others who were on welfare. Our family was part of the black bootstrap generation that pulled itself up by its own efforts. Both of my parents were college graduates and higher education was always stressed and assumed. As the “smart one,” I always knew that I would go to college and that I would need a scholarship. I excelled in my segregated public school and was offered advanced placement to skip a couple of grades. My family wisely declined as other intellectual prodigies in the community did not fare well, developing “nervous breakdowns” and never quite living up to their early promise. I spent a lot of time in the library in elementary school to keep from being bored. I participated in local and statewide sponsored enrichment programs from junior high school onwards.
In addition to running his business, organizing/participating in early black football, and serving as a deacon in our church, my father was a prolific writer, philosophizer, and wannabe politician. He was concerned about the plight of the Negro (as we were called in those days) and was active in the community. He wrote and published a book in which he proclaimed that the solution to the race problem would be solved with miscegenation. He sent free copies to anyone that he thought might have some power or concern over the situation including every POTUS and major politician he could access. He wrote letters to the editor of the local white paper, wrote opinion articles for the Journal and Guide (the local black newspaper), and had a talk show on local black radio called “Joe Rose—Tell It Like It Is.” We had lots of lively conversations from which I learned to think critically and seek to understand issues at their most fundamental levels. He encouraged me academically and helped me get a couple of writing assignments from the editors of the Journal and Guide. Some of my fondest memories are of sitting around the kitchen table reading and reviewing his writings while I was in high school as well as on breaks from college.
My mother encouraged all of her children to excel in school and participate in social and extracurricular school activities. She encouraged me to sing in the church choir, sing in a local operetta (which I did), and join black middle-class social clubs like Jack and Jill (I did not). I was never a social butterfly and declined most of these activities, though I did become a debutante during my last years of high school. My mother made time to pursue postgraduate educational opportunities in oceanography and eventually returned to teaching in the only black high school in town. She was an excellent biology teacher and was one of the first black teachers to integrate the white high school in my hometown.
The integration of the public school system was a major event in Norfolk; white schools closed down for a year or two rather than submit to desegregation. After fifteen years in my insular black world, my parents decided to move out of the projects to a more suburban setting. White flight was out of control and previously unavailable housing areas were open to black families. My father moved us when I was preparing to go to Booker T. Washington High School. I was upset to learn that instead of going to that Mecca of black teenage life, I would have to go to the local white high school. Talk about culture shock. Up until then, I had limited contact with white people, but would now be surrounded by them. There were only ten black students in the tenth grade class, only two of us were in AP classes, and I had only one class that had another black face. Even though I was never a social butterfly, I did miss being a part of the black world.
I was largely ignored in high school. I learned to adjust to a different style of teaching and learning. I had taken two years of French in junior high school, but imagine my surprise when my high school French teacher only spoke French to the class and gave homework and all instruction in French. I failed the first “dictée” largely because I did not know what was happening, but I eventually caught on. Most of my other classes were uneventful, and I did well in high school without any validation or encouragement from most of the teachers. By the time I started looking at colleges, I had decided to apply to schools away from home.
Applying to Swarthmore was pure serendipity. I was sitting in the guidance counselor’s office—she thought I should go to trade school—when I saw the College catalogue, picked it up, and thought it looked nice, so I decided to apply. I had never heard of the school, nor had my parents. As far as I knew, no one in Norfolk had heard of the school. I applied to seven or eight schools and was accepted to each one. The final decision rested on the scholarship money that was offered. Swarthmore offered full tuition and two hundred dollars for books, so they got me sight unseen.
The Road to Swarthmore
Going to Swarthmore was to be the big adventure of my life. I always knew I would go to college, but never anticipated the path I would take. I always thought I would go to one of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) like Howard University or Hampton Institute, which was right across the water from Norfolk and was essentially a local college. I knew that I could meet academic expectations anywhere with no problem, but I was never socially adept and basically felt like an outsider wherever I was. I was not looking for a husband or the usual social life that was an integral part of the HBCU experience.
Leaving home was harder than I expected. My brothers were too young to fully understand what was happening, but my mother and my sister did. We all cried and hugged each other several times that morning. My last image of the day I left is of my mother and sister standing outside on the walkway to the driveway, past the white wooden rail fence that my father loved and my mother hated. That is when I first really felt the loss of my family and all the love and security that they represented. I experienced a strange combination of sadness and anticipation.
My daddy and my uncle brought me to Swarthmore. They packed up my uncle’s big green Cadillac for the road trip. We left early in the morning and drove until we reached the Pennsylvania countryside. I had never been that far from home. The campus was beautiful with rolling hills and lots of trees. We arrived sometime late in the day. My daddy and uncle unloaded all my stuff in my room on the third floor of Willets Hall. Swarthmore had previously sent me my room location and the name of my roommate. Susan was already there and had placed her stuff on the left side of the room, so I took the right side. My daddy and uncle kissed me goodbye and headed back home. Then I was really alone.
All first-year women were required to meet with Dean Barbara Lange in the Quaker meetinghouse for some type of orientation. I had never been in a meetinghouse. It was spare, cold, undecorated, and not at all like any of the Baptist churches I had visited over the years. If there was a cross there, I did not see it. The wooden benches were hard and uninviting.
Dean Lange was a middle-aged white lady with white hair, a blue suit, and pearls. I felt like I had been transported to June Cleaver, no, Donna Reed land. Dean Lange embodied the spirit of those true representatives of the white women of middle America, portrayed on late 1950s’ black and white television, and I felt like I was in a foreign land where I barely understood the language. House dorm rules for freshmen were discussed. She talked about how fortunate we were to matriculate at Swarthmore. That Swarthmore was equivalent to Ivy League schools like Harvard, Yale, and the Seven Sisters women’s colleges, but with a smaller, more select student body. That was the first time I realized what kind of reputation the school enjoyed. When I looked in the Cygnet, the freshman handbook, complete