by Tavis Smiley
And, by the way, thirty years later my second-grade teacher and I are still in contact. We talk to each other and write to each other regularly. I will forever be indebted to her, and she claims to still be one of my biggest fans.
NEVER GIVE UP!
G. Jean Thomas
In 1974, at the age of twenty and with a junior-college secretarial certificate in hand, I moved to Atlanta, Georgia. I had just married my high school sweetheart a month earlier. Upon our arrival in Atlanta, I was ready to begin my job search. Although I possessed a secretarial certificate, the truth of the matter is that I could barely type forty-five words per minute. Practically every other job seeker was typing at least sixty-five words per minute. It didn’t take me long to realize I was not prepared to compete in the job market. Reality set in.
I enrolled in the Metro Atlanta Skills Center, an educational training program that targeted minorities. Even though I had taken typing classes in high school and junior college, I had never approached typing as a skill I should master. Having been raised on a farm in southwest Georgia, I was naive enough to believe that a typing speed of forty-five words per minute would make me as competitive as I needed to be.
At Metro Atlanta Skills Center, within a few months I was able to greatly improve my typing skills. Through persistence, hard work, and a lot of practice, I became confident enough to seriously approach the job market again. This humbling experience had taught me two things: never to settle for mediocrity and to do things right the first time. I emerged from my experience as a true competitor.
In 1977, my husband and I became parents. Four months later, at the age of twenty-three, we purchased our first home. Looking back, I can say that this was the beginning of a series of tests, trials, and tribulations in my life.
The responsibility of maintaining a home and being a parent was overwhelming! I had also become a surrogate mother for my youngest brother—my mother had passed away several years earlier, when he was five.
There were many times where there was not quite enough food to go around, so I made myself the last one to eat. Together, my husband and I wrestled with the responsibility of our daughter, my younger brother, and our house note. Then our marriage broke up and my husband and I decided to go our separate ways.
At this point, I had been working long enough to realize that I would never be able to seek other opportunities without acquiring additional education and skills. So I submitted an application to Georgia State University to pursue a four-year college degree. Within a few weeks, I received a letter from the admissions office stating that my application for admission was being denied. The letter informed me that I was entitled to an appeal of the decision from the admissions office. I went through with the appeal process and was admitted to the university.
Without two incomes, I was unable to keep up with the mortgage payments for the house. In addition, I now had the responsibility of a car note and weekly day care expenses for my six-month-old daughter.
I decided to take things one day at a time. I recalled hearing my parents and grandparents when they used to talk about what the Lord had done for them. I decided to turn to a higher power for strength and asked God for faith to simply hold on. I was determined to have faith and not give up.
My first major challenge was in figuring out a way to bring my current mortgage up to date. I needed approximately $2,000. My earnings were a meager $12,500 per year, and a certain percentage of this was automatically deducted for a retirement account. Although I had five years of seniority on my job, I decided to resign from my job in order to gain access to my retirement funds. With the money in hand, I was able to bring my house note current.
The first winter after my divorce was particularly difficult. In Georgia, the weather is generally warm. However, this particular winter was unusually harsh. The furnace in our home was not working properly. Sometimes it failed to turn on at all. Even when it did work, it resulted in an electric bill in excess of $350 per month. Eventually, the furnace stopped working completely. I bought two space heaters from Kmart and an electric blanket. I kept one heater in the bedroom where my children and I slept and the other one in the bathroom, where we got dressed each morning.
During the Christmas season that year, we experienced blizzardlike conditions in Atlanta. The space heaters were totally inadequate, although at least they kept us from freezing. When we were home, we would spend most of our time in the bedroom, where there was a space heater. At times, it seemed colder inside the house than outside; ice formed on the inside of the windowpanes.
I never let on to my children or anyone else in my immediate family the extent to which we suffered that winter. My pride, determination, faith, and desire to make things work would simply not allow me to surrender. I continued to have faith that God would see us through.
I came down with a severe case of bronchitis that kept me out of work for two weeks. Because my funds were so limited, I tried to avoid going to the doctor. Although I had health insurance from my job, even the copayment was too much, not to mention the additional expense of prescriptions.
I prayed to God to help me come up with a solution to improve my life and my family’s situation. When I finished praying, what came to my mind was the idea of selling our present home and purchasing a more affordable one. I decided the time had come for me to finish my education as well.
I put the house on the market; it was under contract six days later. At the time, I was living from paycheck to paycheck and borrowing money from everyone I could. After my home was sold, I was able to buy another, smaller home in a different city in the area, where my family and I spent the next ten years.
I reentered Georgia State University. But because of my limited finances, I was unable to attend classes on a consistent basis. I would attend one quarter and have to drop out the next. The stop-and-start process was terribly frustrating and seemed endless as well. Then, halfway through completion of my program, the university decided to discontinue the major that I had selected. I was forced to choose a new major and had a new set of classes to complete. I refused to give up, however.
During the last two quarters of my senior year at Georgia State, I attended school full time and worked full time as well. It took me thirteen years to complete my undergraduate degree in political science. But I finished. I had entered, dropped out, and reentered Georgia State University four times before graduating. By the time I marched down the aisle, my daughter was a sophomore in college herself at the University of Georgia! I was euphoric. Looking back, I still find it difficult to believe that I did it!
Somewhere during those thirteen years of completing my degree, I managed to find the time to attend paralegal school. I attended classes two nights a week and every other Saturday. I would leave work at 4:30 P.M., pick up my daughter from after-school care, drop her off at my sister’s house, drive to the MARTA train station, and then ride the train to Lenox Square, where my classes were held. When class was over at 9:30, I made the reverse trip. We would usually arrive home at 11:00 P.M.
Currently, I am attending graduate school at Clark Atlanta University in pursuit of a master’s degree. My daughter and I are making family history; we are both pursing master’s degrees and working full time!
Through persistence, hard work, and determination, I have come to realize that every experience in life carries a lesson to be learned. I may never have wealth, but I am truly thankful for all that I have accomplished. All it takes is a little hard work, and faith.
JUST GET THE KNOWLEDGE
Sandra J. Easterling
The green and white three-bedroom house with the large porch was perched at the end of a dirt road in the borough of Wheatland, Pennsylvania, located some eighty miles from Pittsburgh. The house sat alone at the end of the street like some huge forlorn castle that boasted a view of country living on the one side and cows peeking curiously through the long wire fence on the other.
My mother had returned to my grandmother’s ho
use to get a jump start on life. Dad had proven he wasn’t the husband or father type even after many years of practice. I learned from him that a real fun guy who can play a mean bass and outdress the next guy does not automatically qualify as husband and father material.
When she wasn’t cooking or cleaning around the house, Momma worked in a big office building in Sharon, Pennsylvania, emptying waste-baskets, mopping the floors, and dusting the furniture at breakneck speed. The telephone rang frequently for “Sweetie,” as my mother was affectionately called by her sisters and close friends. She wasn’t one to dish out a lot of advice but was more the great listener. Being a wise woman, she knew that most people didn’t heed advice even when they asked you for it.
The toughest lesson I had to learn as a young child came one day while I was in my first-grade class. Sitting in my classroom going over the assignments, I raised my brown arm frequently in an attempt to answer questions. The teacher, however, refused to call on me. After much frustration, I started passing the time by talking to my classmates. This became bothersome to the teacher, and she began to wave her finger in my direction and send me a cold stare. I ignored her and continued to talk to my friends. Finally, she beckoned me to the front of the class, and to my horror, she sat me across her knees, pulled up my skirt, and proceeded to spank my behind parts good!
When I arrived home, I sat down and confessed my story to Momma. I hadn’t cried, because I was too humiliated to do so. Momma had me sit on the hassock and talk to her while she ironed. She asked me, “Did you know the answers to the questions?” I replied, “Yes, ma’am; I knew them all.” She continued, “Well, if you know the answers and you know the teacher isn’t going to call on you, why bother raising your hand? Knowing the answers is enough! Just keep learning more of the answers. Don’t concern yourself about impressing others with your knowledge; just get the knowledge!”
And that’s what I did.
A WELL-EDUCATED BLACK
Lana Rucks
I grew up in suburban Cleveland about twenty-five years after Brown vs. Board of Education. In both my immediate and extended families, learning was a priority. When finances would allow, my sister and I were enrolled in a variety of enrichment activities. Often during the summer, my father would hold “basement school,” in which he would reinforce lessons learned from the previous school year and prepare us for the next year. Our analytical thinking, critical in any endeavor, was developed at the kitchen table with regular discussions and debates on myriad topics. My parents had moved to this suburb because it had one of the best public-school systems in the nation at that time. The combination of my parents’ efforts and the quality of the schools should have been enough to ensure a quality education. It did, but not without a fight.
The transition from elementary to junior high school introduced us to tracking—placing students in “appropriate” learning levels. Some have argued that tracking is a modern version of segregation. One day toward the end of sixth grade, my teacher distributed notices indicating where she had tracked us for the following year in English and math. I was shocked to see that I was placed in a standard English sequence. “Standard” was actually below average. I quickly folded the notice and put it in my backpack before any of my classmates could see it. I had always considered myself smart. That was the first time that I can recall thinking I was dumb.
I showed the notice to my mother, who immediately became angry. My mother, who was a native of Cleveland, recalled her own school experience. She had had a math teacher who would not teach her class math because “you do not cast pearls before swine.” My mother crossed out the word standard on my paper and circled the next-highest level. I was eventually placed in advanced English.
This marked the beginning of a six-year battle with various teachers, guidance counselors, and administrators. The next year my parents urged the school to have me placed in gifted-and-talented courses, a move that was supported by my grades and standardized test scores. Nevertheless, their request was met with resistance. My father, who was raised in a small town in the segregated South, was extremely sensitive to the issue of educational expectations. He told us of an experiment in which average students were divided into two groups and assigned a teacher. One teacher was told that the students under her care were below average, and the other teacher was told that her students were gifted. At the end of the school year, the students assigned to the gifted classes outperformed the remedial group. Because of his involvement with the community and with the schools, he knew that upper-level classes reinforced students’ abilities and confidence.
Eventually, I made the transition to gifted-and-talented courses during the second half of seventh grade. (My math teacher, in a fit of pique, required that I complete nine weeks of homework assignments in a week.) There were only seven other African Americans in the gifted-and-talented program in a class of eight hundred at a school that was 50 percent Black. Together we developed an organization that provided a network for parents and students at the high school level, and mentored junior high students to help with retention in the program.
There is a profound and lasting impact on kids who are told daily that they are smart and capable. If the schools are not doing it, then we adults must tell this to our children. We need to expect and encourage our children to do marvelous things, and eventually they will. Most importantly, parents must be involved in their children’s education. My parents attended every open house, scheduled meetings with teachers, and were involved in parent organizations. They understood that the educators needed to see that they were concerned about their children’s education, because if they did not care, no one else would. Our school system did not understand the intricacies of becoming a “well-educated Black,” but thank God, my parents did!
EDUCATION IS A TICKET OUT
Virginia D. Banks-Bright, M.D.
I came from a family that was always politically involved. It just made sense to my mother, a civil rights activist, to have us march in Raleigh, North Carolina, for the integration of hotels, schools, and restaurants. I would come home from school in the ninth grade in 1962 and do all of my homework so that I could go with my mother and sister to the church where all the marchers collected. The father of the former mayor of Atlanta, Bill Campbell, was one of the civil rights activists at that time, and he also participated. We would sing and march in the streets nightly to such songs as “We Shall Overcome” and “We Are Soldiers in the Army.” Slowly, hotels and restaurants opened their doors to “Negroes.”
At the time, I was attending a Black junior high school, and my parents felt that my education would be enhanced by going to the white high school across town because they offered more courses, especially in German. My mother petitioned the school board, and I was accepted. The school had been integrated, reluctantly, two years previously, and there were three Black students there.
In September 1963 I enrolled at Needham B. Broughton High School in Raleigh. Every day was a day from hell. Although the teachers, for the most part, were okay, the students were unforgiving. I was called the N word on a daily basis. There were times in class when the teachers had to force the students to sit next to me in class. In biology class we had to sit at desks made for two people. No one, of course, would sit with me. The teacher would hand us items to look at and then we would pass them on to the other students. When the teacher would hand something to me and I would pass it back, the students would laugh and let it drop on the floor. Then they would get up and get a paper towel so that when they picked it up, they would not have to touch it.
When we entered the auditorium or the gymnasium for special programs, whoever was behind me in line would automatically start a new row so he or she would not have to sit next to me. There would sometimes be an entirely empty row where I was sitting. My stomach was in knots most days. I wanted to give up, and told my mom and dad that I did not think I could do this. My mother instructed me to go back in there and just prove that I deserved to b
e there.
The first exams came along, and I made A’s on most of them. Then some of the teachers pointed out to the class that I was the only one who sometimes made 100 percent on an assignment. Some of the students started coming around when they found out that I was smart. Believe it or not, some of the most racist ones asked me to help them with their homework.
That experience made me tough. My mother and father were strong parents who had a vision. Black parents, in those days in the South, knew that education was a ticket out and could lead to success in the future. I don’t know if I would have continued to let my children go to a school where they were constantly berated and humiliated.
Today I am an infectious-disease specialist. I have not been back to my high school for any of the class reunions. I do realize, however, that the human spirit is capable of much, and those of us who integrated schools in those days must serve as role models to our children and to other children as well.
FROM PREGNANT TEEN TO PH.D.
Tanya Dugat Wickliff, Ph.D., M.B.A.
The phone rang and the voice of my best friend at the other end said, “Dr. T, are you ready for the big day?” I stood speechless for a moment (as hard as that is to imagine for anyone who knows me). “Dr. Dugat Wickliff, are you there?” Finally I replied, “Good morning, Shay. Quit tripping, I’m just Tanya.” “No,” she said. “Today is your graduation, and after all that you’ve been through, I’m going to call you by the name that you’ve earned, thank you very much!”
Realizing that there was no negotiating with my best friend, I answered her inquiry regarding the after-graduation party that my family had planned, and excused myself from the conversation. Instantly, as if on autopilot, I began to shout, “Thank you, Jesus!” The tears welled up in my eyes. Perhaps you’ll understand my behavior better when I share with you my story.
