Since the day she learned to walk, my sister, Lucretia, who is a year older, has always been as stoic as they come. But Lucretia was in tears when she came home that afternoon in June 1956. After hearing her out, our family swallowed yet another bitter taste of life in class-stratified black Washington.
Lucretia had graduated from Dunbar High School a few days earlier and was looking forward to becoming the first King family member to enter college. What she needed was a summer job, so she headed across town to an employment center housed in a D.C. public school building at 14th and Q streets NW. She was interviewed by a male "Negro," as we called ourselves in those days. He was in the kind of job that made him, at least in our eyes, a professional: He wore a shirt and tie to work and had an office.
Lucretia told him that she hoped to enroll in Howard University in the fall and was looking for a clerical job. But after reviewing her application and asking about our parents' background, he told her to abandon her dream of college. "Your mother is a domestic worker and your father is a laborer. What makes you think you can do anything more?" he said, handing back her application.
That's why she came home crying.
| This morning, once you continue and complete Washington Post deputy editorial page editor Colbert A. King's Post Magazine article "The Kings of Foggy Bottom," you have a little time to read before you can check out the Post's Live Online chat
Also worth your time: John Greenya's "Black Man on a White Field" about Daryl Hill, the first black football player in the Atlantic Coast Conference, and Keith W. Jenkins' "Picture of Success" on black high society photographers Addison, Robert and George Scurlock, with an accompanying slideshow
posted in articles on February 2, 2004 2:07 AM | t (0)
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