A White Addendum to Black in America

A White Addendum to Black in America

Can’t remember if I have put this on the computer before, but it’s worth another go.

As a daughter of a rich family in Wyoming, I was sent to a rich girls’ boarding school in Virginia from 1939 to 1942. My next door roommate was Edsel Ford’s daughter, Dodie. You get the picture.

In the evenings, the students would sit in our windows listening to the black employees singing old Negro hymns as they finished their long hours of work. Several times a week the staff would take the students on horseback rides through the countryside.

On one such ride, with 20 or so horses in a long row, we passed a decrepit old house that had never seen paint, and an old black woman came out on her porch to watch us go by. She swung her trunk out using her arms, because her legs had been amputated at her body.

I do not know what she was thinking, but I know what I was thinking. Here were the rich white girls from the boarding school, riding their steeds English-style, parading their privilege past HER HOME and CONDITION, chatting with one another and enjoying the day.

Nor do I know what the other girls were thinking. But I DO know that almost 70 years later I remember that day with shame.