 |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| More than 50 years ago in Mississippi, a Black teenager named Pamela Gipson decided to spend her junior and senior years at a blindingly white high school on Long Island in New York. She was 15 years old, and she missed home so much that sometimes, she says, "I would walk down to the street and through the woods to see a major highway, just to see Black people driving." |
| What on earth led her to leave everything and everyone she knew at that age? |
| The simple answer is that her parents wanted her to have an excellent education and a limitless future. She wanted all that, too. Syosset High was an exceptional school with far more resources than her segregated high school in Jackson. "The whole idea was to broaden my horizons, to better myself, to have a better opportunity," she says. |
 | | Pamela Gipson dressed as a gift coming out of a box at a party the Perlsteins hosted for her in 1968 shortly after she arrived in Syosset. | | Family photo | |
| There were good high schools closer to home, and a few Black students were starting to attend white schools in Jackson. But "back then, there were all kinds of dangers for integration in schools," Pam says. Rather than subject her and themselves to those fears, her parents agreed to the safer alternative: Going North. "My daddy told me years later that my mother cried every day," Pam says. |
| I was one of her classmates, and I just learned all of that this year. Read more... |
More from columns for you to read |
| |
Real quick, sign up to get our alerts |
| Get columns from your favorite columnists + expert analysis on top issues, delivered straight to your device through the USA TODAY app. Don't have the app? It's free and available in your app store. |
| Once you have the app, go to the settings and add "Commentary & Analysis" to make sure you don't miss out. |
| |
| |
| |
| |
No comments:
Post a Comment