BEING A GUIDE IN PARIS LED ME TO CHOOSE FRANCE. FOR AFRICA, THE REASON GOES BACK TO A BABYSITTER
When my brother and I were small Cora Bailey, a Black woman from a neighboring town, would take care of us when our mother took a day off. She was a calm person whom we never thought of disobeying. She made superb lemon meringue pie and peanut butter cookies. Sometimes she brought her daughter, Doris, a teenager I admired because she could twirl.
When I was 15 Cora told me that Doris wasn't coming because she had had a baby, and then, that he had died. "She misses him," she said.
At about that time my mother's aunt, who worked in an organization called the Urban League in the town where Cora lived, told her that she was a prostitute. "We don't need you any more," Mom said. We never saw her again.
If true, the little she earned from babysitting made sex work a classic solution, but there had never been anything untoward in the ten years that she took care of us. Cora had no say in losing the small job she had held for at decade and may not even have known the reason for being let go.
Such unfairness led to my choosing the left and her memory explains being drawn to Black people and culture. It explains choosing African history as a field for research.
This Blook II is dedicated to Cora Bailey.
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