The Atlantic
We Were the Last of the Nice Negro Girls
In 1968, history found us at a small women’s college, forging our Black identity and empowering our defiance.
This article was published online on February 9, 2021.
My high-school counselor at Western High School, an all-girls public school in Baltimore, was a rotund white woman with a pleasant but less than energetic countenance. She was wholly absent from my education until one day, after rumblings about affirmative action in colleges had begun shaking the ground that Negroes traversed to higher education, she suddenly summoned my mother and me for a meeting. My mother, a veteran teacher in Baltimore’s public schools, took the afternoon off. We sat in the high-ceilinged counseling office, prim and proper as can be, while the counselor showed us one pamphlet after another with images of white girls in sweater sets relaxing in bucolic environments.
A women-focused recovery, Nikki Haley’s choice and a farewell
RULING THE WEEK
Hi, everyone! I have some news: Today will be my last day as the writer of the Women Rule newsletter. I’ve been so honored to helm the newsletter over the past nearly two years as we reinvented it and nearly doubled our reach.
Working on this project has changed the way I view the world and not just because I know it’s
“don’t marry your glass ceiling” in the back of my mind everytime I go on a date. I now see more clearly how much gender bias permeates our lives.