My parents, my mom grew up in Greenwood, South Carolina, Jim Crow, poor. My father grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina, Jim Crow, poor. But they had brains, and they, I remember them being avid readers. And I also remember a photograph when we moved from Brooklyn to East Harlem, Spanish Harlem, in the Mitchell-Lama development, and you can see our old Brooklyn furniture in the living room, no carpeting.
And in the center of the photograph is a little bookcase I think it probably had Funk and Wagnall encyclopedias but that was sort of the focus. And so in my home books were important and I remember, I think it was the arrow book club when I was in elementary school and books were probably ten cents, twenty cents, and while if I wanted new sneakers or a leather jacket or some, it was like no. But when I came home with like ten, fifteen books that I wanted to buy at the book fair my parents never said no.
There was always money for books. And also I remember my grandmother telling me a story and I don’t know if she went to school for more than two years but she told me this story about an enslaved man someplace on a planation and one day the overseer gave him a note and said you know take this to the owner or the owner gave him the note and said take this to the overseer and when he did so he got whipped or beaten.
And the moral was, had he been able to read he would have never delivered that note. So growing up, as a kid in the working class and coming from people who had gone through Jim Crow the lesson was your mind, reading, education, that’s going to be your ticket.