When the principal, a white man in his 40s, asked seniors what they planned to do after graduation, Mattie replied that she wanted to take typing classes to land a clerical job.The reply still stings. “He thought I’d spend my life cleaning houses.”
The woman who had been told she would be cleaning houses was now working for a major telecommunications firm. Mattie remembers the relief of getting a job where, in 1970, she earned about $67 a week. The job, which would later become unionized, funded courses at Spalding University, and Mattie took classes here and there but never finished as she started a family of her own.“There was so much joy in also having a girl,” she recalled.
Back in Louisville, the school district had, for decades, used a busing plan to desegregate classrooms, which later required at least 15% and no more than 50% Black enrollment at the district’s schools. Myya thinks back on her youth and how she did not understand the long-term consequences of her decisions. It pained Mattie to see her daughter not value school — especially after all she had been through in Lebanon. But, still, she never stopped believing in Myya’s potential.Myya had a boyfriend, Jamal Oliver, got pregnant and in February 1994 — her senior year — gave birth to NaKayla.
She was among a handful of Black students, but it didn’t deter her. She got good grades and didn’t think twice about her next step.It was 2012 — the U.S. was bouncing back from the recession and President Obama, the nation’s first Black president, was campaigning for a second term. But with that optimism came a devastating reality in NaKayla’s neighborhood: gun violence.
NaKayla started cosmetology school and graduated, but soon realized she wanted a career with more earning potential.she told herself, rejoicing when she got accepted at the University of Louisville.
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