I was a second grader at St. Bartholomew School when Little Rock Central High School was desegregated. Growing up in that time and place shaped how I see history, including the history I now spend my days researching. I graduated from Central High School in May 1968.
After high school I planned to become a secretary, but I quickly learned that in Little Rock in the late 1960s, “secretary” was not considered a job for a Black woman. I was turned away by employer after employer, including Governor Winthrop Rockefeller’s office, where the administrator, Flo Pence, didn’t like my hair and worried that television cameramen might see me on the job. What was meant for evil turned out to be my good.
Ida W. Moose, a close family friend of Governor Rockefeller, heard about me and asked my business teacher, Brenda Haynes, to send me her way. I walked into Mrs. Moose’s office ready to take a shorthand test, and she told me I didn’t need to. She encouraged me to go to college and paid me a full-time salary while I attended classes half days and built my schedule around them.
After I earned my BBA, I moved to Inglewood, California, and spent the next 20 years working for Hughes Aircraft Company. Music found its way into that season of my life too. I took private piano and voice lessons, directed the choir at Baldwin Hills Baptist Church, wrote Christian music, and wrote plays.
I went on to become a California credentialed music and business teacher, leading high school choir and show choir programs in Los Angeles and later in San Bernardino City Schools. One of my most memorable moments came in 1999, when I served as musical director for Washington Preparatory High School’s production of Guys and Dolls, working alongside theater teacher and producer Mark Swinton, now Senior Vice President for Tyler Perry Studios.
When I retired, I needed something to fill that space, and I found it in genealogy. It has become my passion, one I still have to remind myself to balance with everything else in life, and it’s what led me here, to helping preserve and share our family’s story.