PERSONAL: BY MARY

I grew up in the era (1950s and 60s) of the big downtown department store. It was an annual ritual for my parents to pick up their six children from school one afternoon to go view the Christmas holiday displays, visit with Santa, and make a wondrous tour of the toy department to point out our favorites. Think of similar scenes from “The Christmas Story” movie (without the mean Santa and elves) and you’ve got the picture. I loved this tradition and still get a warm feeling when I recall it.

But there was an unacknowledged part of the experience that confused and unsettled me. I grew up in suburbia’s first wave, probably less than a mile from the city limits of St. Louis, in an all-white neighborhood, attending all-white schools at a time when people who were not white were largely absent from the media (don’t get me started on Shirley Temple movies, however). 

As a young, impressionable heart and mind, I was taking in the magical experience of big city life mixed with holiday anticipation on those excursions. I was a sponge soaking up and internalizing everything I saw, heard, and felt. And I couldn’t help but notice, as we faced the wall with the row of busy elevator doors opening and closing, that every elevator was under the command of a Black woman. 

The elevators of that time were constructed with big, heavy metal gates that had to be pulled open and closed, and the operator had to manually stop the elevator to line up the elevator’s interior to be level with the landing floor. To my young eyes, it looked like hard work. I wasn’t accustomed to seeing women doing a job with anything mechanical or that depended on physical strength and coordination. And even more puzzling was being in the close presence of women who looked different from my family and my teachers and just about everyone I had previously encountered. 

I believe I was curious, maybe even fascinated, feeling the sway and rattle of the elevator attuned to my own fluttery sensations. But what I remember most was the silence. No one spoke. None of white store clientele engaged the Black women except giving their destination floor numbers as an order to be performed.  In that odd and uncomfortable way that elevator etiquette is enacted, we held our bodies away from each other and avoided eye contact. In the hush of those few moments, I couldn’t help but sense unease, an avoidance of the obvious, and an unspoken agreement to pretend like I wasn’t experiencing anything out of the ordinary. I eagerly hopped off at the toy floor and put those wonderings and feelings out of my mind. I was maybe six years old, and I got an early lesson about race and racism. 

Decades later, as a racial justice leader, people ask me how I got started in this pursuit. I remember traveling in that cage of an elevator, emblematic of the cage of racism. I remember wanting to know more and not having the words or the courage to ask questions. I regret that it took several more years for me to understand and act. I know now that living in an all-white neighborhood and attending racially homogeneous schools means that the presence of racism was woven into the fabric of my white life. And I marvel at the fact that in spite of where I started, Black women have become some of my closest allies and teachers.