She was a single mom. My father had left. And she thought that she would support her four children by writing children's books - which, you know, in hindsight sounds crazy; but it ended up working for her. But unfortunately, when we were children, it wasn't terribly lucrative.

Classless Society Stories Project

I felt, even though I had not voiced it myself, that for me getting an education was going to be the way out for me... I must have been about fourteen years of age, and in terms of summer employment, my mother... would try to solicit from this lady that she worked for consistently, to see if this lady had any friends that needed someone to do housework... and so I went one day. And then I came home, and I told my mother, "I'm never going back."

 

She said, "What do you mean?"

"I'm not working for any White people. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not cleaning their toilets. I'm not scrubbing their floors. I'm just not gonna do that. I'm not gonna spend my life doing it this way."

 

And she said, "how could you talk to me this way. This is what I do, this is how I take care of you."

 

And I said, "I understand that." I said, "but why do I have to do that."

 

So she said, "Well, you're not gonna have the things you need. There won't be any new school clothes for you. There won't be anything because that's the only way you have. You were gonna be able to make money for the summer to buy things."

 

And I said, "Then I just won't have them. I'm not going back."

 

And I said, "Anyway, I don't like the way her husband looks at me, so I'm not going back."

 

And so she said, "You better get a good education because if you don't get a good education this is what you have to look forward to."

 

And I said, "You better believe it, because I don't want to get my hands dirty."

 

And she would say, "Oh because you think you're better than everybody else in this family."

 

And I said, "Maybe I am." And she-I really think in some way she agreed with me in terms of- because she didn't force me to go back.

 

She was like, "It's your choice; it's your decision."

 

And I didn't go back... I mean I always had this sense that I wanted something more for myself, and that the only way I was gonna have it for myself was to be educated.

 

Sandra Jones, "A Place Where I Belong: Working-Class Women's Pursuit of Higher Education," Race, Gender & Class 11, no. 3 (2004): 74-93.