Judy Seymour
Madison, WI

I grew up upper class white outside New Haven, CT.  ‘Bill’ and ‘JB’ cleaned my parents’ house for ‘Mrs. Seymour’, my mother.  My mother hung a calendar photo of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the wall behind a folding door between our kitchen and family room that was only closed/unfolded by Bill or JB.

I sat in my family room not 10 miles from race riots, unscathed, reading the Autobiography of Malcolm X.  When Bill and JB came to clean, I ran to my room and hid in shame.

Read more about this essay @Your Stories (this link will take your to Michele Norris’s official website)