WritingPartners
Document: Invite Print Info
More
Properties/Access Dates Add to Document Analytics Report Fullscreen (hide top links) Download & Export Options Tag Document Embed in another web page
2-Pane Combined
Comments:
Full Summaries Sorted

Colored Girls DO Go To College

Author: Ruth, Darwin, Gia'nna, Ariani, Kayla

Say I'm Dead, E. Dolores Johnson, Copyright 2020, Chapter 7, 86 - 89

“He began to have a dim feeling that, to attain his place in the world, he must be himself, and not another." “ - W.E.B. Du Bois”

Say I’m dead tells the story of Dolores, a biracial girl who struggles to find her place in the world in this novel that explores a deep delve into her past.

Direct Quotes:

Gianna: I arrived early to the appointment in my good plaid wrap-around skirt and white blouse to make an impression and browsed college catalogs while waiting my turn. Then a trim white woman in black heels called me to take the seat she gestured at. She sat behind a desk, empty except for office supplies and a phone book
 Kayla: "What can I do for you?"
Gianna: the thirty-something Miss Guidance asked. I bumbled through my request for help figuring out about going to college.
Kayla: "College?"
Gianna: she asked, raising her eyebrows.
Kayla: "Oh no, Dolores. Colored girls don't go to col-lege. 1 If you do anything after high school, you should go to Fosdick Masten Vocational School and take up sewing. 1It's right downtown by the baseball stadium."
Gianna: She flipped her dark hair back over her ear, as white women do to signal what they think is their allure or power, crossed her legs, and rifled through the phone book. She wrote the phone number of the trade school on a slip of paper and handed it to me. Standing up, she went over and opened the office door, signaling the end of the conversation. Not knowing what to say, I thanked her and wandered out, defeated.

Gianna: Was that why I didn't know about college? I wasn't supposed to go because I was black? But she'd said something ridiculous about me sewing. I'd earned a single D in eleven years of school—in sewing. Too upset with the counselor's advice to face the kids on the Ghetto Express, I went around to the empty street behind Bennett to think, where nobody would see me.
She hadn't even reviewed my transcript. Was she crazy, randomly picking sewing of all things out of a hat? None of the white honors students were being told to take up sewing at Fosdick Masten.
Pacing up and down the street, I snorted out loud, imagining the eye doctor's cashmere-clad white daughter taking up other people's hems. She would never sit in her fancy mansion with the music room and library I'd seen, pumping the pedal on a sewing machine for a dollar. Why should I?

Gianna: I was not about to let this white woman blow me off because I was black. Not after all those fire hoses turned on civil rights demonstrators. Not after that new law for equal access Mr. M. kept talking about. I pulled out the notepaper with the phone number to call and ripped it to pieces. I wanted what my white classmates were going to get. That sorry white lady wasn't going to keep me from having it. Now I wonder how many other worthy students' professional careers that woman killed because of their color.
I applied blindly to a few colleges in New York state my classmates talked about, without understanding that different colleges taught different things, without knowing the distinction between public and private universities, liberal arts or professional majors. I had no idea some were harder to get into, or which offered scholarships, or what the relevant selection criteria was. I never asked anyone else how to get into college.
Gianna: Daddy watched me work on applications at the kitchen table as he rinsed collard greens in the sink for Sunday's dinner.
Darwin: "You know college costs a lot of money?" . "Why are you filling out all those papers? We don't have that kind of extra, you understand? If you want to go to college, I don't know how you're going to pay for it."

Gianna: I kept on mailing completed applications, adding requests for financial aid, like some of the white kids were doing. One crisp Saturday morning that fall, Mama and I hung sheets out on the line in the backyard.
Our next-door neighbor, Mrs. Mosby, leaned over the chain-link fence and asked if I was taking the exam for Howard University the next Saturday. Mama and I looked blankly at each other, dropping the wet sheet and wooden clothespins back in the basket to listen.
Mrs. Mosby said the scholarship exam could be a great chance to get college paid for, and I should have a good shot at it with my school record. It would be held in the Urban League office where she worked. That neighbor said that education was the way up and out.
Kayla: “You would do well to go to Howard," she said. "It's the leading black university in America."
Gianna: I'd never heard of it.
Ruth: "Put her name down," "What time will it be?"

Gianna: The only preparation I made that week was to get the specified pencils and pack a good eraser. It would probably be something like the SAT, which I also hadn't known people prepared for. That Saturday at the Urban League, I answered everything and checked it twice.
Acceptances started coming in for my classmates, including Jackie, who was heading to the University of Michigan. A few mainstream white schools accepted me, like Russell Sage, offering financial aid so paltry Daddy said we'd have to go to the poor house. I came home from school one afternoon to find Mama still hadn't left for work yet, even though her clock-in time had passed.
She sat in the living room in her spotless white shoes, stockings, and nurses' aide uniform, ready for her second shift at the hospital. An oversized envelope rested in her lap, torn open.
Ruth: "It's all set," "You did it."
Ariani: "Did what?"
Ruth: "You got into Howard University."”

https://vimeo.com/1047689521/afe4886e58 →

DMU Timestamp: January 20, 2025 22:44





Image
0 comments, 0 areas
add area
add comment
  • Join an existing conversation — click the “Reply” button of the appropriate right pane comment
  • Start a new conversation on an existing area — Double click on the existing highlighted area or its comment balloon
  • Define and comment on a new area — Draw a box around the desired area by clicking and then holding + dragging your mouse
Start a new conversation about the image as a whole (no specific area) — click here
change display
hide comment areas
hide comment balloons
help
Video
add comment
  at current time
  at a different time
on whole video
help

How to Start with AI-guided Writing

  • Write a quick preview for your work.
  • Enable AI features & Upload.
  • Click Ask AI on the uploaded document.
    It's on the right side of your screen next to General Document Comments.
  • Select Quickstart Pathfinder & ask how to begin.
  • Click Continue.
  • Click Start Conversation. after the results appear.

Welcome!

Logging in, please wait... Blue_on_grey_spinner