At the elbows of my elders

by Gail Milissa Grant

"Decades before the beginning of the civil rights movement as most Americans recognize it, black families across the U.S. were fighting the battle against discrimination. Grant's father, a lawyer and civil rights activist in St. Louis in the 1950s, was among the less well known resisters of segregation, eventually working with more prominent figures, from Thurgood Marshall to Ralph Bunche and A. Phillip Randolph, to fight racial inequities in St. Louis. Grant recalls a long line of family resisters, middle-class business owners who were always on the forefront of the racial divide, challenging Jim Crow laws and practices while sustaining the social and economic underpinnings of the segregated black community. Grant describes growing up with the gut-wrenching "unknowing" of whether she would be welcomed in a store or business or turned away because of her race. As barriers were broken, Grant went on to a 20-year career in the foreign service with the U.S. Information Agency. This is a f