Living in Monroe, Christine had always been someone’s little sister. At Hampton, she thought, she would become her own woman. In the fall, she applied to the school, with Fisk as her backup plan. Hampton responded with an offer letter and a scholarship covered by the United Negro College Fund. “I’ve been accepted at Hampton,” Christine wrote her mother in a letter in early 1958. “I have a scholarship at Hampton, and so there is no reason why you shouldn’t let me go.” Desma Mann fretted at the idea of her baby going off so far away, all alone, but she had always known that day would come.
