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doyenne’s
apace
ebullient
the Martha Washington Hotel for Women,
what?” “How can you not have heard of it, Belle? It opened not even five years ago, and it’s a residential hotel that can
house up to five hundred businesswomen. Not only do we have our own rooms and lovely dining areas, but the hotel has its own drugstore, tailor shop, millinery, manicurist, and newspaper st...
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“Not that I’m concerned, of course. Because no matter who you see or what you do, you are my personal librarian. You must always remember that you belong to me.”
My love
abortifacient
living as white is not what she wanted to do, but what she felt she must
She gave up the identity she’d loved to live among people she abhorred, only for the betterment of her children.
The America I inhabit is the antithesis of the society for which he worked, even though groups like the National Urban League, the National Council of Negro Women, and the Congress of Racial Equality have protested the laws of segregation and inequality. If he saw our segregated country and the unabashed white supremacy that continues in our midst, his heart would shatter. Even though colored and white soldiers fought side by side in the war, the black military returned home to Jim Crow laws that have kept colored people in a persistent state of social and economic inferiority. Lynchings are
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Could there one day be a world in which we have new governmental leaders and new laws that would grant equality to all of the citizens of this country? Could our society change such that we would walk among each other, live with each other, and perhaps even love one another, no matter the color of our skin? And if that day did come to pass, would someone, someday, reach back in time to discover my story and proudly claim the real me, the colored personal librarian to J. P. Morgan whose name was Belle da Costa Greene?
detritus
Our country in disarray was the background music as we, a white woman and a Black woman, talked through our emotions of what felt like our country crumbling around us. Marie checked on me every day, giving me an outlet for the outrage that burned within me, although just as many times I had to be that outlet for her. We created a safe space between us as we discussed the history of Black America, the history of white America, and the hope that one day these two Americas would converge into one.
