Legacies

During our family reunions, we tell the story of Florence B. Lesueur and her journey from a small farm in Youngstown, Ohio to being a confidante of Eleanor Roosevelt and a champion of civil rights. Florence Lesueur is my grandmother. She had eight daughters and three sons. As she washed dishes one day, enjoying a late summer breeze through the open kitchen window, she overheard a conversation between her husband and brother-in-law that began, "how's the little incubator?" Not hearing a response that had anything to do with the chicken coop, and everything to do with her health and a great supper on the stove, she sat down to write a letter to her husband letting him know the address of her best friend who had recently moved to Boston, MA. She would be back, she said, in three weeks: in time to get their girls to school-a place where they would have access to an education equal to that of their boys and an environment where they would not be referred to as "breeders." If he cared to join them, terrific, and if not, she expected to see her sons on a regular basis. Before her family sat down to an absent supper, she and a small bag were on a bus to Boston. A week after that, the family was reunited there, in a modest apartment on Walpole Street.

Not only did Mrs. Lesueur chair the first city-wide NAACP Education Committee, before becoming the first female of African descent to be a city chapter president, she also watched as each of her children successfully completed high school. Higher education would be difficult for any of her children to attain in a place like Boston, but this goal was never far from her mind. The sixth daughter of Florence and Arthur Lesueur was my mother, Phyllis. She and her husband were determined that their children would see a college degree as the natural end of a formal education, as opposed to a high school degree. As the oldest, I led the way, but it was always a way that was carefully crafted to allow other to follow. When, in 1966, Ruth Batson, one of Boston's best-known figures in education and civil rights, met...