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Letter for Sonia Sanchez

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@ University of South Dakota

Revelle, Chris

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On a hot New York Monday in 1955, Wilsonia Driver had missed her train stop. She was a recent alumna from Hunter College and had woken up that morning with excitement and pride. Ms. Driver had been offered a writing position at the New York Times, but when she arrived at the office on West 43rd St. the Times staff were not expecting a young black women. Despite her protests, Ms. Driver was quickly told that the position had been taken. She left in a daze of anger, making her way to the train station. When Ms. Driver realized she had missed the 96th St. stop, she was already at 135th St. As she made her way across the street to catch the train back downtown, she saw a sign that read, Schomburg, as she recounts, “I was hot. I was mad, and I was everything. And I said to the guy who was standing outside, ‘What kind of library is this? I just got out of Hunter. I never saw this library.’” When she learned that the Schomburg library’s collection was dedicated to books by and about black people, Ms. Driver responded with, “There must not be a lot of books in here.” The librarian sat her down at a long table with three books from the collection, Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington, The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois, and Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. After reading a...
Type:
Physical Object
Format:
Artists' Books
Rights:
http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ Chris Revelle
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University of South Dakota