From Liberty To Magnolia by Janice Ellis

Author:Janice Ellis [Ellis, Janice]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781641147514
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2018-02-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

Who the Hell Are You?

I was pumped up and inspired after studying all the works of Lippmann and after all the elective courses I had taken in political science about the American political process, political socialization of the masses, voting behavior, development and implementation of public policy, and profiles of prominent political leaders. The question of how I could apply all that I had learned was always resident in the recesses of my mind despite the daily demands of becoming a part of a new community, adjusting to a new job, and still trying to salvage a marriage I should have long before abandoned. At the time, I just couldn’t accept that my marriage wasn’t fixable. I thought if I would just hang in there like I had done in times past—overcoming situations and conditions that had been tough, even daunting—then things would turn out all right. I was still expectant and hopeful of building a beautiful family life and meaningful career.

Moving from Madison to Milwaukee was more than just changing locations. I was leaving the University of Wisconsin and all that it had meant for me during the previous four years—living in married-student housing, taking courses and teaching courses, while being the primary bread winner. I had also assumed the primary responsibility of caring for our two children while suffering psychological and physical abuse. My husband, Thomas, on the other hand, had continued to be uninvolved in much of anything except law school.

Along with my move to Milwaukee to begin a new phase of my life, I was bringing along with me an amalgamation of long-standing cultural, historical, and personal feelings and forces that weighed on me—not the least among them was the anxiety of finding a job, the instability of my marriage, and the ever-present challenge of navigating it all as a black and as a woman.

The freshest of these feelings were from the university life I was leaving behind. As I was driving the seventy-five miles from Madison to Milwaukee on Interstate Highway 94 with the boys in the back seat and Thomas in the front passenger seat, I found myself taking deep breaths and long sighs as I recalled climbing the steepest hill on campus, the last trimester of both my pregnancies, to get to my classes in Bascom Hall. My mind went back to what repeatedly happened in those classes during the four years I was there. Being the only black, and often only woman in class, I felt the burden of having to say something smart and profound when I volunteered or was called upon to answer questions from the professor. I felt I had to ask an intelligent and penetrating question even when the professor or a fellow classmate did not. If I didn’t, I felt that I would be put in the “slow and ignorant” category and that my whole race would be looked upon as intellectually inferior. But, that was not a new feeling that hit me in Madison. It was something I had carried throughout my undergraduate studies.

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