From file clerk to columnist: 60 years of Miami Herald memories | Opinion
It hardly seems like 60 years since my love affair started with the Miami Herald.
I call my association with the Herald a love affair because that’s what it has been all these years. I have never regretted walking in those great, big glass doors of the lobby of what I thought was the most beautiful building in downtown Miami. I have always considered myself blessed for the opportunity to be employed at 1 Herald Plaza.
It was on the first Monday of January in 1966 that I first stepped into the lobby of the Miami Herald as one of its employees. I wore a light green pencil skirt and a white, long-sleeved dotted Swiss blouse (I still have the skirt. I don‘t know what happened to the blouse – probably wore it out), and black pumps that I had polished until I could see my reflection on them.
I remember being nervous that day but not scared. I knew my life was changing, but at that time I didn’t know to what extent. I had given up my job as a maid to take on the job of file clerk in the Herald’s library (or the morgue, as we called it).
As a maid, I worked for two families during the week – four days (Tuesday through Friday) with a family of four, and one day for a childless, middle-aged couple. My weekly salary from the two families combined was $42 a week. On the day Mr. Sykes (then the supervisor of the library) called me to let me know I was hired, he told me, “Your salary will be $60 per week.”
I thanked him, hung up the phone and did a holy dance, screaming to my mom that I’d gotten the job and I would be making $60 a week. Shawn, my younger son, was 5 at the time. He heard me tell Momma what my salary would be, and he started jumping up and down yelling, “Oh Mommy, we’re rich, we’re rich!”
And we were. Not in a monetary way, but in a faith-filled way. In a way of believing that God hears, and answers prayers.
It was mid-December of 1965, just after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had been signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Businesses advertising for help in the Herald added to their ad, “We are an equal opportunity employer.” I learned early on that the statement wasn’t always true for some businesses. But I kept trying.
Then I saw the ad for a file clerk in the Herald’s library. There was no phone number to call, only a post office box address to respond to. And the ad also had the familiar phrase – “We are an equal opportunity employer.”
By the time I saw the ad, I was tired of having the telephone hung up on me as soon as I told them I was a graduate of Booker T. Washington High School. (Schools were still segregated back then, so no white person would have attended the all-Black Booker T. Washington High School in Overtown.)
It was on a Sunday after church that I saw the ad. I had just finished reading the comics to my sons when I turned to the help-wanted ads. That’s when I saw the ad that was about to change my life. I don’t know what it was about that particular ad. I just know that it gave me hope.
And so, I sat down at the second-hand desk in our living room and wrote a letter of application, one that the late Mrs. Jane Lewis, my junior business teacher at BTW, would be proud of because I remembered everything she taught me in her class.
I didn’t have a typewriter. But I have a nice cursive handwriting. So, I placed a lined sheet of paper beneath a plain sheet to keep my sentences straight and wrote my letter. The ad didn’t ask for a resume, but I included one anyway. I wanted the reader of my letter to know that I knew what a resume was.
Two days after I mailed the letter, I got a response asking me to come in on my next day off for an interview. (My day off was Wednesday, because I asked to work on Saturdays just to have a weekday off to job hunt.) My appointment was for 9 a.m. I arrived at 8:30 a.m. A nice woman from the human resources office interviewed me and I was given a test.
When I left the building that day it was almost 4 p.m. I left feeling confident that I had the job. Mr. Sykes called the next day, verifying my feeling, telling me I could start the very next Monday.
I asked him if I could start the first Monday in January because I wanted to give my current employers a two-week notice. He agreed.
I will never forget the morning I told the family where I worked four days of the week that I was leaving because I had found another job. When I asked to speak with the lady of the house, she thought I wanted a raise. After all, I worked for the family for four years at the same rate - $8 a day.
So, she already had an attitude until I told her I had found another job. I told her where I would be working and what I would be doing.
She said, “Well, you know that as soon as Johnson is no longer the president things will go to go back to the way they were.”
And I said, “That may very well be true. But while the door is open, I’m going to walk through.” I told her I was giving her a two-week notice; that my new job would start the first of the new year.
It’s sad to say that it was then that she offered me more money to stay. She figured that after taxes and other deductions I would still be bringing home just a little more than I was making as a maid.
What she didn’t understand was that my leaving her employment was not only about money. It was about dignity and self-worth.
It was about loving children who would one day be taught that it was okay to call me the “N” word.
It was about my future. And the future of my children.
Yep! The day I walked through those big glass doors at 1 Herald Plaza was the day I fell in love with the Miami Herald. It is a love affair that opened doors to me that I didn’t dare to dream of.
Who knew, back in 1966, that I would become a journalist? Or that I would be writing for my dream paper for 55 years?
My life has seen many changes in the past 60 years. And so has the Herald. Throughout my years there, life for me wasn’t “… no crystal stair.” I have shed many tears, been disappointed and rejected.
Most of all, along the way, there have been victories and countless friendships that I treasure. What a love affair this has been.
While I don’t know what the future has in store, I have 60 years to be thankful for.
What a blessing.
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