Clinton - Its Your World

Courtesy of the UN, Map No. 4170

INTRODUCTION

W hats the first thing you remember reading? The first thing I remember reading on my own was the local newspaper, the old-fashioned kind that left ink stains on my hands. I probably read Corduroy or a Curious George story first, out loud to my parents, but its the newspapers I pored over as I ate my morning Cheerios that mark the line in my mind between not-reading and reading. The newspaper is probably what I remember most because its what enabled me to be a part of my parents conversations about what was happening in our hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas, and the broader world. Those conversations happened around the dinner table every night and intensely after church on Sunday over lunch. They happened on the way to school and on the way home from ballet class, before Brownies meetings and after softball games. In other words, they happened all the time.

Knowing what was in the newspaper meant I didnt have to wait for my parents to explain everything to me. I could ask questions to start conversations about the world too. Best of all? The newspaper helped hide how much honey I poured on top of my Cheerios. My mom wouldnt let me have sugary cereal growing up (more on that later) and so I improvised, adding far more honey than likely would have been in any honeyed cereals. Thankfully, my mom never caught on.

I was very fortunate growing up. My main worries were things like trying to get my mom to relax her ban on sugary cereals, figuring out how to stick a clay honeycomb or papier-mch Jupiter or clay-and-Popsicle-stick coral reef to poster board for various science projects, how to sell more Girl Scout Cookies than I did the year before and whether my best friend Elizabeth and I would sleep at her house or my house Saturday night. I never doubted I would have a roof over my head, a school to go to, enough to eat, books (and newspapers) to read, a safe neighborhood to play in and a doctor to see if I got sick.

My parents and grandparents made sure I knew I was lucky. I dont remember a time not knowing the life story of my moms mom, my grandma Dorothy. By the time she was eight, my grandma Dorothys parents had abandoned her twice, often leaving her hungry and alone in their Chicago apartment. The first time was when she was three years old. Ultimately, they sent her to live with her grandparents in California. When she became a teenager, her grandparents told her she was no longer welcome in their home and that since she was old enough to get a job and support herself, she had to leave. If she hadnt found a job working in someone elses home, she would have been homeless. If her employers hadnt supported her determination to go to school, she would have had to drop out. As a teenager, she constantly worried about whether she would have a roof over her head, be able to go to school or have enough to eat.

Courtesy of the Authors Parents

My grandma Dorothy as a kid in 1928.

My grandmother always talked very matter-of-factly about her memories of being hungry and scared as a child. Knowing her story helped me be aware that some of the kids I knew at Forest Park Elementary, Booker Arts Magnet School or Horace Mann Junior High likely had to worry about whether there would be enough to eat that day and whether it would be safe to play outside when they got home. Less than twenty-five years before I was born, Horace Mann was a school only for African American students. Back then, schools were segregated by race in Arkansasas they were across much of the South until the late 1950sand the schools white kids went to had more and better resources, like nicer classrooms, more books, newer desks and fancier playgrounds. The wounding legacy of segregation and growing up knowing adults who had worked for civil rights and equal opportunities for African Americans was part of what made me understand that many kids in my community and around the world were still treated differently because of the color of their skin. My mothers work on behalf of girls and women first in Arkansas and later around the world helped me understand how being born a girl is often seen as reason enough to deny someone the right to go to school or to make her own decisions, even about who or when to marry.

Long before I turned eighteen and started voting, really for as long as I can remember, my parents expected me to have an opinion or point of view about everything. Truly, everything. What I experienced, what I learned in school and what I saw or read about in the news. They also expected me to be able to back up my views with facts and evidenceand, if I could, to work to change things that frustrated me. It never seemed to matter how oldor youngI was. And it wasnt just my parents; my grandparents felt the same way. As my grandma Ginger, my dads mother, often told me before she passed away when I was thirteen, Chelsea, youve been blessed and you need to always be thinking about how to expand the circle of blessings. My grandma Dorothy repeatedly told me, Youll never know until you try.

Courtesy of the Authors Parents

This is a photocopy of the letter I sent to President Reagan in 1985. I included one of my favorite stickers as a sign of respect (and hoped it might help the president take my letter more seriously).

Reading the newspaper and knowing what was happening was only a first stepmaking a positive difference, or at least trying to, was what mattered most. Those expectations were one of the greatest gifts my parents and grandparents gave me. It felt important, and exciting, to know I could make a difference, or, again, that at least I could try. I wrote a letter to President Reagan when I was five to voice my opposition to his visit to the Bitburg cemetery in Germany, because Nazis were buried there. I didnt think an American president should honor a group of soldiers that included Nazis. President Reagan still went, but at least I had tried in my own small way. In elementary school, I was part of a group that helped start a paper-recycling program. Through my church in Little Rock, I volunteered in park cleanups, helped with food drives and worked in soup kitchens. There was always more to do, but seeing bags fill up with trash, barrels fill up with canned food and people eating meals all taught me that a group of people working together could have a real impactand that such work could even be fun.