The Long Road

Dastination Freedom. Dastination Freedom. Grammatizations of the great democratic traditions of the Negro people is brought to you by station WMAQ as a part of the pageant of history and of America's own destination freedom. Of an American woman, the late H.G. Wells once said, Turn the pages of this plucky woman's story of the broadening streak of violence and injustice

through which she has lived her life in her own country, and I wonder what answer will America give to her. The woman was Mary Church Terrell, and in a chapter entitled The Long Road, Destination Freedom Turns the Pages of the Terrell Story.

I am the woman, Mary Church Terrell. The pages of my story began at the close of the Civil War, on the threshold of that new Age, I was born. Born in Memphis, Tennessee. Unheralded, unwanted.

It's a girl. At a time like this, the Almighty sends us a girl. It's neither the time nor the place to raise one. No, no, it's not the time for any child. I wanted none.

Oh boy, he'd have a chance. But in this section of the South, where they are struggling it threw us back into slavery? A girl? Oh, I wanted no children at all. None at all. So, I was welcomed. And in the wreckage of the reconstruction, I grew, and quietly wondered that the split personality of the social system that spawned me, that preached one way of

living for white folks and demanded a different way from black folks. And I asked my mother why I was unwelcome. Must you keep asking me that? I'd like to know. You will get to see for yourself soon enough.