Rosa McWilliams Henderson

Rosa represents several of the narrator “strivers” who were born into poverty or to uneducated parents with lesser means.  She writes about how her father’s opportunity to go from farmer to a janitorial position at the high school offered him the opportunity to add on to the two-room home that she, her siblings, and her parents once lived in.

Rosa epitomizes what can be achieved through educational opportunity in an atmosphere of high expectations.  Like thousands of other poor Black women in the Jim Crow South, she used the lure of secure housing and a modest salary to work for wealthy White families in the North as her escape route.  Rosa writes about her first live-in job: “It was the family’s choice to give me the bones when they had steak.”

Rosa saved her money after working with several families and returned to Tuskegee to attain college degrees in the field of education.  Rosa retired as an education administrator in Tuskegee. She is still active in numerous educational organizations focused on providing access and support to the children of Macon County and the State of Alabama.