An Interview with
Kathryn Coram Gagnon

Excerpt from: Voices of Rondo: Oral Histories of Saint Paul’s Historic Black Community

Syren Books, September 2005

Part V - Skin Color

The thing that most people look for to identify individuals is skin color. And because my skin is very light, they just passed me by. You know, because I would fit in. I’d been fitting in all my life. Not intentionally. It’s not like “passing,” which a lot of kids did in those days.

Not so much the younger kids, but as the girls got to the point where they wanted employment. You couldn’t work at the Emporium or Golden Rule department stores if you were Black unless you were willing to work as the janitor or the matron or something of that nature. You were not permitted to be a clerk. Now I knew one girl who was Black and Mexican, Peggy Aparicio, who was working there. And there were two girls, one of whom goes to my church right now, who eventually got jobs as clerks, and we would avoid them because we didn’t want to blow their cover. You know, they had got the job. We understood what the situation was. That’s how it was in those days.

That’s the part of being Black which is the chameleon aspect. If most of my friends who are successful, what they need to know is you have three or four different languages you speak. You speak school. You speak Mama-Daddy. You speak maybe church. You speak friends. They’re all different languages. And so when you’re in school, you speak that language. When you’re with your friends, you speak another. And this is something that most of the Black kids I know are skilled at.

Next: < Part VI - The Soul of Rondo >

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