The Everyday Feminist

4Stay in the Game Even When You Win

Spotlight: Tarana Burke and the MeToo Movement

Issue: Gender‐Based Violence

At the house of a family friend in Atlantic City, my mother enjoyed an outing with smart and successful people. She asked the host of the event about his path in life and the many books in his home. He in turn told her about the time he'd spent with Malcolm X. He praised her and how she was raising her three young children. “You are so smart,” he said. “You are a unicorn, and your husband is very lucky.”

On the way back home to Philadelphia that night, my father didn't feel lucky. He felt like his wife had been flirting to get compliments. She denied it and screamed his name as he pushed her from the moving vehicle on Highway 295, while her children silently cried in the back seat. Her kids were relieved later that night when she came through the door. But he beat her again and again, that night, and for many years to come.

My mother's family had arrived in Philly from the segregated South after her proud father, a decorated WWII vet, was chased from his only home in Georgia. He would walk the streets in his uniform, like many of his white compatriots did, after serving more than two years of combat in Europe and Asia. He should have been celebrated on his return home, but—unlike his white fellow servicemen—his actions were not looked on kindly. He abruptly had to move north, where he heard he could find a factory job to put food on the table and escape the threats ...