This is the memory palace of Nate de Mayo. When they mention her, if they mention her,

in some small aside in some large history, are in a post highlighting unsung heroes

of the Civil Rights Movement. Bernice Robinson is the beautician who taught people to

read, and this is true, but as with most things not so simple. It was kept simple

by the leaders of the movement itself. Specifically it seems by Miles Horton,

a white activist who founded and led the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee.

On the notion that the best activists and organizers, the best people to change

communities came from the communities themselves. And so when he wrote his own

story, looking back on his vital, truly I don't come here to denigrate Miles

Horton of all people. When he wrote about his own role in the movement, Bernice's

story helped to bolster it, and to make the case for his vision of change.

Of local people, indigenous people, working people, teaching people just like them.

No one coming down from ivory towers, no one so laden with accreditation and

pedagogy that they lost their ability to lift anyone up. So Bernice Robinson's

story was kept simple, like they did with Rosa Parks. It was for so long the

seamstress, solely, tired and fed up, stumbling into history by refusing to stand.

Instead of an activist, trained and tested, and so I will use the time you have

granted me here, short though it is to simply tell you more about Bernice Robinson.

The ninth child of James, a bricklayer, and Martha seamstress, born in 1914 on the

first snow day in Charleston, South Carolina that anyone can remember. She went to

school until ninth grade, which was as long as Jim Crow allowed. So her parents

sent her up to Harlem where a sister had moved sometime before, and where

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