July 10, 1942 | Atlanta, Georgia
Elizabeth Anderson stepped off the trolley onto the Atlanta sidewalk and turned the corner to walk the block to work. She was a half-hour early, but she knew that Mr. Bennington would be in his office, and that the door to the YMCA administration building would be unlocked. She wanted to get there before any of the other employees arrived so that she could change shoes.
Photograph Packet #6: Ding-ding-ding Went the Trolley
My mother in Atlanta in about 1945.
The shoes she was wearing were comfortable enough, and they matched the outfit she was wearing. They were acceptable, but not distinctive. The red shoes she had bought at Rich’s Department Store yesterday would be snappier. They would change her ensemble from suitable to stunning. But her mother disapproved of red shoes. She thought that only promiscuous women wore them.
Elizabeth entered the building and went upstairs to the cubbyhole where her desk was. She opened the drawer where she had hidden the prized shoes and slipped them onto her feet, putting the black ones into the recesses of the deep bottom drawer. When it was time to leave, she would switch shoes again. She felt a twinge of guilt, but it seemed to her that this small deception was kinder than upsetting her mother, and it was certainly easier that confronting her head-on about the issue. Mary Anderson’s moral convictions were ironclad, and she felt duty-bound to inflict them on all she encountered.
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