If you ask Sheryl Lee Ralph about the educators who played a pivotal role in her life, she'll begin listing them without hesitation: her dad, her mom, her auntie Carolyn and so on. Then she'll get to her kindergarten teacher, Miss Spencer. Her eyes light up as she disappears into her memories of Driggs Elementary School and the pretty blond woman who made her feel seen in the civil rights era, when the struggle to desegregate schools across the country was underway. She remembers the smell of Miss Spencer's perfume. The full skirt silhouette she favored. The feel of her hand.
"I remember looking at this woman, and even though she was white, thinking: I want to be that," Ralph says.
"The way she stood in front of the class and encouraged us to hold hands. To have a teacher in an integrated classroom, and even though it's Connecticut, for her to be nice to you — because there are some teachers who weren't necessarily nice. They didn't like their job. They didn't like children. But I remember Miss Spencer very clearly. She could possibly still be alive. She would be younger than my parents. She meant everything to me. She held my hand."
