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January 03, 2004

Old School Parade

10848638.jpgGail Elizabeth Wyatt comes from my old neighborhood.

With her fair complexion, silky hair and refined dress, she resembles the archetypal African American trophy wife of her generation. Indeed, her husband is an obstetrician-gynecologist, and they live in a grand home — tennis court, swimming pool — high above Beverly Hills. Yet even on his arm, and even when she "looked like a lady going to church" in a new, emerald silk dress, she has been mistaken for a prostitute.

Check out this interesting article in the LATimes. If you need an id & password use 'laexaminer' in both.

Funny, you don't often hear about such folks. Don't you just love this paragraph?

Fourth- generation college, a granddaughter of a Methodist minister, a daughter of conservative educators, Gail Smith came of age in L.A.'s newly integrated Leimert Park, with suitable friends, membership in Jack and Jill (an exclusive group for cultured, middle-class black families), a cruise to Norway, deportment classes and a second trip to Europe, all before she graduated at 16 from Dorsey High School.

Over at the NYTimes, theres a profile of the classic character-building coach who is more than a coach.lsu.184.jpg

Leonard Moore has a Ph.D. in history from Ohio State, is the director of African and African American studies at Louisiana State and has command of enough clear-eyed maxims to get the attention of most college students. But the credentials that most impress his target audience of African-American student-athletes are his high school transcript and ACT test score.

And it's not even Black History Month

Posted by mbowen at January 3, 2004 11:57 AM

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Comments

Mrs. Wyatt reminds me of a lady named Carmen Greenidge who I worked with about 15 years ago. Born and raised in Connecticut, private schools and cotillions, married to a high-ranking UN official, lived like a queen in Liberia and Zambia for 25 years. At the time I met her, she was living in Scarsdale, heavily involved in charities and working part-time because she felt like it. She was very aristocratic and ladylike, and good for shattering stereotypical assumptions (I was pretty young and stupid at that time).

Posted by: Jonathan Edelstein at January 4, 2004 10:00 AM