The Girl from Coke

A faded color photograph is my sole relic from the days I spent in Meridian, Mississippi. Creases span the worn surface, and smudges stain the yellowing border, hinting at its age. Creases span the worn surface, and smudges stain the yellowing border, hinting at its age. The date printed on the top border, May ’67, confirms it.

In the photograph, my twenty-two-year-old self leans against a red Camaro, smiling. I’m wearing an outfit I made on my Singer sewing machine: a short-sleeved, white blouse and a straight, red skirt that hits just above the knee. A red ribbon ties my then-dark hair up and back, and white three-inch heels encase my feet, one foot slightly ahead of the other in a kind of fashion-model pose.

The cherry red of the Camaro almost matches that of my skirt. A sign atop the car shouts, “The Girl from Coca-Cola is Here! Hundreds of chances to win $10-$35!” Looking at that old photo of myself, I see a version of me, a version that can’t know all that experience has taught me these many years since. The 1960s in the Deep South held almost unimaginable turmoil—hate, fear, violence. Yet possibility somehow lay in the mix. The possibility that the country really could do better in fulfilling its founding promise of equal opportunity for all its citizens. But who was I then? And how did that person find her way to being the current me?

***

We moved to Meridian in spring of 1967, Ron and I. We were to be there several months for the second phase of his flight training at the Naval Air Station. Married for less than a year, we were caught up in the novelty of life together, of being part of the huge and meticulously orchestrated officialdom of the military, and of learning to navigate it all successfully. Much of Ron’s energy went into his training; he was entranced by jets, and his training schedule demanded his full attention. My efforts went toward trying to fit into the “club” of being an officer’s wife, of figuring out who I was in light of and apart from that.

Given the examples in my life, I’d lacked enthusiasm for the institution of marriage. Nevertheless, Ron and I had wed the summer before. He’d finished his engineering degree at Colorado School of Mines and was leaving for the first phase of Marine Corps officers’ training in Quantico, Virginia.

On a warm night in June, he’d come to tell me goodbye. Outside in the quiet darkness, the soft summer air enfolded us and the stars dazzled. We spoke of officers’ training and how he likely wouldn’t be back in Colorado for a long time, if ever. “You know how many times I’ve asked you to marry me,” he said. “It seems to me that it’s your turn, if there’s to be any asking.”

The risk of not seeing him again was high, and I couldn’t imagine life without him. So I did the only thing I could think of. I asked him to marry me. He said, “Yes.”

He’d signed up with the Marines as a way to pay for his last years of college. The prize his eye was on? Flying jets. Unlike me, he knew what he wanted to do, and he knew how to go about making it happen.

***

My childhood years had been spent in the Jim Crow South, where I was born. How did those times, steeped in bigotry as they were, affect me; how did they add to or detract from my ability to understand others, to empathize? And for myself and others more broadly, how is it that we don’t automatically recognize, or want to recognize, our common humanity? An old song from the musical South Pacific in 1958 suggests a significant part of the problem: “You’ve got to be taught . . . before you are six or seven or eight . . . to hate all the people your relatives hate.”

Some memories of that time and place have grown vague or have dissipated altogether. Others are forever etched in my mind—largely memories of family, friends, teachers, but also of a certain tone, a heaviness in the atmosphere imbued by an unseen threat.

A few years before my mom died, I asked her for one word she thought described each of her three children. For first-born Bruce, she said “mischievous.” Susan, my younger sister, was “determined.” And for me, “solemn.” I’d not thought myself that, but now some six decades later looking at photos from those years, it’s obvious. I was a solemn child. Why was that? Did I pick up on some vibe in the atmosphere? In the whisperings in school among children, in town and at home among adults, of violence done to “others,” to African-Americans, Black people? Whisperings, and also flat-out comments such as “So-and-so got tied to the railroad track because he looked right at that white woman. Probably tried to flirt with her, too.” Or, “That uppity nigra’s house got burned down. Served him right. Who does he think he is?”

It’s clear to me now that not all the whisperings were rumors or gossip, stories to titillate, or warn. Current statistics on terror lynchings—terror because torture and mutilation often preceded the actual lynching—of Black men and women confirm that Florida had the most lynchings per capita of any state through 1950. And for a while, Jackson County, where I lived, held the record among Florida counties.

Did I remember an of this while in Meridian? Perhaps in some vague sort of way. But my focus then was trying to figure out how to do my job—that elusive work of finding my way.

I’d had two years at the University of Colorado, beginning as a dance major then drifting to English literature. The first in my family to go to college, I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do, what I wanted to be. Perhaps that was partly a legacy of my unconventional parents, who at various times had been carnival and circus performers, my father turning to entrepreneurship, and later my mother to life on the road as a traveling saleswoman. It seemed to me that life was something you made up as you went along, or responded to as opportunities presented themselves. Planning hadn’t been a word in my parents’ vocabulary, and it wasn’t a concept with which I had great facility.

But still I wanted to do something that mattered, to have a purpose and contribute in some way to Ron’s and my household—and possibly beyond, whatever that meant to me at the time.

***

I first heard about the Girl from Coca-Cola advertising campaign on a trip to the commissary with several other wives. Eileen had already picked up the others when she stopped by for me. Melinda, sitting up front on the passenger side, said hello as Alice and Sally scooted to one side to make room for me in the back seat.

All four wore fashionable casual dresses, as did I. The main difference, I suspected, was that none of those four had probably ever made her own dress. But then, besides coming from wealthier backgrounds, they were all taller, with figures clothing stores catered to.

We were turning onto Front Street when I saw the old buckboard wagon. It was drawn by what seemed an equally old horse, moving slowly in the late morning traffic. If you disregarded the cars, you would’ve thought the scene was straight out of the 1930s.

“I see that old colored man in that wagon every week. I wonder why he drives it in town,” Eileen said.

“Maybe that’s his only way to get around,” Sally said. “Not many of the coloreds can afford cars.”

I studied the old man there on his buckboard, reins in his hand, calmly navigating the busy street. There was something positively regal about him, regal yet sad at the same time. Maybe the way he sat, straight and with the reins held loosely in his left hand as if they were just a token to show he and the horse were connected. Or his faded overalls that reminded me of the kind my Uncle Red wore. He seemed from another time.

The buckboard in the middle of all those cars made its own statement, but there was something about the man that said he wasn’t trying to make a statement. He was living life the way he always had, despite so many changes around him.

I was thinking about those changes when Alice asked, “Have y’all heard about The Girl from Coca-Cola campaign?”

You could tell from her tone she was hoping not. But she’d hardly finished the question before Sally broke in, “I interviewed for the job.”

Melinda immediately chimed in saying she’d interviewed, too, and felt encouraged. Alice also had had an interview about which she felt optimistic. “It seems to me that one of us ought to get it,” she said.

I admired the confidence in Alice’s voice and was curious both about the campaign and why these women were so keen on it. Didn’t they have enough going for them already?

Wedged in between Alice and the door, and hating to reveal that, as usual, I didn’t know what everyone else knew, I asked anyway. “What’s this campaign?”

Alice explained that it was a six-week advertising campaign, capitalizing on the popular television series name, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., which we all knew as the United Command for Law and Enforcement, and which battled dangerous forces threatening peace. The Girl from Coke, while not battling such forces, would go to houses giving out coupons if the household had Coca-Cola in it. And she would drive a brand new red Camaro for the campaign’s duration.

Her description had me thinking. Maybe I could at least check it out, although I didn’t think I would stand much of a chance given the competition in the car. If I did get the job, something told me that I’d be resigning from the club of which I never was really a part.

Yet my defiant side began to think this just might be an opportunity to show that being in the club wasn’t as important as some might think, that an independent spirit could also find fulfillment. Clearly in the mix were the voices of both my mom and my dad, who had died four months earlier, saying, “If you don’t even try, you certainly won’t get it.”

Once home, I called the Coca-Cola offices. The receptionist transferred my call to personnel while I clutched the receiver. “The application process closes today,” the man on the other end of the line said. “Can you come in this afternoon?”

***

My family’s small home town, Sneads, in the Florida panhandle, had two distinctly separate, equal in rhetoric only, school systems, as did every other town in the Jim Crow South: one for whites and one for Blacks, and the two never met. Since school is the most likely place for children to find friends and playmates, and since I attended Sneads Elementary School, not Lillie Blanks Elementary School, my friends and playmates were white.

The relatively new, red brick Sneads Elementary School sat slightly east of the small downtown area. Lillie Blanks School, house in an old Army barrack, was on the west side of town, in the Black section. The schools’ locations made it unlikely their respective students’ paths would cross.

The Methodist church we attended, whose parishioners were white only, was only a block or two from the school. Was there a church for the black population in Sneads? Not that I recall. I do remember references to one in Chattahoochee, five miles away.

Separation, segregation, separate and not close to equal, the town had, as did the South in general, separate bathrooms for Black and white, separate drinking fountains, separate churches, separate parts of town in which to live., separate pretty much everything.

***

Detailed memories of my interview at the Coca-Cola offices have dimmed. I can, however, easily conjure up images of a comfortable office and an avuncular Mr. Chambers, who oversaw the campaign. A middle-aged man, he was polite and friendly, and appeared genuinely interested in what I had to say. Aided by his seemingly casual questions, we chatted about my background, Ron and the Naval Air Station.

Toward the end of the interview, he asked, “Why are you interested in this job, Carol?

To be perfectly honest, Mr. Chambers,” I said, “I prefer to be working. I like meeting people, and I can work well by myself. And since this is a new kind of campaign, it seems the perfect opportunity to be part of something exciting and really special.”

Leaving his office, I thought I just might have a chance. I wonder now where my kernel of confidence came from. Childhood dance and piano performances, which had put me on stage alone? The jobs I’d held as hasher in the dorm, assistant in the anthropology department’s office, or tutoring to help pay college expenses? Whatever the source, I felt cautiously confident as I put the groceries away. And I was excited to tell Ron, who would be home in an hour or two, all that had happened—and all that might, knowing he would be wildly supportive.

Then the phone rang.

“Mrs. Layton?” a woman asked.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Will you hold while I connect you to Mr. Chambers?”

I held the receiver, and my breath. Was he calling to thank me for coming in, to tell me he had chosen someone else? Or for another reason? I didn’t have long to wonder.

“I’m glad to catch you at home, Carol,” he said. “Thank you for coming in to

interview on such short notice.”

“Thank you, Mr. Chambers,” I said. “I appreciated the opportunity to talk with you, especially since I called so late in the process.

“Well, I’m pleased to hear that,” his courtly drawl accelerating my heart’s pounding.

“He paused for a moment. “We’d like you to be the Girl from Coca-Cola. Would you be willing to start on Monday?”

***

In Sneads, most of the interactions I had with Black people were with those my parents hired for particular jobs. My mother employed women to help with us three children and work alongside her as she cleaned, cooked and did laundry. In succession, Fanny, Theola, Beulah, Rosa Lee, all Black.

My mother’s attitudes were an unpredictable mix of prejudice and kindness, and to her dying day, she would surprise me with which characteristic would dominate. Mom could, in consecutive sentences say, “I have to take this ham over to Rosa Lee. Her sister is coming to visit, and they might need some food.” And then, “Carol, go wash up. You look like a pickaninny!”

Once, decades later, my mother told of seeing the Klan ride past her home on the outskirts of Sneads, this late one night when she was a small child peering through a crack in the wall, at her mother’s side. The moonlit night revealed figures on horseback, white hoods and sheets draped over each rider, the ends of the sheets flapping with the horses’ movements. In the stillness, echoes of horses’ hooves created a steady drumbeat as the figures rode down the red clay road, to what purpose one can only guess. The sight haunted her for the rest of her life.

My father, a relatively open-minded man, especially for that part of the country, grew up in Pennsylvania and New York. Yet, he was influenced by the overwhelming prejudice that seemed to permeate not only the humid air, but the water one drank, the earth upon which one stood. On a personal level, he could become attached to people regardless of race. A young black man he hired to help him in his restaurant, do odd jobs, and take care of our expansive lawn, became more like a son to him in the way my dad treated him and looked out for him. I say young man, although Amos was really still a boy, barely sixteen. But as a sixteen-year-old, Amos had to do a man’s job, and my father thought he did it well.

As younger kids, we looked up to Amos, tagging along behind him sometimes when he was trying to work. He tolerated us, but he was also careful. “Now y’all stand back, ya hear?” he might say to five-year-old Susan and ten-year-old me. “I don’t want y’all gettin’ near this lawn mower.”

My brother, Bruce, almost two years my senior and several years Amos’s junior, felt a particular bond. When Amos died in a swimming accident, our whole family was devastated. Bruce asked to attend the funeral. Our mother, who made most parental decisions because our father was usually consumed by his work, said, “No, Bruce. You cannot go.”

“But why not?” Bruce asked. “Why can’t I attend my brother’s funeral?”

Now I wonder, was it because she didn’t want Bruce to be at a Black funeral? Or was she worried about the risks to Amos’s family, risks that came with the ambiguous

crossing of the white-black line?

***

The first week of the campaign, I made the first of many grocery-store visits. As was to be the case with all the stores, the inside provided a blissful contrast to the heat and humidity outside. This air-conditioned Piggly Wiggly also held a surprise, one I met face-to-face only seconds after entering the store. A life-sized cut-out of the Girl from Coca-Cola stood in the center of a Coke display, greeting customers as they came inside.

Cartons upon cartons of the beverage formed a semi-circle around a cardboard me. Dressed in the same white top and red skirt I was wearing, she stood sporting a friendly smile. Although I’d had photos taken for newspaper ads, no one had told me they’d be used for this promotional device. When I recovered from my initial shock, I smiled back at her. I also smiled inwardly, wondering if this cut-out, or maybe the newspaper ads, had caused Alice, Melinda and Sally to be so cool, hardly talking to me, at the cocktail party the other night. Eileen, true to form, had been her usual warm self.

It was mid-afternoon and commerce in the grocery store was only at half-throttle, but the manager saw me and came right over. Customers started to pick up on the slight buzz and made a beeline for me, too. I had been in the store only five minutes, and I was surrounded by people wanting an autograph or their picture taken with me, or both. The advertising campaign was garnering a great deal of attention in Meridian and in surrounding small towns and countryside. Flattered and knowing that was my job, I signed whatever was thrust before me, newspaper clipping, autograph book, or just some slip of paper. I smiled and chatted with customers, but the high energy soon penetrated my brain, and I longed for a few quiet minutes, even in the heat.

When at last the crowd dissipated, I left what I’d earlier thought of as a refrigerated haven. For about five seconds the heat felt good, the air-conditioning having exceeded its expectations.

It was funny about all the attention. On the one hand, I enjoyed people wanting to shake my hand or get an autograph. Most people like a little attention. On the other, too much and I tended to freeze or feel completely drained. It didn’t feel real, and I wasn’t sure I could produce what people expected. But the job was to advertise, which is why the company had me driving that shiny red Camaro.

A big part of the job, just as Alice had said, along with occasional appearances in grocery stores, was making random home visits to see who had the requisite stock of Coca-Cola on hand, or had the words written on a slip of paper in order to ensure the campaign did not entail a lottery. Having to buy something, even a carton of Coke, to win money would be illegal.

Mr. Chambers had given me a list of general areas, and I was to choose the particular houses. Depending on what folks had, I could give them a certificate for ten to thirty-five dollars on the spot. Everyone was excited about that.

What I couldn’t quite fathom was why well-off people were as excited as the poor, who could put a few extra dollars to better use. Yes, ten dollars then would buy nine gallons of milk, almost thirty gallons of gas, or pay for numerous twenty-cent bus fares to and from work. With Mississippi ranked as one of the poorest states in the nation, there were plenty of people for whom those dollars would make a difference. In the early 1960s, eighty-six percent of nonwhites lived below the poverty level, along with a smaller, but still sizeable percentage of whites.

Thirty-five dollars would not be life-changing for those families in the fancy brick houses or elegant old storied homes like those along Poplar Springs Drive. Yet for someone who had to save her pennies to fill her gas tank or take the bus to get around, it would mean a lot. I supposed rich families’ enthusiasm was good for Coke, but I wondered.

***

With the Meridian Coca-Cola plant serving many small towns and wide swaths of countryside, the promotion covered a hundred-mile radius of Meridian itself. It hadn’t occurred to me that someone else would go along on these forays, but the company had different plans.

One morning several days into the campaign, I walked into the plant lobby to find Mr. Chambers talking to a pleasant-looking man in his mid-thirties. In contrast to Mr. Chambers’s coat and tie, the man wore the casual trousers and starched shirt that people on the distribution routes wore.

“Carol,” Mr. Chambers said, “I’d like you to meet Rusty. He’ll be going with you when you travel outside Meridian.”

I smiled and said hello to Rusty, then turned to Mr. Chambers. “That’s very kind, but why do I need someone with me?”

“There’s been a little trouble out in the smaller towns, and the Company thought it best not to send you out alone,” he said. His tone, though unfailingly polite, suggested I not argue, and I didn’t.

I had some idea of “the trouble,” the core of which was the Civil Rights Movement’s efforts to get Black citizens registered to vote, and the reaction of white Southerners to that effort. But that summer in 1967, I didn’t know the extent of the repercussions; I didn’t know of the many African-Americans who were threatened, beaten, lost their jobs, whose homes and churches were burned, whose lives were taken in brutal ways. When the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965, some of the legal barriers to registration fell away, but the attitudes remained, as did far too many acts of brutality. Fewer than seven percent of Mississippi’s eligible black citizens were registered to vote. That was more than sixteen percent below the national average. But in just five years of registration drive, the number in Mississippi surpassed the national average by five and a half percent, with sixty-six and a half percent registered. Almost fifty years later, this fact would be recorded on Marker six of Meridian’s Civil Rights Trail.

***

In the summer of 1953, my mother packed us three kids in the car and headed for the wide-open West. She’d fallen in love with the Colorado mountains in 1942, when as a nineteen-year-old, she’d hitch-hiked across the country. Every year after our 1953 trip, we drove to Colorado for the summer. Then my mother bought a lovely little Victorian in the hamlet of Empire, Colorado. We moved there in 1957, when I was in seventh grade, while my dad stayed in Sneads for a while attending to his businesses.

Worried about the increasing corruption—fights, knifings, gambling, burglary—Mom had wanted to get away from Sneads. The town had grown steadily rougher after the end of World War II when so many soldiers, haunted by their war experience, returned home with little cash in their pockets to face scarce job opportunities. Over the years, too much idle time and too few opportunities and resources resulted in more crime.

In the West, I didn’t see signs like “Whites” and “Coloreds” on water fountains or restrooms, and the absence of such signs told me segregation wasn’t universal. Not that Colorado was perfect, but its big blue sky and sense of space invited questions and bigger possibilities.

***

Rusty and I decided to take back roads on our way to the little town of Nellieburg. Dogwood, cypress, magnolia, and live oak draped with Spanish moss bordered the road, sometimes forming a canopy overhead. Dappled light, created by the graceful trees, played before us, shape-shifting with the occasional breeze.

A break in the trees on one long, straight stretch opened onto a huge field with rows and rows of beans, okra and corn. Eight or so men and women were out working with hoes and shovels. When they saw the red Camaro, they dropped their tools as if they were one and started running. A couple of them pointed at the car, shouting and waving.

We pulled up in the yard at the first house, a small weather-beaten construction that leaned a bit to the left. As I got out, I saw one of the women from the field running to the back door. In seconds, the front door opened, and she stood there panting and laughing.

I smiled, then laughed with her, as I negotiated the wobbly stairs to the porch, stopping to consider the huge hole before me. The boards had rotted away leaving the porch all but impassable.

“Jus’ edge yourself around this way, and you’ll be alright,” she told me.

I edged myself around as she watched, her hands on her hips and a beautiful smile that never left her face. “Lordy, lordy. I never ‘spected the Girl from Coke to come all the way out here!” she says, shaking her head back and forth. “I jus’ cain’t believe it!”

“But I’ll bet you have just what you need to win some of this money!” I heard myself saying.

She did, but only a carton, which would have earned her ten dollars.

“If you write ‘Two cartons of Coca-Cola’ on a paper and give it to me, you’ll win thirty dollars,” I said.

“But, ma’am, I don’t knows how to write.”

“If you give me a pencil and some paper, I’ll show you,” I said.

***

We moved from Empire to Golden during my high-school years. There I joined a church youth group that undertook service projects. One project involved helping clean a migrant camp, my first encounter with the existence of migrants, primarily from Mexico. Although I didn’t form friendships or even talk much with the migrants themselves, who were either out working in the fields or had gone on to the next job, the experience introduced me to another world.

Yes, our church group efforts were just projects, some would call do-gooder, outsider undertakings, but they were another step toward awakening something in me. As did the wider circle of friends at school, where my best friend hailed from Venezuela, a seemingly innocuous situation that nevertheless brough conflict.

Maria invited me to the monthly dance held by families of young men from South America studying at the Colorado School of Mines. I couldn’t believe my good fortune when I walked into the large room engages for these dances. Along an entire wall stood a table filled with cookies and a glass punch bowl surrounded by elegant little cups. Several of the mothers, wearing lovely, modest dresses, attended the table, while several others talked with guests.

The young men were all dressed in coats and ties, and the other girls and young women wore frilly party dresses. Moderating the formality, Latin music filled the room, enlivening the very molecules of the air. This was pure heaven for a fifteen-year-old who loved nothing more than dancing. And these young men knew all my favorite dances, plus some. Samba, rhumba, cha-cha-cha, merengue, even the tango, and I danced every one of them, mostly with Rudy, a Bolivian who quickly became my favorite dance partner.

After the dance, when I described the party to my mother, her face became serious.

“Carol,” she said, “I don’t want you going to any more of those dances.”

“But Mom, they’re Maria’s friends, and her brother’s friends from the School of Mines,” I protested. “And many of the mothers are there because of the South American custom of chaperons.”

“But you should be dancing with those people.”

“What do you mean, ‘those people’?” I demanded. But the subject was closed; only the question remained.

***

The day we went through Marion, Rusty and I had been taking turns driving, and my turn had come up for the next stretch. Segregated, as all the towns were, this town’s Black population lived near the old downtown. Our route took us down the main street where we saw groups of men standing around the edges of the street and on sidewalks. As we drove by, it felt as if they all turned to stare at the two of us in the bright red Camaro with its Girl from Coke sign sitting on top. The stares didn’t feel friendly.

I knew, along with everybody else, that a big trial had been set for October in Meridian. Three years earlier the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan had brutally beaten and killed three civil rights workers in neighboring Nashoba County. When the FBI arrested eighteen men a few months after the murders, state prosecutors refused to try the case, claiming there wasn’t enough evidence. But then the federal government stepped in, and a trial for seven of the men was set for October—in Meridian.

The men in the street didn’t make way for our car, and I slowed the Camaro to a crawl. His voice firm and low, Rusty said, “Put your window up, lock your door, and drive just a little faster.”

The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and the stares from the men sent chills down my spine. I did as Rusty instructed and navigated the car as carefully as I could past the onlookers.

Past town, we both breathed deeply. “What was that about?” I asked.

“That back there is a good example of why the company sent me along,” Rusty told me. “That’s the trouble they’re worried about.”

“What do you mean?” I wanted Rusty to spell it out.

“Since Mississippi has the biggest colored population of any of the states, and the lowest number registered to vote, it might be more of a target than some of the other southern states. I don’t know much, but I do know a bunch of Northerners have been in the area for a while now trying to register people to vote. The white folks haven’t taken too kindly to that, and the colored folks are pushing back.”

Tension permeated the very air, and I was glad Rusty was willing to be candid. Most Southerners preferred not to talk about racial matters to a “Northerner,” as they would say, although I was from the West. But there, if you weren’t from the South, you were from the North. There was no East or West.

Of course I knew about the effort to get Black citizens registered, and I knew about the protests. While I hadn’t paid close attention, being caught up in my particular bubble, I knew about these developments in an abstract way.

Only the month before, in the Loving v. Virginia case, the Supreme Court voted unanimously to clear the legal path for Blacks and whites to marry. That incensed white Southerners, although the reaction wasn’t confined to the South.

Rusty mentioned the Loving case, too, and talked about how Southerners didn’t like outsiders telling them what to do. That only exasperated me further because those same Southerners had quite the track record of telling others what they could and couldn’t do, and with terrible consequences.

He referred to the Reverend King and how his non-violent approach was nonetheless resulting in violence. I didn’t mention that the violent part was mainly from whites.

We were both quiet for a moment, then Rusty said, “Look, I know it’s not right the way coloreds are treated. But it’s been that way for a long time, and a whole lot of people don’t think it needs to change.”

***

Mr. Chambers asked me to stop by one morning about five weeks into the campaign. With only a week left, I was beginning to lament its ending. I’d been out two or three days a week to many of the small towns outside Meridian. The other days I worked in Meridian itself, handing out ten to fifteen certificates a day, and making one or more grocery store visits.

Mr. Chambers hadn’t said why he wanted to talk to me, which made me both curious and a little nervous. He was sitting behind his desk when I entered his office, but he stood to greet me and offer me a chair.

“The campaign seems to be going well, Carol. Even after that interview on the radio.”

I felt the red crawling up my neck, the hot embarrassment of the radio interview still fresh, even though it had happened more than a week earlier. “I’m so sorry about that, Mr. Chambers. I didn’t know I would get stage fright. It just grabbed me right when we went on the air.”

Mr. Chambers’ chuckle helped me settle down a little. I got the feeling he wouldn’t have liked being interviewed on the radio either.

“We’ve had a very strong response overall to this campaign,” he said, “and with the end coming up soon, we’re thinking about extending it. That is, if you’re willing to give it another four weeks.”

“Yes sir, I’d like that. My husband’s training doesn’t end for six weeks, so that would be wonderful.”

“Good. I’m glad to hear it,” he said. “You’ll be choosing the areas to work, but there is one thing I want you to do a little differently.”

“Yes sir?”

“We’ve gotten some complaints that you’re not going to enough of the white homes, especially here in Meridian. Some people think you’re giving a little too much attention to the poor folks and especially the coloreds. I’m sure we can make this work out better, don’t you?”

Mr. Chambers was the boss; still defiance bubbled in me, threatening to overcome good sense and the satisfaction I’d felt about the extra work weeks ahead of me. Before it spilled over, I had to acknowledge that if I wanted to take this campaign to its end, I’d have to do as he said.

***

“Come on in, you poor thing, and have a glass of iced tea,” the woman said. She stood in the doorway, the rich mahogany door open wide behind her, beveled glass windows framing each side. “It must be awful to be out in that heat all day.”

“Thank you. That’s nice of you, but I’m just fine,” I replied.

Ignoring my reluctance, she motioned for me to follow her down a hallway to a large kitchen, cool and full of light. As I walked behind her, Mr. Chambers’ clear message that I accommodate certain people again rumbled in my mind. I’d been heeding it for weeks. Everyone had been friendly enough, but not this friendly. I felt my defenses start to rise.

Through the large windows, I saw a lush, spacious lawn, azaleas bursting in brilliant color, defying the end of their season. Red hibiscus, creamy gardenias and light blue hydrangeas bordered the yard, and a white wrought iron table and chairs beckoned in the shade of a stately magnolia tree. In the kitchen, I pulled out a chair and sat at the large round table while the woman filled two glasses with ice and tea.

“Oh, my,” she laughed as she handed me a glass, “maybe I should be offering you some Coca-Cola.”

“No, ma’am,” I said. “This is just fine. I don’t usually take anything from the people I visit.”

“Well, I don’t doubt it, seeing as how you have to go to all those Nigra houses, too. That must be unpleasant.”

The tea suddenly tasted too sweet, the air felt too close. I couldn’t stay in that house with that woman much longer, so I asked, “Do you have Coca-Cola on hand? Or something written down?”

“Why, I have it all,” she said, smiling over her shoulder as she went toward what looked like a pantry.

She paused to scribble something on a notepad and brought the paper along with her Coke bounty to the table. “I don’t suppose you could award me double, could you?”

***

Looking back, I wonder if perhaps that bigoted, grasping woman did me a service. Her words and behavior caused a veil to drop, some greater understanding of the awfulness such attitudes incurred. This incident was to be another nudge toward the direction my life would take.

The next year, 1968, Ron went to Viet Nam. Halfway through his thirteen-month tour of duty, on April 4, 1969, his A-4 Skyhawk was shot down fourteen miles south of Da Nang. He didn’t survive to do all that he wanted, all that he’d talked about. It happened exactly one year after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King.

A few months before that fateful April day, I’d returned to Coloardo to complete my Bachelor’s degree in English literature. After Ron’s death, I felt more strongly than ever that I needed to do something that mattered, something that would make me worthy of being the one who lived. I acquired a teaching certificate and completed a Master’s degree in Social Foundation of Education, with an emphasis on philosophy, as well as a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction. My degrees included an emphasis on equity and social justice, which served as invaluable footing in my work over the next forty years.

***

One week of the campaign remained. One week in which I decided to follow my own instincts, my own heart, while still keeping my responsibilities in mind. It wasn’t exactly what Mr. Chambers had implied, but it wasn’t going to hurt the Coca-Cola Company. And if he decided to end the promotion a few days early, it would have been okay with me. Either way, I could no longer ignore what felt so important to me.

I spent several days working in the neighborhood around Newell Chapel CME Church, a church at the heart of one of the Black sections of town. Although I didn’t know the details then, I knew Newell Chapel was, as were other African-American churches, at the center of the Civil Right Movement. I later learned this church was an initial host to Meridian’s Head Start program—because the public school system refused to have the program. In 1968, the year after Ron and I lived in Meridian, the Ku Klux Klan destroyed the church parsonage with a gasoline bomb.

But in the early summer of 1967, several days found me in the neighborhood, knocking on numerous doors, some neatly painted, others of weathered wood. And always I would find a smile and kindness when a door opened. Sometimes, especially late in the day or on Saturday, children playing hopscotch or marbles would spot me and gather around, laughing, jumping up and down. Ambassadors of delight, they were.

I’d told Rusty not to plan on accompanying me out of town that week, and that turned out to be fine with him. He’d already had a tough time trying to catch up on his regular duties, especially given the extra weeks of the campaign. Instead of Rusty, I took plenty of slips of paper in case I needed to demonstrate how to write “one case of Coca-Cola.”

I couldn’t fight dangerous forces that threatened peace as did the Man from U.N.C.L.E., but I could be and was inspired by the courage so many people were displaying right there in Mississippi. It was negligible in the bigger picture, but it was at least an option I had. I could direct some of the campaign’s money to those for whom it would make a difference. My bright red Camaro and I glided along a red clay lane lined with dogwood and magnolia. Sunshine filtered through the leafy canopy, light and dark shape-shifting with the breeze.