Senior Class: RIP, Melinda Mitchell

Melinda Mitchell (Photo courtesy Darlene Schweitzer.)

Just got word that Melinda Mitchell, a long-time member of the “Me, Myself & I” memoir-writing class I used to lead at the Chicago Cultural Center, has died. Some of you long time Safe & Sound blog followers might remember Melinda — I wrote about her back in 2014 in a post called Waking Up in a Strange Room.

Some sixty-plus years ago, the girl who was supposed to be Melinda’s roommate showed up with her mother to meet Melinda at their Kalamazoo College dorm. The girl’s mother took one look at Melinda, stormed off to school authorities and insisted her daughter “not room with a Negress.”

Melinda was moved to the dormitory’s unfinished attic but didn’t stay there for long. She eventually transferred schools, graduated from Howard University, and joined our class after retiring from a long career teaching high school Spanish in Chicago Public Schools.

Melinda had a style all her own, and we all learned so much from the engaging — and witty — stories she shared of growing up on Chicago’s South Side, her visits to Cuba as an adult, her experiences teaching in Chicago public schools, and the jazz music she loved so much.

To remember her today I am sharing the piece she read in class when I asked writers to write about rules they had to obey when they were kids. “You expect me to fit
them all into a 500-word essay?” she laughed. The next week She returned with a series of nostalgic and thought-provoking lists rather than an essay. . I’m sharing her lists with you here today in hopes they give you a glimpse of her creativity, her confidence…and her wit. This first list comes from early childhood:

• Don’t come into mama’s kitchen wearing bedclothes.
• Don’t eat with your fingers, or put your elbows on the table.
• Don’t walk around barefoot in the kitchen.
• Don’t talk with food in your mouth.
• Don’t interrupt when adults are talking.
• Don’t waste food.
• Don’t run in the house or run down the hall.
• Don’t holler out the front window to playmates on the porch below.
• Don’t play in the street and dodge cars.
• Don’t go into other kid’s homes without permission.

“Things were changing as I was growing up,” she said, continuing the list with rules from her teen years:

• Don’t watch TV after 8 pm.
• Don’t leave your room messy.
• Don’t stay in the bathroom primping all day.
• Don’t stay on the phone yakking and yakking with girlfriends.
• Don’t talk back, complain, or whine.
• Don’t make noise after bedtime bumping and thumping around the place.
• Don’t sleep late.
• Don’t let your friends turn the lights out when you have your parties in the living room.
• Don’t go out, or anywhere, if you’re not properly dressed.

Melinda had a knack for switching her writing from first-person to second-person without missing a beat,and this list of hers was no exception. After reading that last high school restriction, she addressed her readers directly with, “May I offer the quaint guidelines adhered to by the grown women in the family during the 1950s?” and read on: To go to the Loop on the #3 bus

• Don’t go barelegged, or without a little girdle.
• Don’t wear shorts or pants.
• Do have lunch with the girls at “The Circle,” the only welcoming department store restaurant.
• Do wear your Easter hat.
• Do wear your white gloves.
• Do wear stockings.
• Do carry a purse with a handle and a hankie.
• Do bring a coin purse and enough dollars to pay.
• Do wear a dress with a belt, sleeves and buttons up to the neck.
• Do remember your manners.
• Do enjoy yourself, young lady.

When Melinda was finished reading, a fellow writer piped up. “I think I know the answer to this, but what did you mean when you said ‘the only welcoming’ department store?”

Melinda shrugged and said, “We were African American.” Others in class chimed in, naming the exact store and restaurant: Charles A. Stevens, one of the many now-defunct department stores along State Street in Chicago. And just like that, Melinda had the entire class reminiscing, sharing stories of everything from white gloves to girdles, giving accounts of visits to Stevens, and laughing. Melinda’s stories were like that. She will be missed.

Rest in peace, dear Melinda. We were so fortunate to know you.