As told to Jeannette Batz Cooperman
Photograph by Mark Gilliland
"We were slated to be a middle-class family," says Kathryn Nelson. "My daddy was a college graduate and worked for Ford and my mother had taught school and we were Episcopalian—and then the family fell apart. My mother couldn't stand her in-laws' disapproval anymore, so she left. And I went from my velvet coat with the squirrel collar to my mama washing taxis at night." Nelson took the advice of her great-grandmother ("Make a way out of no way") and wound up at Columbia University. She was a missionary in Haiti, became a social worker, helped found education programs in St. Louis, worked with the Danforth Foundation. Today she is president of the St. Louis Public Library board and, at 80, still teaches.
Mama was 5'11" and wore high heels all the time. As I look back, I suspect she was feisty because she was afraid.
Being poor was like walking around on things that keep rolling out from under you.
My sister was fairer-skinned than me, not much but enough for people to think she was cute. They called me "old black cat."
I so wanted to be beautiful.
When I was 10 and my sister was 6, we went into business. We'd line pasteboard boxes with funny papers and put in a big mess of greens, okra, tomatoes and green onions and sell it to ladies who didn't like planning meals.
My great-grandmother thought I was wonderful. Everybody needs that somewhere along the way.
People think you're crazy if you speak up for yourself.
The whole business of prejudice: I have tried over the years to do something about it, because it's such a waste.
What goes on in your head is not necessarily what goes on in someone else's head—and communicating your good intentions often just makes you more of the enemy.
Respect people because of who you are, not because of who they are.
If you don't know what someone's thinking, how can you win an argument?
One gift I never received: I was never an elegant housekeeper.
I told my daughter when she married: You'll have to learn to forgive him for not being you.
Once you've made up your mind where the lines are, it's never worth it to change them. That makes you hard-headed sometimes—but I don't mind being hard-headed.
When you start out purely selfishly, it never works out—or, if it does, it's never as good as you thought it was going to be.
Be yourself, because that's all you can be. It's your limit. It's also the height you can climb to.
If it looks like an interesting card to play, I play it.
I go to meetings—but sometimes I have urge-to-run tendencies.
People think I'm easy because I'm pretty soft-spoken. They don't realize I have fire in my gut.
You either get up and make things happen or you sit and feel sorry for yourself. There's not much space in between.
Sometimes you have to make a fool of yourself. When you stop being careful, you do what needs to be done.
I didn't have any right to believe that anything good was going to happen to me.
I have been exposed to people and life and ideas beyond my wildest dreams.
