| Paulina Letitia is a stern, no-nonsense woman. When we first met to begin an interview for this article, she insisted that the meeting take place in her office, that it last no longer than half an hour, and that she would be eating her lunch during it, as she "didn't have time to be wasting on frivolity." Her lunch was as austere as her office - tuna on salad greens, a diet coke, a Hostess cake. She bid me to begin asking the questions at once, didn't care for any chit-chat. She wanted me to sit, get my job done, and get out.
I couldn't resist. I had to know where it came from. Her father served in the second world war. "Momma said he came back like that, that the war'd changed him," she said. "You learned quick, in my daddy's house, that there wasn't room for doubletalk. Wasn't time to be wasting on the things that don't matter."
She was 27 when Milliken v. Bradley was decided. "It was like that, in those days. Two steps forward, one step back." She marched to Montgomery with MLK in '65 at the age of 18. To hear, 9 years later, that Brown v. Board of Education was being partially overturned made her furious. Furious enough to attend college.
|
University of Michigan finally did accept her application and at the age of 28 she became a freshman, among scores of 18 year old whites. It would take her five years to earn her bachelor's degree - in literature, but her experiences there would further refine her anger at the Milliken decision and see her work her way into Detroit's public schools as an English teacher in 1984 where she worked until the All Success Student program began in 2004. She retired to focus on caring for her aging father, who's battle experiences were taking their toll, working part time as a substitute and tutor. After her father's passing in 2012, she turned to civic life, and decided to run for City Clerk. The rest, as the saying goes, is history.
|
