In 2006 Deval Laurdine Patrick became the first African-American to be elected governor in Massachusetts. And what do you know? He is a graduate of the independent school system. His way out of the Chicago projects where he was born and raised came at the age of 14 when he was awarded a scholarship from A Better Chance to attend Milton Academy in Massachusetts.
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Our youngest daughter, Katherine, graduated from high school a year ago. Sitting at her graduation, I couldn’t help but reflect on the difference between her journey to that milestone and my own. I grew up in poverty on the South Side of Chicago. I went to overcrowded, sometimes violent public schools. I shared a room and a set of bunk beds with my mother and sister, so we would rotate from the top bunk to the bottom bunk to the floor, every third night on the floor.
I can’t think of a time when I didn’t enjoy reading, but I don’t remember actually ever owning a book as a child. I got my break in 1970 when I came to Massachusetts on a scholarship to boarding school. For me, that was like landing on a different planet. Our daughter Katherine, by contrast, has always had her own room. By the time she got to high school, she had already traveled on four continents, and had shaken hands in the White House with the president of the United States.
One generation and the circumstances of my life and family were profoundly transformed. And though that story is still not told as often as we’d like, it’s told more often in this country than any other place on earth. That is the American story.
(Remarks by Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick as prepared for the 2008 Democratic National Convention)
photo: Milton Bulletin July 1974 – permission of Milton Academy
