Part Four: Harassment (1974-1986)
Chapter 14: No Law
For 19-year-old Mechelle Vinson, coming from her family home among the battered bungalows of a one-block street of northeast Washington, in a neighborhood wedged between railway yards, it was all uphill, two miles uphill along Rhode Island Avenue to the bank where she found her first professional opportunity. Capital City Federal Savings & Loan, sat at the crest of the broad street. Looking left from the front door of the bank, a teller could see the red-brick walls and white-doric columns of the National Bank of Washington and, looking right, the blocky red brick of a union headquarters. Straight across from the bank stood the imposing Romanesque columns and arches of St. Frances de Sales School and, to its right, the church of St. Frances de Sales, home to the oldest Catholic congregation in the District of Columbia.
To Mechelle Vinson, Capital City Federal was more than a bank. It was her family bank and her neighborhood bank, "a very small, black bank," she would later call it, in what felt to her like a very small, black neighborhood — one of those close-knit and steady urban communities of Washington where everyone knew everyone else. Vinson had wanted a job at this bank, and she had gone after it, she let people know, because she was young and willing to learn and because she felt a struggle to "be something." . . .
In the years that mechelle Vinson was feeling "bothered" by her boss, American law was beginning to hear stories remarkably like hers. Other women were starting to tell their stories in court, even though there was no law to address their dilemmas.
[ * * * ]
[This is the opening of Part Four of Fred Strebeigh, Equal: Women Reshape American Law (W. W. Norton, 2009), listed in the Norton catalog and also at Amazon.com.]
For 19-year-old Mechelle Vinson, coming from her family home among the battered bungalows of a one-block street of northeast Washington, in a neighborhood wedged between railway yards, it was all uphill, two miles uphill along Rhode Island Avenue to the bank where she found her first professional opportunity. Capital City Federal Savings & Loan, sat at the crest of the broad street. Looking left from the front door of the bank, a teller could see the red-brick walls and white-doric columns of the National Bank of Washington and, looking right, the blocky red brick of a union headquarters. Straight across from the bank stood the imposing Romanesque columns and arches of St. Frances de Sales School and, to its right, the church of St. Frances de Sales, home to the oldest Catholic congregation in the District of Columbia.
To Mechelle Vinson, Capital City Federal was more than a bank. It was her family bank and her neighborhood bank, "a very small, black bank," she would later call it, in what felt to her like a very small, black neighborhood — one of those close-knit and steady urban communities of Washington where everyone knew everyone else. Vinson had wanted a job at this bank, and she had gone after it, she let people know, because she was young and willing to learn and because she felt a struggle to "be something." . . .
In the years that mechelle Vinson was feeling "bothered" by her boss, American law was beginning to hear stories remarkably like hers. Other women were starting to tell their stories in court, even though there was no law to address their dilemmas.
[ * * * ]
[This is the opening of Part Four of Fred Strebeigh, Equal: Women Reshape American Law (W. W. Norton, 2009), listed in the Norton catalog and also at Amazon.com.]
A note on this website for Equal: Women Reshape American Law
As of May 2012, Microsoft has ended its long-running website service called Microsoft Office Live, on which I built this site, www.EqualWomen.com. I am now rebuilding the site on a new website service, but for a while this site may remain in progress.
Many apologies, Fred Strebeigh