During the writing of my book, Drag Me Out Like a Lady: An Activist’s Journey, I posted the draft of each chapter on this blog as I finished it. I did this in part so that if it should happen to not get published, there would be at least the draft of it online. I also did it because it was both fun and enlightening to add links and images. Now that the book is available, I have removed the text from those entries but left the links and the images to assist any of my readers of the book who might wish to engage in further research. I also did that because images are fun and there is a limit to how many images can be included in a book, as well as a higher standard of quality that does not apply to a blog.
Before my world crashed, in Cleveland, when I was about three.
My parents as they were about the time I left home.My mother brings me home from the hospital in Cleveland. Sidebar on this photo is that my Uncle Buck, my father’s bachelor brother, carried this picture all through World War II and told people it was his wife and baby. Our contribution to the war effort, I guess.
My father’s crew at the phosphate mine. He is the tallest one.My brother and sister in Cleveland before I was born.My sister holds me without dropping me or torturing me.
My great-grandparents, Florida pioneers. My great-grandfather was a “circuit rider” hardshell Baptist preacher. My mixed-race great-grandmother was a “black Seminole,” the daughter of a former slave, raised among Seminoles.My grandaddy, the moonshiner.
Me, on a day trip to a state park shortly before we left Cleveland, looking like I might have looked just before I let my granddaddy have it.
My grandma, aunts, mother and cousins in Ft. Green before I was born. My mother is the shortest one. There are no pictures anywhere of her as a teenager, the period when she had her mental breakdown.Grandaddy with my sister before I was born.
My father and sister after her accident.
A rare shot of my parents looking sincerely happy, taken shortly after our arrival in Miami.A very good little girl, I excelled in Brownies and Girl Scouts and had badges up the wazoo, including one for caring for my neighbor’s chickens.West Little River Elementary School pretty much as it looked when I went there, except for the paint job. I remember it all gray. I was so skinny I could get between the rail and the posts on the second floor and hang on, trying to amuse my classmates, until Mrs. Maxwell beseeched me to stop it.
Our house in Miami. It was way too tiny for a family of five, but had a large back yard. A corner of the Mesas’ house is visible, showing how close together the houses were, this photo taken from the next yard over before a large hedge was planted.A random house in Miami Shores, of the type I saw every morning from the school bus windows, illustrating the class line I crossed with great trepidation every day for a whole school term.The First Baptist Church of Groveland, Florida, where I spent and enormous amount of time during my high school years.
My Dad in our boat on our lake, about to take me for a water ski spin on a Sunday afternoon.The view from the Citrus Tower in Clermont, illustrating the general landscape around Groveland.
The dock at the house next door, from which could be launched a rowboat. The dog and I spent a lot of time in the rowboat.In my new large bedroom as a sophomore at GHS. Outside the window is the highway to Tavares. In the bedside table, unlike those of my girlfriends, are stacks of books, and on it is a strong light to read them with. Never would have made it, sane, without the books.
Groveland High School as it looked when I was a student there. This building was in the process of being razed years later when I made a nostalgic visit and I reached through the fence and grabbed a chunk of it as a sort of victory gesture. Someday I may stomp on it and crush it, but not just yet.
Cast of the senior play from my high school annual, complete with signatures. The cheerleaders in the play had to hotfoot it from their photo shoot to the play photo shoot and had no time to change from our summer cheerleading outfit.A jukebox similar to the one at Kimbrough’s. I know where the free play button is, but I can’t tell you because Sarah swore me to silence.What you chose songs on from the jukebox if you were upstairs on the roof patio. I don’t know what to call this, so I’m calling it a fixture.
Waterskiing on our lake. I was the best skier, if not the most popular, in the school. Here, it looks like I’m about to fall, but I’m actually just not quite balanced yet after kicking off a ski.
Roland W. Eves, whom I never did quite marry, as he looked in 1962.
GHS 1959-1960 cheerleading squad, note the 40s uniform. Unlike the Clermont squad, which had short skirts, we were required to keep them below the knee. Couldn’t bleach or dye our hair, get pregnant or use cuss words, either.Through a statistical fluke, I ended up being a cheerleader my senior year at GHS.
On my way to church in Lakeland, standing in front of my car, soon to be totaled between Lakeland and Winter Haven.
CHAPTER TWO, PREVIEW OF COMING ATTRACTIONS
Above, the Norman College Choir performs at the Stephen Foster Memorial on the Suwanee River, White Springs, Florida. My roommate, Sarah, is second row, second from the left and my other high school friend, Esther, is furthest right, back row. I am nearest the piano.
Vivien Leigh, as Scarlett O’Hara in the film, Gone With the Wind, ascends a graceful staircase with well-practiced aplomb, unlike the women of Norman College, who ascended and descended a shabby one with great trepidation.
Mama Altman, house mother of the girl’s dorm when I was a student at Norman.Mama Davis, music director and assistant dorm mother when I was a student at Norman.
A scene from Wauchula, Florida, where my siblings were born. It is the nearest town to Ft. Green, where my father was born, a town so small no images are available online for it.
The house council, theoretically adjudicating rule violations. Back left, my high school friend Esther, of whom I came to be quite proud. Bottom second from left, my good friend “Lizzy”, one of the few people I was sad to leave at year’s endGuy Atkinson, my hero at Norman.Miss Knowles, the literature teacher who defended me.A picture of myself posed for my high school yearbook, wearing the dress I wore the first and only day of my campussingMy Norman College yearbook picture, taken shortly before my expulsion.
CHAPTER THREE, BACK TO THE SWAMP
Florida State University campus.
This scene from the “Greek life” section of the FSU website, may or may not show sorority houses, but it looks very much like the scene from my fifth-floor dorm window.
Some 30 years after my semester in Tally, many of the people I had known were living in California. We gathered one day at Roy’s house on the Novato River for a reunion. While Roy cooked for us in the kitchen, Roger took a shot of some of us on Roy’s non-functional boat languishing in the tidal mud. Rochannah, Len, me and Bob, who had just dived into the picture the instant before the shutter snapped.
I am often contacted by persons wishing to interview me for oral histories of the 1960s because of my participation in the documentary film, “Berkeley in the Sixties.” 
Berkeley Backlog 