Memsy Price

As the eight of us enrolled in the public-speaking class introduced ourselves, I realized that we represented an almost perfect snapshot of this so-called New South. A couple of us grew up here, a couple in the Northeast. One person moved here during high school, with his dad’s job transfer. Someone was from India, another […]

At the International Civil Rights Center and Museum in Greensboro, there’s a two-sided Coke machine. On the “white” side, drinks cost a nickel; on the “colored” side, they cost a dime. The museum is rich with sounds, images and relics of the Jim Crow eramost notably the original Woolworth’s lunch counter where four courageous students […]

My maternal grandparents didn’t drive. After arriving in Durham nearly 50 years ago, fresh off the boat from Italy to work as caretakers at the Eden Rock Motel, they had the use of a car. But when they moved on to jobs at Duke Univeristy and a rented duplex on Watts Street, they could walk […]

There were hundreds of people, maybe thousands, on the grounds of the State Capitol. They were mostly moms, grandmothers and kids, with some dads and grandpas scattered into the lot. Many of the women had dark green buttons pinned to their shirts. Printed in thick white numbers, the buttons read “59¢.” My mother had driven […]

Mrs. Bethea did not tolerate foolishness, yet she liked to have fun. First grade was not only for learning to read but also for learning how to love schooltasks that might seem mutually exclusive. One day, a kid brought in a pair of rearview mirror “spy glasses” he won in a box of Honeycomb cereal. […]

It’s that time of year when the world teems with heartwarming stories of wishes granted, stockings hung and treats baked. It’s also the time when some of us hunker down and relish the retelling of the iconic holiday disaster story. My maternal grandfather Pietro was, out of necessity, the cook in our family. My Danish […]

There are two fig seasons in Sorrento, Italy. The purple figs arrive in the markets in late June but, according to our grocer, these are just the inferior prequel to the green figs, which appear in late July. Throughout our southern Italian summer, we witnessed the constant buzz of tiny Ape trucks stacked improbably high […]