To Whom This May Concern

My sister and I often visited our Uncle and Aunt when we children. Our school was not too far from their home so we walked from school to meet our aunt at their house shortly after she arrived in the afternoon from her job. My sister would help our aunt in the kitchen. Our aunt was a very good cook who could prepare an international entrée of meals from Chinese, Mexican, Italian, to our traditional Southern menus which we commonly called “soul food”. We ate very heartedly at their home; that was one of reasons why I was a little plump in those days. It was 1964.

One day while we sat at the table eating, our uncle entered the house frustrated and angry. He spoke aloud to our aunt about what had happened to him at work; how he was mistreated. “I’ve been working hard at this job for nearly 20 years and still call me boy and still call me a N….!” She tried to console him, but he quickly walked away into his bedroom to change clothes.

I had also shared with him some of his sense of animosity and hopelessness he felt. Two weeks earlier he and I were traveling on the Golden State Freeway in Glendale when a white driver pulled along side of us and yelled out “get out of here, N…!” He side-swiped us, ran us off the freeway and onto the side embankment. Fortunately I saw and remembered his license plate number and wrote them down on a scrap of paper for my uncle. He later filed an accident report with the police.

After hearing my uncle’s anguish and witnessing his anger of being treated so at work, I pulled a piece of paper and a pencil from my school pack. I came up to my uncle in the den and told him I would write a letter for him to give to his boss. He smiled because he thought it was amusing that an eleven year old child would take the time to write about his grievances.

What exactly was written has mostly been lost or destroyed. But what I remember is as follows:

To Whom This May Concern

I am Mr. Monroe Perkins. I have worked for you for nearly 20 years. I have reported to work early and I have never been late. I have worked hard all these many years and I have done whatever you asked me to do. I am a man and not a boy. Could you kindly give me the respect by calling me “mister”.