For my mother, an Afro-Cuban immigrant, ensuring her children received a quality education meant enrolling us in Project Concern, one of the nation’s earliest voluntary desegregation programs, which preceded Sheff vs. O’Neill.
Through this initiative, my brothers and I were bused to schools in predominantly white suburban towns like West Hartford, Glastonbury, and Farmington, Connecticut.
While I received a solid education, I can’t forget my fourth-grade teacher threatening that if I didn’t stop talking, she’d send me “back to Hartford.” I imagine my teacher and others at the time were still acclimating, given that it had only been 10 years since Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1965.
Why did my teacher think “going back” was a punishment? As an adult, I now understand the layers of coded meaning that came with such comments. In that teacher’s mind, Hartford represented something undesirable—a place associated with the struggles of urban life and, in her eyes, a contrast to the “privilege” of suburban schooling.
That sense of being “privileged” was reinforced in subtle and overt ways. Our teachers made it clear that we were lucky to be in those classrooms, to sit beside students who didn’t look like us. It was as if they were telling us, “You’ve been given something better than what your neighborhood offers.” Yet, the children from my community, those who remained in Hartford, were my friends. I couldn’t help but feel the divide between where I was educated and where I came from.
On observance holidays like Rosh Hashanah, when we had school off, my friends in Hartford were still in class. And on Three Kings Day, while they slept in, I was trekking through mounds of snow to catch the city bus back to West Hartford.
I never felt quite welcomed, and I internalized it for so long. I was made to feel that I didn’t measure up to my white peers. Feelings of inadequacy took a major toll on me. At times, I felt like a seat filler, even up until my freshman year of high school, when I eventually transferred to a college preparatory boarding school in Washington, Connecticut, that things began to shift for me.
Years later, I often wonder how different my experience might have been if I had attended Hartford schools. Life took my neighborhood friends in different directions. Some became successful entrepreneurs, military, social workers, and civil servants or found meaningful careers in fine arts, education and nonprofits. Others weren’t as fortunate, succumbing to the pressure of violence, death resulting from complications from hypertension and diabetes, drug addiction, and the criminal justice system.
While success is often attributed to education, it is intricately tied to a multitude of factors—family, community, opportunity and the systemic forces that govern them. I was fortunate to have my mother’s foresight and determination guiding my path, but that alone doesn’t determine the outcome for everyone.
Though education is a significant piece of the puzzle, our environment, upbringing, and the opportunities we are afforded profoundly shape the paths we embark on.
Olivia Almagro now lives in Miami, Florida
