When You Don’t Look Like Anything

1950–73: “Don’t Stare”

There was ambivalence about performers in my family. Part of this was caused by middle-class-Negro hypervigilance about drawing attention, especially bad attention. I still get nervous when children are out of control in public. Growing up in 1960s Baltimore, my siblings and I did not dare be out of control in public. In our wildest dreams we could not have imagined a meltdown in, say, Hutzler’s department store, where colored people were not allowed to try on clothes, or to return items that didn’t work out.