Summary

Octavia Senior had been tall for her age and was placed in the third grade when she should have been with the other five-year-olds in kindergarten. She could not keep up with the much older children and so she was labeled slow and unintelligent by her teachers. Octavia Junior faced many of the same challenges her mother had when she began attending elementary school. She attended both Lincoln Elementary School and Garfield Elementary School in Pasadena, California. She was often taunted by the other children and faced unfair treatment by her teachers. She enjoyed daydreaming and her attention often wandered from her schoolwork, angering her teachers.

Octavia Estelle was born and raised in Pasadena, California in a mixed-race neighborhood slightly north of Hollywood. While legal segregation did exist in other parts of the country when she was born, Pasadena did not have...