Growing up in the South,
she never felt she fit in,
being way too serious
and none too popular.
She came north to be educated,
and, leaning to the law,
clerked for a federal judge
and joined the Justice Department.
Reared among D.C. sophisticates,
her daughter returned to the South.
All that the mother had fled,
her daughter embraced—
football and frat parties,
good old boys and good-natured girls.
Prettier than her mother
and not so serious,
she countered blandness
with refinement
and reconciled her mother
with what she had rejected
and what had rejected her.
“No Known Restrictions: Lucille Burroughs, daughter of a cotton sharecropper. Hale County, Alabama by Walker Evans, 1935-36 (LOC)”by pingnews.com is licensed under CC PDM 1.0
