Prologue

The flimsy hotel room door threatened to spring from its hinges at every jarring shake of the nob.

 Sandee’s fingers clenched the phone as she called the front desk, her breath drawing an inch deeper, a slow-motion heartbeat longer, with each unanswered ring.

 The two awkwardly silent men that had followed Sandee off the elevator and past her room when she arrived earlier in the evening took on a more ominous specter when she was awoken by a frightening call after midnight.

 “Hey baby, how are you doing?” A leering voice challenged.

 “Excuse me?”

 “Looking for some company?”

 Click.

 In keeping with United Airlines policy which required female stewardesses to stay in lodgings separate from the male pilots, Sandee was the only crewmember spending the night at the Sir Walter Raleigh Hotel, in Raleigh North Carolina on the layover flight.  Immediately upon hanging up on the harassing caller, Sandee called the desk and requested that the hotel security guard escort her to a new room.

 Sandee packed up her belongings and sat on the bed.  And waited.

 It was March 1966.  Only a few days after the one-year anniversary of the bloody confrontation between civil rights protestors and club wielding Alabama State Troopers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama.  Barely six months since deadly riots had raged through the Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts.  Sandee had been in her new job as a stewardess for United Airlines for only a few short months.

 Sandee waited and remembered.  Remembered how she had been the only woman of Color at the day long airline stewardess job fair – not the last candidate to arrive, but the last to be interviewed.  How she had been asked during one of her interviews, “If a White man were to come up to you and spit in your eye, what would you do?”  How she had been told during her training that she would not be able to work flights to the South because the airline feared alienating their conservative White male clientele. Remembered the story of the African American stewardesses being chastised for almost starting a race riot by checking into a “Whites” only Southern hotel.

Sandee waited as the hotel security guard leisurely finished his late-night snack in the lobby.  Waited as unknown and potentially dangerous strangers attempted to force their way into her room.

Sandee’s determination would see her safely through this traumatic evening.  Once hotel staff arrived to accompany her to the lobby, she took the initiative to use the courtesy phone of another airline to reach a United manager that would help her secure safe accommodations for the evening.

Sandra Virginia Eggleston led an ordinary life during extraordinary times.  “Sandee” embraced the cultural and economic upheaval of the 1960’s and 70’s.  Regardless of the challenge, she found her way forward, often guiding those close to her along the way.  Daughter. Sister.  Friend.  Godmother. Colleague.  A platoon sergeant on the front lines of both the civil rights and women’s liberation movements.

Sandee’s perspective of these experiences is captured here with the help of memories of those closest to her, from her home, workplace, and sometimes even the national and international stage.  Each story is explored within the broader historical context, often with a reality check of its current implications for our nation and its people.  Sometimes with a connection to my own life that in some small way paralleled Sandee’s journey.

My role, as partner and scribe in chronicling this inspiring journey, was more chance than fate.  As a neighbor of many years in our quiet suburban Northern Virginia community, I heard many a “Sandee story” while we gathered around the summer fire-pit.  One evening, after listening to yet another humbly shared yet name dropping, life changing, country defining tale, I insisted, “someone needs to write this down.”

And so began the interviews.  Each of Sandee’s stories challenged me to research people and events that her experiences touched upon and, to varying degrees, even shaped.  I remembered, or learned for the first time, much of what I had forgotten or never bothered to truly understand.  Things we take for granted – or, considering the current political environment – took for granted for too long.  Civil rights.  Women’s rights.  Equal opportunity in education, employment and housing.

 I am grateful for the awareness and commitment to social activism which Sandee’s story has awakened in me.  I hope that it will help you find the same.