Dear Lee Daniels

In tribute to your movie, I post this excerpt from my memoir, Black Star Girl. 

From Chapter 34, 'The New Job'     ( Note: It was 1972.  Equal Employment laws had required companies to integrate.  Thus the civil rights movement, then an Urban League search brought a major corporation into my life and gave me a relatively lucrative career.)   Please read.

“-----years ago my father’s verbal challenge had me considering, “Would you rather be a big fish in a little pond or a little fish in a big pond?”  My unspoken answer was, “Neither, I want to be a big fish in a big pond.”  No matter I kept my thinking to myself,  Daddy had launched into a lecture that resulted in opening my mind to understand the comfort or discomfort resulting from the decisions one makes.  The challenge of greater opportunity appealed to me.  That is how I view a career in the profit sector, an opportunity for greater challenge with commensurate reward.

    Even though I was afraid, I knew each day I was able to hold my position in private industry meant another day for me to learn new things, develop new contacts and leave behind noteworthy contributions building my employer’s business,  all leading to a stronger resume to take someplace else when necessary.  If and when I had to hear,  “I’m sorry, we have to let you go,” I would be better equipped than when I came.  Such optimism enabled me to shrug away the cautious counsel of  friends and relatives who cared about me, the divorced mom with two children quitting the known for the unknown.

     An overriding truth of significant importance to me was Equal Employment Opportunity was the law of the land and companies were trying to comply.  In the decades before, courageous people sacrificed, some dying in the turmoil leading to enacting the law.  Did I not have the courage to accept the chance before me?  My obligation was to stay on the path others made possible and face my challenge in my time."

                                                                - Marva Woods Stith
                                      
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Mr Daniels,  Thank you for telling the butler’ s story; for artfully bringing to theaters the complex history many of us know so well and others do not.   I think it is an important story.