Veronica Jones

They put us at the — no, this was elementary school, too.  Elementary school, too.  They put us in the lower classes.  So when I got up to the fifth grade at Venable, the English teacher said, “Veronica, why you in this class?”  I said, “I been in this class since kindergarten.”  She said, “But you shouldn’t be in this class.”  I didn’t know what she was talking about.  So next thing I know, I was taking some tests, so results came back, she put me in the A/B group.  And the kids that I went to elementary school, you know, they kind of like, one of them numbers.  And I informed them, don’t you ever look at me that way.  I says, because some of y’all parents is the reason why I was down in them other classes in elementary school.  And so Miss Lugo said, “Veronica Jones went into the military, now she’s a teacher, Franklin Carr is a heart doctor, cardiologist doctor.”  He’s deceased now.  So what she was saying is, you track these two individuals, and I guess she said, not degraded, but you hindered their learning abilities.  And see my only problem is, I had a speech problem.  And because of my speech problem, they put me in the learning program.  And finally my mother said, she came in, she said there’s nothing wrong with my daughter’s mind, she has a speech problem.  So I took speech classes from kindergarten to the eighth grade.  And even though I had that speech problem, I did not let that stop me from being successful in what I wanted to do, due to my Miss Lugo, Miss McDaniel, my grandmother, and them, saying — and my uncles saying, Veronica, or Ronnie, you can do whatever you want to do that you can put your mind to.