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1. Chicago The Beginning In 1923, when Regina, as a librarian, decided to remain in New York City, it seemed like the most obvious thing to do would be to seek employment at the largest library system in the city—the New York Public Library. Although Regina lived with family in Chicago and had a good job at the Chicago Public Library, she decided she wanted something different, or perhaps she was escaping from a tragedy back home. Regina was also finding “it difficult to fit into the comfortable and complacent middle-class society that was expected of Negro young ladies.”1 Three or four days after she completed the application at the main branch, she received a request to return for an interview. One could imagine that Regina was probably very nervous as she entered the 42nd Street Branch library on Fifth Avenue, an imposing beaux arts building designed by architects John Merven Carrere and Thomas Hastings. The edifice had existed only for a little over a decade, opening May 24, 1911, when Regina arrived for her appointment. No doubt she was impeccably clad, as usual, and her waist-length hair was most likely pinned up since Regina “combed it very high on her head in a Spanish fashion.”2 In fact, she possessed long hair for her entire life. Although the current style was bobbed hair, Regina’s father paid her to keep it long. She entered the building by passing through the two gigantic lion statues, nicknamed either Leo Astor and Leo Lenox or Lady Astor and Lord Lenox at that time. They are now known as Patience and Fortitude, after being renamed by then mayor Fiorello La Guardia during the Depression to reflect the characteristics that he suggested New Yorkers needed during this difficult time. Regina had been described as “a beautiful, beautiful girl”3 and “a pert olive-skinned girl.”4 In fact, the next year, in December 1924, she graced the Chicago 15 cover of the Messenger: World’s Greatest Negro Monthly. At the beginning of that year, the magazine declared that it would “show in pictures as well as writing, Negro women who are unique, accomplished, beautiful, intelligent, industrious, talented and successful.”5 Regina fit that description. On the cover she posed in a three-quarter profile and looked very elegant with her hair loosely styled in a nonlibrarianlike bun with curly bangs covering her forehead. Instead of focusing on her previous library experience at Chicago’s Hyde Park High School, Wilberforce University, and the Chicago Public Library, the personnel administrator was most concerned about her race. He asked her, “What do you mean where you have here under race and religion you have American?” Regina replied, “Well, I always considered myself an American. I don’t know what else I could be.” He asked her, “What is your background?” Like untold numbers of U.S. citizens, Regina came from a multicultural background requiring a roadmap to follow. Her father, William Grant Anderson , a prominent criminal defense attorney in Chicago, sprang from the union of a Swedish immigrant and his American Indian wife. Regina’s maternal grandfather, Reverend Henry Simons, was the son of an Arkansas Confederate General and an immigrant Jewish woman. Henry’s wife, Regina’s maternal grandmother Lucinda Reynolds, was the offspring of a Madagascar mother and an East Indian father.6 Regina considered herself an American. She explained her complicated history to her interlocutor. He replied, “To us you’re not an American. You’re not white.”7 * * * The day in Chicago was “cool and generally fair.”8 In the Hyde Park section, rain patted the roof of 4609 Vincennes Avenue, a two-story house rented by a lawyer and his artist wife. William and Margaret Anderson lived with their three-year-old son, Maurice Barton; one-year-old daughter, Mildred Viola (assuming she was still alive); Margaret’s younger sister, Kathryn Simons, a stenographer; her older brother, Eugene Simons, a porter for the railroad; and a servant, Mary Watson. Under the category of “race,” the entire household was designated as black. The majority of the neighbors were white immigrants from England and Germany, although the Andersons were not the only black residents. The neighborhood had two physicians, a shoe store clerk, a musician, clerks, a stenographer, a clothing salesman, a mercantile office worker, and servants. From the time of her birth into the Anderson household on Tuesday, May 21, 1901, Regina Mathilde Anderson would come to view herself...

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