Facing gender, culture issues requires creativity, Women’s History Month speaker tells USU crowd
Adopting assertive, aggressive, responsive and creative behavior was the topic of a lecture Wednesday night as part of Women’s History Month.
Jean Tracy, director of conventions at the Salt Lake Convention and Visitor’s Bureau, told her story of moving forward and not looking back in the Utah State University International Student Lounge Wednesday at 6:30 p.m.
Tracy said in 1965, when she was 12 and marching with Martin Luther King Jr. from Selma, Ala., to Montgomery, her mother told her, “If you don’t stand up for yourself, no one will.”
She participated in the first 14 miles of the march, skipped school and was brought home by her mother and given a lesson she said she never forgot.
She said her mother told her, “Whatever you do, stay in school and get a good damn education.”
“I learned education came first,” Tracy said.
After being part of the last segregated class of her high school and growing up poor in an all-black world, she said she decided she had to do better than what she grew up in.
She graduated high school and got married at 18. For 10 years she stayed in an abusive marriage.
In the hospital, after her husband threw her through a sliding glass door because he suspected she’d stolen $100 from him, she realized she needed to leave.
“I survived, and I probably survived for a reason. And that reason is to tell you this story,” Tracy said. “I left that day, and I never looked back.”
From there she went to the Family Support Center, which she said helped her help herself. Being paid $1,300 child support over 10 years, she said her ex-husband owes her $96,143.20.
“It’s hard work; it struggles, but you can do it and I did it,” Tracy said.
She married again, and in 1988 her family was transferred to Utah from Belgium where her husband was stationed.
Tracy said that when she found out she was moving to Utah, she said, “I got three black kids and two white kids – I am not going to Utah.”
She got a job as the director of sales for the chamber of commerce in Salt Lake City, which changed her mind, she said.
“It changed my life and my attitude about Utah,” Tracy said.
She decided to remember who she was and be proud of it.
“You’re going to be the same color when you go in that hole as when you were born,” Tracy said. She said she gets her charge from people, and by being aggressive, assertive and creative to make positives out of negatives – she is happy.
“I’m not going to look back because tomorrow is going to be better,” Tracy said.