I was brought up on a farm in Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley, the second of four children and the only daughter. My mother never went to college and the expectation was that I would have a similar life. I was raised to become a wife and mother.

The word “l(fā)ady” was a big word in my childhood – “l(fā)ady” meant being gentle and submissive. I was restricted in ways my brothers weren’t. If I was invited to someone’s home to spend a weekend, my mother would insist that she, too, had an invitation so she could ensure I had appropriate supervision. I remember having one teenage confrontation with my mother because my older brother was out driving at night but I was never allowed to drive myself. She used to say to me: “It’s a man’s world, sweetie, and the sooner you figure it out, the happier you will be.”

My own sense of injustice developed within me an intense sense of the injustices happening outside my home. I lived in a community of rigid racial segregation. There were separate black and white schools; restaurants and other public facilities were restricted to whites, and in our house, the black cook and handyman had a separate bathroom. When I realised why there were no black children in my school, I sent a letter to President Eisenhower. “I am nine years old,” I wrote, “and I am white, but I have many feelings about segregation.” Years later I found out that my letter is in the Eisenhower museum.