Image of a frieze at Cardozo High School from takomabiblet on Flickr (public domain)
Practically everyone at Cardozo knew them — two pregnant girls who had dropped out of school to pool their church mice resources in an effort to make the best head start for themselves and their babies.(“The Night Rhonda Ferguson Was Killed,” Lost in the City, 41)
“The castle on the hill,” as Cardozo High School is called, is known as the first business school for African American students (DC People). It admitted its first Black students the night after school segregation ended in D.C., which was before Brown v. Board of Education (“Cardozo”).
In Lost in the City, Cardozo, now Cardozo Education Campus, is always mentioned in the context of leaving, from Pearl and Joyce dropping out because of children in “The Night Rhonda Ferguson Was Killed” to Caesar giving up on school and turning to crime in “Young Lions.” In “The Night Rhonda Ferguson Was Killed,” a group of girls (Cassandra, Melanie, and Anita) are shown skipping class, a regular activity for them. The story’s title character, Rhonda, is listed by Black and white newspapers as a rising musical prodigy. She seems the most career-focused and driven towards completing her education.
For the girls in The Night Rhonda Ferguson Was Killed, home is anywhere but their homes. While they do stay in good contact with their mothers and receive allowance and food from them, they enjoy their time outside of the house. Cassandra feels more comfortable driving around the city than taking a cab. When Gladys rants about her family troubles, Melanie and Cassandra immediately suggest heading to a stranger’s party as a cure. Near the end of the story, Cassandra points out that they all have a place to stay at Rhonda’s, where they discover that she has been shot. School serves as the context these characters meet, become friends and head out together into the city. Rhonda’s death removes their most stable meeting place outside of school.
For Caesar, home becomes Sherman’s apartment, the after school hangout for him and Angelo. After months of staying later and later there, Caesar finally causes a rift between him and his father. He’s thrown out on the street because of his displacement from home. School isn’t the direct cause of his father disowning him, but it is the background that he comes from to Sherman’s place. Reading these stories together, we can see Jones constructing Cardozo as home-like in that it provides its students a common reference point and known space, but the action of the stories reveals the ways in which instability arises from the lack of other kinds of homes beyond the school day.
References
“DC People & Places: Black History Spotlight – Cardozo Education Campus”, Department of General Services. Accessed March 15, 2018. https://dgs.dc.gov/page/dc-people-places-black-history-spotlight-cardozo-education-campus.
“Cardozo Senior High School” , DC Historic Sites. Accessed March 15, 2018, http://historicsites.dcpreservation.org/items/show/77.
