By Christina Russo
After
years of living in the South, Rosa Lotson was not prepared to battle the winter
cold of the North. "I didn't have proper shoes or boots, because in
Georgia we never had snow. So it was a challenge to adapt yourself to the
winter months," she said.
Before her journey
North, Lotson grew up on a farm in Jones, Georgia. After high school, she was recruited to work
for the FBI in Washington DC.
Rosa
said the recruiting process was a yearlong endeavor, which involved lots of
background work. She enjoyed working at
the FBI and stayed for a few months.
In 1973, after the
birth of her child, Rosa moved to Roxbury, Massachusetts to live with her
fiancé whom she had met in high school.
Rosa’s fiancé had
family in the area, so she did not feel very alone when she moved North. However, she was not prepared for the move to
Boston.
“There was a lot of snow on the ground,” she
said
Several years
later, Rosa moved to Brockton, where she now lives. Working in Brockton was different from working
for the FBI, and she found work at a bank as a file clerk.
Eventually she
worked her way up to a senior clerk, then supervisor and further up in management. She admits it was not easy being the one to
give orders to those who did not respect her.
“It was challenging, as me being a black female, and there were whites
working for me.”
“They were angry,
they did not want a black individual telling them what to do,” she said. “They
would talk about me on the side.”
“I overcame it by
showing them that I had earned the position and I was only giving instruction
that was handed down to me.”
She prayed to God
to forgive them. Eventually she says,
they got used to having her in charge, but it took several years. “It didn’t
happen over night,” she said.
Lotson worked for many years for various banks
in the area, and retired a few years ago.
Now,
she spends her time helping others.
She has taken
several courses in diabetes self-management, a disease that she also has. The courses will help her to teach others
with diabetes how to manage the disease.
Also in her
retirement, Rosa has taken up missionary work in the Brockton community with
the Messiah Baptist Church. Three to
four days a week, Rosa and a few others go out into the community to visit the
less fortunate and help them in any way that they can.
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