Young describes how her sojourn in the North while attending graduate school at University of Wisconsin and Bryn Mawr College, as well as her brief job as the Dean of Women at Hamlin in St. Paul, Minnesota, piqued her interest in the issue of race in the South. While in St. Paul, her association with an African American woman from the South led her to the realization that she had been relatively unaware of race problems while growing up in Memphis. She explains how this realization became a catalyst for her decision to teach at an African American school in the South, rather than continuing her career in the North.