The term "colored girls" in the title refers to all females of color,though Shange's focus in the choreopoem is particularly on black girls.
In the only monologue spoken from a child's point of view, the speaker does not find it easy to be a young black girl in St. Louis in 1955. The character, who has no name, decides to run away from her integrated school, street, and home. Her distaste for integration is a reminder of the harsh treatment received by real black children entering previously all-white schools in the 1950s and 1960s. One Missouri woman remembered how it felt to be a black girl who was transferred suddenly to a predominantly white school in the mid-1950s. She was unhappy "because when you live in a racist society you learn your place.... We didn't know what to expect and we did notn expect acceptance, in fact we expected rejection" (Greene, p. 174).
And in fact, despite orders to desegregate, the authorities of many school districts in Missouri and elsewhere either refused to integrate their schools or else met only the minimum requirements. For example, black children in St. Louis who were bussed to new schools in the early 1960s still studied in separate classrooms and were restricted to separate parts of the playground.
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