When Women Weren't Allowed to Have Checking Accounts

For some of us, life is like a novel. We don't need to do anything for something else dramatic to happen. And as I work on the story about the first time I was homeless as a teen, I realize how only chance or God saved me. That first night when my boyfriend rescued me and my grandmother and father were unreachable, he dropped me off at the flat of some older girls he knew. 

         They let me live there, and I found a job at a Record Distributing Company where a man helped me. Because my mother had thrown my belongings down the clothes chute that night, I had to wear the clothes of the other girls. I had no winter coat, so he bought me a dress and a coat. I was so young and he was so good, he never touched me. But he did take me to the park to swing. 

        Then he took me to a bank to open a checking account. In those days, not really that long ago when you consider time, a woman couldn't have a checking account without a man to co-sign. It's strange to even imagine how strict things were. And this is why when I see people without checking accounts and government becoming more authoritarian with increasingly rigid rules, I feel extremely concerned.