Zaila Avant-garde, a 14-year-old Black eighth grader from Louisiana, won the National Spelling Bee competition this year.
In 1936 MacNolia Cox, 13, a Black girl from Akron, made it to the final round of the National. She was forced to sit in the back of the train to Washington, and she and her mom were not allowed to eat with the other spellers or their parents. To get to the precontest banquet, she and her mom were not even allowed into the elevator. They took the stairs. I am always amazed at how petty racial discrimination can be.
Ms. Cox made it to the final round with four others. According to one report, the judges, all from the South, were growing uncomfortable. They gave her the word Nemesis, the god of divine retribution and revenge. It was not on the list of 100,000 words she had studied; it was technically a proper noun and not eligible as a contest word. She misspelled it and was out.
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