Opening Doors: Sandra Brooks Henriquez (CAS’72), CEO of the Detroit Housing Commission

Bostonia: You’ve said that in Spencerport, N.Y., where you grew up, yours was the only Black family. What was that like for you?

Sandra Brooks Henriquez: I’ve lived a very sheltered, blessed life. My dad worked for Eastman Kodak for 42 years. He started out as a machinist and he ended up in HR doing recruiting. On top of his full-time job, he always had one or two part-time jobs, usually janitorial work. A lot of the time he was also going to school part-time so he could learn something work-related. My mother worked at Eastman Kodak for a while, but after she had me, and then my brother, she was a homemaker. My dad told my brother and me, “You’re Black, you have to work twice as hard to get half as far.” That was drummed into us by both our parents. It still sticks with me today: you do your job to the best of your ability. Whatever it is, you have to be the best.

I went to a high school with 900 students and I was the only Black student. From first grade to graduation, I can count the number of racial incidents on one hand and still have fingers left over. There was no name-calling or anything like that. I probably had an unusual experience.

Bostonia: What was it like in the late 1960s, going from your high school to BU? 

Sandra Brooks Henriquez: I went from a small suburban town to a university in the heart of a major city. The city and the freedom of college were a real change for me. I came out of a place where I’d been the only Black student in my high school, so coming to an all-white university was just an extension of that…. I met a woman in my dorm from Connecticut who said she had never met a Black person who wasn’t a gardener or a maid or someone in service to her family. At the time, I never thought about what that really meant, except that I found it strange that Black people knew of lots of white people in all walks of life, but white people did not know us in the same way. In fact, I knew Black people as teachers, doctors, lawyers, people in every profession and walk of life. White students at BU were not dismissive of me. I was a curiosity. At the same time, though, faculty treated me as if I was just another student. 

I had a ball at BU. I was involved in student government, in the life of BU. It was the 60s and 70s; we marched against the war in Vietnam. It was my junior or sophomore year, I think, when BU began recruiting more students of color—especially Black students. And I found myself, with some of those students, being seen as not Black enough. Our experiences as Black people were very different. For a long time, I was on my own personal journey to figure out, who is Sandra Brooks? Where do I fit in? What do I call myself? Am I Black enough or am I too white? Do I like myself? It probably took me until my early 20s to think, I’m a good person and if you don’t like me, it’s your loss. It took a while for me to figure all that out, as a woman, and particularly, an African American woman. 

I think something happens with all young women, regardless of color, where we have self-esteem issues, and I went through that. A friend still sends me affirmations every day about my being good enough. Because there are times when you have self-doubt about how you present to the world. And you need, or at least I need, to be reminded that I am enough.

Bostonia: Can you tell us what it was like to start your career in Boston in the mid-1970s?

Sandra Brooks Henriquez: I always thought that racism and racist behavior existed only in the South. Shame on me, right?

I love Boston most of the time, but back then I thought, I’m up North and it’s not racist up North, there are no racial issues up North. So then when something would happen that was based on color, I had to spend time thinking, did that just happen? Let me run the tape back in my head. And then it was, okay, now how do I react to that? Am I righteously indignant? Do I say anything at all? What do I say? And by the time I process all of that, the moment is gone. And I’ve now internalized all of it with no outlet.

Bostonia: You’ve mentioned the bigotry in Boston in those days. What was an example of one of the times when something happened and you had to rerun the tape in your head? 

Sandra Brooks Henriquez: I walked into a store [in Back Bay], with branches across the country—I won’t name it because they’re still in business today—to buy a Christmas present. There are three salesmen and they’re all talking to each other. I’m the only client on that floor and as I walk in, they look up. I go to the counter and see a pair of gloves I want to buy. I clear my throat and I look up. They don’t look at me. So I clear my throat again. I say, “Can someone help me over here, please, I’d like to see these gloves.” And one of the salespeople says, “Oh, we didn’t see you.” And I say, “Oh, yeah, like Ralph Ellison and Invisible Man.” 

He takes the gloves out and I say, “I’ll take these and I’d like them gift-wrapped, please.” I open my wallet because I’m going to pay with cash and I purposely let some bills fall out on the counter because I wanted them to know I could afford this. The gloves are all wrapped up and I walk to the door. Then I play the tape in my head. And I walk back and I say, “Excuse me, I don’t want these.” That was 1972, and to this day I have yet to buy one item of clothing or merchandise from that store.