AROU N D TH E WORLD AN D BACK
Gumbo Conversations with Carolyn Shelton ONE OF CONTINENTAL’S FIRST BLACK FLIGHT ATTENDANTS ON GOOD MANNERS AND THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE OF FOOD
Story and photos by Alexandra Kennon A disclaimer: I, the writer, was given a substantial amount of some of the very best chicken and sausage gumbo I’ve ever had by Ms. Shelton following our interview. Anticipating my protest, Ms. Shelton told me the same thing she tells the kids in her etiquette classes: “Just take it, and say ‘thank you,’” which I was certainly in no position to argue with. The excellent gumbo did not affect my coverage of Ms. Shelton’s story.
“C
an you make some gumbo?” This question has followed Carolyn Shelton—who became one of the first Black flight attendants for Continental Airlines in 1969—on her international travels from Guam, to Hawaii, to Japan, and far beyond. No matter the destination, when a new friend (because like her mother, Shelton never meets a stranger) heard she was from Louisiana, gumbo was always the first priority for discussion. “Gumbo is like a universal word,” Shelton told me on a recent afternoon spent chatting about her life in her New Orleans home. “I don’t care whether you’re in the Netherlands, if they take you from Louisiana, there’s a gumbo conversation.” And, luckily for the many international friends Shelton has made throughout her storied career—and for me—the answer to the gumbo question is a resounding, “Oh yes, cher.” “We were raised on Creole food. It was gumbo. Gumbo was all the time. I mean, I don’t care whether you went to my mom’s house, my Nana’s house— everybody had some gumbo,” Shelton emphasized. “We grew up with gumbo. Gumbo was our healing soup, it was our friendship soup.” For the Creole woman born in Cajun country, nothing comes quite so naturally as a good gumbo roux—except for an intense streak of friendliness, positivity, and ambition. Shelton spent her early childhood in Youngsville, Louisiana, the oldest of nine children. Around the time she entered high school the family moved to what is today Houston’s Fifth Ward, which was largely populated by Louisiana Creoles. “And what made Louisianans different from the other African Americans in Texas was that most of them were Catholic,” Shelton recalled. “So they had they built their own church, they spoke French.” At 34
the time Shelton lived with her family in Houston, the Fifth Ward area was known as—and is still called by many—“Frenchtown”. Her mother Angelique was a housekeeper who wore lipstick and pearls to work every day, earning only around five dollars a day. “The person I admired the most was my mom,” Shelton mused. “And my grandmothers, but my mother never seemed to have a bad day.” Despite her mother’s graceful and dignified approach to her profession, Shelton once told her—and herself—that she could never clean another person’s house for a living. “So, at a young age, I knew that I only had one weapon to get out of that situation,” she said. “And that was to get an education.” Her plan was to become a teacher, marry a doctor, and live “happily ever after”. As is often the case with carefully-laid plans, things turned out quite differently than she imagined: less than two years into a wonderful marriage, her husband died in a car accident in the military. “So, one morning I just woke up and I said, ‘Mother, some friends and I are moving to California. I’ve got to leave,’” Shelton recollected. “Because I had too many memories.” So, in 1969, Shelton dropped out of Texas Southern University, moved to California, and became a flight attendant for Continental Airlines (“Which, of course, is now United,” she reminded me). At the time, Shelton was one of the first Black flight attendants with the airline—the very first, she recalled easily and with reverence, was a lady named Diane Hunter. “So, I endured a lot of racism,” Shelton said matterof-factly. “Lots. Lots, lots, lots, lots.” Her memoir Coffee, Tea, or Watermelon: Life as a Flight
A P R 2 1 // C O U N T R Y R O A D S M A G . C O M
Attendant chronicles these, along with her other varied experiences as a Black flight attendant at a time when to be a person of color in aviation was to be a pioneer. In the same breath that Shelton spoke of the racism she endured, she volleyed back to her signature positivity. “I lived a very good life. I lived in Hawaii, Guam, Australia. In many of the destinations she traveled to, “Gumbo” became Shelton’s nickname, which she embraced. “When I lived in Chicago, they used to say, ‘Hey, Gumbo!,’” she chuckled. “I’d be walking on Michigan Avenue in a mink coat: ‘Hey, Gumbo!’” In Chicago, and many of the other cities Shelton lived over the course of her career, she would throw “gumbo parties”, inviting the friends she made
so easily wherever she went: “Girl, it would be jam packed.” During her time back in Houston where her family lived, she took the opportunity to share the wealth of new experiences she had been introduced to working for Continental. “I mean, we never had money to go out to dinner. So, all of the fancy restaurants that I had been experiencing, I took my mom, and my sisters, and everybody,” she said, beaming. “So now I’m living in a nice section of Houston, you know, Audi, Mercedes, the whole nine yards, shopping…” But when she wanted a taste of Creole food—a taste of home—she found herself back in Frenchtown. “When I wanted that good food that my mama used to make…I’d have to go to the hood where my mom lived.”
