St. Louis, one of the most segregated areas in America today, had already become racially polarized by the time, Debra, born in 1959, was growing up. The nearly all-black neighborhood she grew up in and the elementary school she attended had both the benefits and the burdens of such situations. With it glaringly clear that white America was largely uninterested in their fate, the African-Americans in segregated communities relied on themselves and each other. However, at the same time, pathological behaviors were magnified. With the rest of society indifferent to harm to black Americans, the worst habits of slavery, including continual denigration of each other and ready violence, became embedded in the culture. Dickerson's brother, Bobby, the youngest of six children and the only boy, suffered the brunt of the brutality of the ghetto. He in turn became a thug for much of his youth.

Meanwhile, Dickerson, who had moved on to predominantly white schools in the suburbs, did quite well academically, though she was directionless and depressed. The spur for her depression, which would follow her into adulthood, may have been her father's dictatorial ways. A man who received little or no affirmation in his interactions with society, Eddie Mack Dickerson was determined to rule his roost remorselessly. The children were forced to wear thrift store clothes and the house was furnished with discarded furniture and implements he had scrounged from beside the highway and trash heaps. The young Dickersons were continually humiliated. Their father insisted on complete, unquestioning obedience from his five daughters and his wife and justified his dominance with scriptures from the Bible. Corporal punishment, including slaps and punches for the least infraction, and full scale beatings that leave lasting scars and injuries, have long been considered normal disciplinary acts among many African-American families. Some historians trace the practice to slavery and the need to break the wills of black children lest they offend whites by being proud of themselves. Eddie Mack Dickerson's child abuse eventually led his usually acquiescent wife to leave him. When Debra was twelve, her mother relocated herself and the children to separate lodgings. Their poverty increased, but, for the first time in years, there was relative peace in the houeshold.

Still directionless, and receiving next to no support from those who are 'supposed' to help promising students — teachers, guidance counselors and principals — Debra finished high school and worked a series of dull, low-paying jobs. Black, female and working-class, she was not perceived as someone deserving of help. Instead, her peers from middle-class backgrounds, both white and black, were given the assistance she and others like her desperately needed. Frightened of becoming like the drones she worked with, she applied to college, and later, enlisted in the Air Force.