This story first published on TODAY.com May 5, 2023.

By Randi Richardson

Sheryl Lee Ralph says she can still feel her kindergarten teacher clasping her hand.

“This young woman held my hand,” she recalls. “This is a young white woman in Waterbury, Connecticut. I’m a child of the ’60s right, and the idea that your teacher was holding you close, no matter what your color was, just spoke volumes to me.”

Ralph’s primary school education came at a time when racial tensions were high across the country and the push for desegregation in public schools was still a hotly contested practice. The actor, who at that time was only two years younger than a 6-year-old Ruby Bridges – the first Black student to attend an all-white school in 1960 – says she still feels her teacher’s hand intertwined with hers all these years later.

“I can still feel it to this day,” she says. “I’m left handed … and I can still feel it and see where I stood with that teacher.”

The Emmy-winning actor, who attended Driggs Elementary School in Waterbury, Connecticut, currently portrays kindergarten teacher Barbara Howard in hit show “Abbott Elementary” and even remembers her teacher’s scent.

“I remember her very well,” she says. “Her name was Ms. Spencer. She was very young. She always smelled of a lovely perfume. It was probably something called ‘Joy’ because I remember my mother wearing that same perfume.”

But after kindergarten, Ralph admits things became more difficult for her in school.

“(After that), oh my God, I’m learning lessons. They were not easy. But do I appreciate my teachers, absolutely,” she says.