It took Nichole Herring 10 years after graduating college before she could begin to pay down her $45,000 in student loans regularly. Then came the pandemic.

Herring, who started working in communications for education nonprofits not long after graduating in 2009, was out of work for 15 months. In that time, she made more than 150 calls to unemployment offices in Virginia and Washington, D.C., to try to access the benefits she was owed. But her applications were never processed. In that time, some relief came from a pause on federal student loan payments, but she still had to make payments on her private loans. She could make only a couple as she depleted her savings and took on additional debt to make rent. Five of her family members died due to complications from COVID-19. She applied to 1,000 job openings — at least.

In November 2022, one finally clicked. She took a job in internal communications at a regional education nonprofit, accepting a lower salary than her last job and a 60-mile one-way commute.

For her, college held the promise of economic mobility. That promise has been broken many times over.

“I was always aware as a Black woman … how my generation has seen this backslide in socioeconomic status, the amount of us who were raised working middle class or middle class who find themselves below where their parents were. I was lucky I wasn’t quite there,” said Herring, 36. “And I look up and I’m like, ‘No, I’m there.’”

Student loans have been the barrier to economic mobility for Black women, not the on-ramp. And the shadow of debt is creeping closer as repayments on federal loans are set to start again in October.

Read the full article about equal pay for Black women by Chabeli Carrazana and Jasmine Mithani at The 19th.