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that school, I promise.”

3
     
HOW could I ever forget May 17, 1954, the day the Supreme Court ruled in
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas
, that separate public schools for whites and blacks were illegal? The adults around me behaved so strangely that their images became a freeze-frame, forever preserved in my mind. I learned lessons on that day that I will remember for the rest of my life.
     
    I was twelve years old. That afternoon, I sat at my desk in my seventh-grade class at Dunbar Junior High, copying from the blackboard. My teacher had been called outside. When she returned, she appeared frightened and nervous. Erasing the blackboard before we could finish our copying, she spoke breathlessly about
Brown v. Board of Education.
    “Does that mean we have to go to school with white people?” my friend Carl asked as a chorus of voices echoed his question.
    “Yes, maybe.But you needn’t concern yourself with that. Collect your things. You’all are dismissed early today.” Although she said the Brown case was something we should be proud of, something to celebrate, her face didn’t look at all happy. I didn’t understand why she was in such a big rush to dismiss us that way, but I didn’t ask. Going home to be with my grandmother India was something I looked forward to every day. Peering over the book or newspaper she was reading, she would always greet me the same way: “And what did you learn today?” She hadn’t finished high school, but she had read lots of books, and she studied everything and everybody all the time. Over an after-school snack of warm gingerbread and milk, the two of us would talk and laugh until it was time for me to start my chores and homework.
    Now as we left school I heard my teacher’s quivering voice: “Pay attention to where you’re walking. Walk in groups, don’t walk alone.” She stood at the top of the steps, telling us to hurry.
    Once outside, I realized I had forgotten a math book, but when I tried to get it, she blocked my way, telling me that I should go on with the others. I couldn’t imagine why she was so insistent that I hurry home. She even said she would excuse my homework assignment the next day. She had never excused undone homework for any reason before.
    I trailed behind the others as I pondered her strange behavior. I paid little attention to where I was going. It was, after all, a familiar route, one I had walked since age six. I usually took a shortcut across a vacant block, through a grassy field filled with persimmon trees. In spring, ripened fruit littered the ground to make walking a hazardous, slippery adventure.
    Sometimes it wasn’t always safe to take that shortcut because of Marissa. She was an older girl who frightened us. She would suddenly become very mean, striking out for no reason. I would be walking along that path, and all at once I’d be attacked by a shower of overripe persimmons. There was no way I could protect myself or fight back because Marissa was so big and overpowering. At twelve, I was considered tall for my age; most folks thought I was fifteen. But Marissa was even bigger. Nobody knew how old she was—we thought she was about sixteen—much too old to be in our class.
    Marissa was different; the teachers called her “retarded.” Even though she often misbehaved, adults never did anything about it, maybe because her father was a rich minister in our community. As I crossed the field, I knew that I risked having Marissa rush out of the bushes at any moment. But I also knew I could get past her if I gave her my lunch apple or my allowance money. Otherwise, I felt I was pretty safe in that field—safe enough to lapse into my daydreams. This was my special time of the day—when I could sing as loud as I wanted and make up new daydreams about being a movie star or moving North to New York or out West to California.
    I didn’t agree with the radio announcers who described Little Rock as a nice, clean Southern