My mother was not afraid of anything, and by that, I mean she did not fear the powerful. In the wake of the killing of four little girls like me, she pushed the color line with me in tow. I was to be on the frontlines of a movement, and so were all the other Negro children of my generation in the South who were called to do something that had not yet been done, something the nation still was not yet quite ready to do.

I was queen of the festivities and, like so many things in the colored world in which I was raised it was celebrated with great pomp and circumstance. As a kindergartener, I did not racially mark this moment because whiteness was immaterial to me, but this would not be so for long as more history was to be made.

I first laid claim to social protest on a walk from the “white” elementary school, as we still called it. I encountered two white boys with BB rifles aimed at my head; they fired, and I refused to run. All these years later, I wonder what it will take to walk the last mile of the way.