The Warmth of Other Suns

more than fifteen years

One county in Virginia—Prince Edward County—closed its entire school system for five years, from 1959 to 1964, rather than integrate.

George had made a winless bargain.

It appeared in the end he was only getting back at himself.

“I didn’t try to tell my wife why I was laughing. It was retribution.”

“It was like having a tooth pulled for no reason,”

There was now a small crater in the earth where, just that morning, a house used to be

was the same George who tried to rouse the fruit pickers some twenty years before, to get them to stand up for what was due them.

rights that would have to be spelled out again

“I have to do this,” he said as he tried to steady himself after the stoning, “to expose myself—to bring this hate into the open.”