But: in seventh grade, our history teacher was Mrs. Alice Dawson, who was a fine teacher and a great lady. She happened to be black. I remember with shame the way she was humiliated by our predominantly white class, because she was black. During black history week, she asked each of us to pick a black American of historical importance, and to give a little speech introducing ourselves as that black American, and explaining what we had accomplished. White parents went nuts. There was no way they were going to have their children pretend to be a Negro. The fracas went all the way up to the principal, who ruled that the white children could pretend to be “a friend of” George Washington Carver, Harriet Tubman, et alia. And that’s how it happened. Today, I cringe to think of what it must have been like for Mrs. Dawson to have to live through that disgraceful treatment — a small thing, I guess, but a disgusting one all the same. Then again, she had lived in our parish for many years, through Jim Crow, had seen much worse, and maintained her dignity and her Christian faith through it all. Like I said, a great lady. All of us who knew her are in her debt, whether we realize it or not.