Fire from the Rock

Sylvia is back at school, staring at a boy named Reggie and serving as the audience for her classmate Calvin’s disruptive antics. Calvin gets caught whispering insults about the teacher to Sylvia. To get out of trouble, Calvin tries to change the subject to something he knows the teacher wants to discuss: school integration. The teacher, Miss Washington, asks Calvin to remind the class what the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision states. He answers correctly by saying it made separate but equal schooling illegal. Miss Washington explains to the class that the Little Rock school board agreed to comply and has a plan for rolling out the integration of schools. Reggie says he would rather stay in his own school: “They don’t need us and we don’t need them” (37). The teacher says the plan is to integrate the high school grades first and that any interested student should let her know if they want to be on the list of the first kids to integrate Central High. Sylvia writes in her diary that she appreciates how strict Miss Washington is, and she wonders if she has experienced difficult times in her life regarding segregation.