Differences

It's hard to understand, this civil rights stuff, all this black against white. For years now I've watched people getting beaten, knocked down by fire hoses, attacked by police dogs and I've seen the bodies of those who have been murdered on the evening news. White people who marched along with the black people have also been killed and beaten, and I tell you I don't understand. Do my classmates understand any of this? Our school is all white except for one. Just one dark face in this sea of white. A girl from Wenonah - Michelle Smith is her name, and I don't know her. She's in the Seventh Grade like I am but she's not in any of my classes, so I don't ever have much of a chance to talk to her.
Michelle's mother is Irene Smith, one of the leaders of the local NAACP, and I've heard she was responsible for stopping the minstrel shows that used to be put on in the Heights. When people mention Mrs. Smith's name in Woodbury Heights, they seem to spit it out, and you can feel their anger.
I don't know if Michelle Smith is treated poorly here in Gateway Regional High School, but there must be some kids that don't want her here.
What must it be like, I wonder, to be the only black kid in the school?
Does she get threatening notes from other kids? Do the girls talk to her, or do they shun her? I don't hear anything, but then again I pretty much keep to myself, and I'm not part of any group, so what do I know?
It's got to be scary, I think, with all this racial hatred going on and you're the only one who's "different".
This is South Jersey not Alabama, but the hatred is there. I've heard all the words and the jokes, and we don't socialize with the black families who live across the street from us even though they are our neighbors.
Every now and then there are stories in the newspapers about crosses being burned on the lawns of black families, or the letters KKK painted on their houses and their churches, but the stories say it's just people playing bad practical jokes, that the Ku Klux Klan isn't really responsible.
This is South Jersey not Mississippi, but there are no black kids swimming in the Woodbury Heights lake in the summer, not yet, not in 1965.
It is something I do not understand, this hatred, this black against white, and yet I'm a part of it, we're all a part of it here in Gateway Regional High School.
Most of us don't pay much attention to it really, even though it's always in the news.
But there is one of us who knows.
Just one dark face in this sea of white.