– Every class I walked into that day, a contingent of students got up and left, and they said, “We’re not coming back as long as you’re here.” Teachers were afraid. I could see the fear. We were all afraid. Many of them offered minimal gestures of acceptance. A smile here and there, but they were very cautious too because the word was out. You could tell the word was out. If you are friendly to those kids, we will do things to you.

– There was some classes that the teacher did not control the classroom. It was on an individual basis as to how good that teacher was, as to whether they can control those bad apples.

– My English teacher, and I can’t remember her name, but it would be easy to find in the records, she was so terribly unwelcoming. She said to me one day, “Why do you want to come to our school? Why don’t you go back to your own school?”

– The rest of the nine, I saw a couple of us at lunch, and the rest of the time you were all by yourself going to your different classes. I didn’t share one class with another black person.

– I was in gym with Minnijean, and she was expelled. They put Carlotta in my gym class. I think all the boys probably were in the same gym class, and then we would see each other at lunch. And people wouldn’t sit at tables near us.

– You were, you know, gonna be hassled in Phys Ed. That was a place where you braced yourself for a whole series of things. From throwing hot towels to broken glass, to, you know, a lot of verbal abuse.

– If somebody threw the baseball when I wasn’t looking, they could always say, “Well, he was on the team. He should have been catching the ball.” You know, whatever. There was always this. And there would be support for that version. Other classes, I had to be constantly vigilant and watchful because all sorts of things would happen and you could never be certain that any appeal to the teacher would work. This English teacher, a case in point. You know, she never saw anything. I would say this happened and that happened, and she’d say, “I didn’t see it.”

– Well, I said I’d never for forget Mrs. Pickwick, I think is her name. Anyway, she was the dearest woman that ever lived because it was only in her class every day that I felt safe. She was very tiny, but anybody who walked near me, she’d say, “No, no, no, no. You move over here.” And that was from the first day I was ever there. From that first Monday I went inside the school, had to be pulled out, this woman was a tower of strength. My algebra teacher, again, I can’t remember her name, but a woman who said to the class when I first walked in, “There will be no nonsense in this class. We’re here to learn algebra.” That was so nice because it meant I could relax in her class.