Unit 3: Vocabulary from Readings 3

That was when I did something berserk. I was so wound up and frightened that I didn’t think, and I struck out at him with my right fist.

The tree was too important to us. It was the most crucial place to me and Jennifer, and the last thing we’d want to do was hurt it.

“But I can’t fight.”
“I’ll show you Sicilian combat tactics.”

There, across the street in a field behind Ronkewitz’s Candy Store, was a crowd of about 300 kids standing around like a big, undulating horseshoe, with John Quinn standing at the center bend glaring at me.

I saw only their faces distorted in ecstasy and expectation.

The crowd was shocked, and booed me with mass condemnation for my Sicilian fighting technique.

For on that day, as part of court-ordered desegregation, nine black teenagers entered the previously all-white institution.

The NAACP knew all too well that the first black students at Central High would have to be exceptional human beings with unimpeachable characters and the faith and strength to be “firsts.”

They chanted, “Two, four, six, eight, we ain’t gonna integrate!” and shouted, “...go home!...go back where you belong!”

But she made it and, as the bus pulled away, she wondered how she could ever summon up the courage to return to Central High.

How, in this nation founded on the principle that all men are created equal, could so much hatred have been directed at one young girl who simply wanted to go to the school of her choice?