Forget You!

Black students challenge a white teacher in a time of racial turmoil

The sisters stayed seated. The bell rang, chairs squeaked, cross-talk erupted and my twenty-odd sixth grade students filed out into the South Central Los Angeles afternoon. But not Lanelle, Brie and Georgianna, best friends — “sisters”, they insisted — who modeled themselves after The Chiffons and would break out into a tightly choreographed version of that girl-group’s “He’s So Fine” pretty much without notice. The year was 1966. Watts had been torched to the ground a year earlier. As a result I was in a place I never expected to be, but…