I was all alone and those [segregationist] people were screaming, and suddenly I saw God smiling and I smiled…. A woman was standing there [near the school door], and she shouted at me ‘Hey you little nigger, what you smiling at?’ I looked right at her face and I said, ‘At God.’ Then she looked up at the sky, and then she looked at me, and she didn’t call me any more names. (Hampton et al., Preventing Violence in America, 124-27)