I was 10 years old when Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed; we watched the funeral on a small black and white television in my fifth grade class at Bessie C. Fonville Elementary. All my classmates were black; Mobile was proudly, defiantly segregated. Two years later, in search for a cheaper house, my family moved to Prichard, Alabama, a small adjoining city that was even more segregated. Less than a decade earlier, black people had not been allowed to use the Prichard City Library -- unless they had a note from a white person. White people owned most of the stores. White people held all the elected offices. I was part of the class that integrated Prichard Middle School. A local television commentator called it an "invasion." Invaders? We were children. We fought white adults on the way to school and white children at school. By the time I graduated from Mattie T. Blount High School most of the white people had left the city. When I arrived at Jarvis Christian College I was not naive about southern race relations.