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ever write about. Even Timpson seemed the most excited about a skunk in Wal-Mart.”
    â€œDon’t fool yourself, son. This isn’t Houston, but it’s got its own blood and grits. You’ll find that out soon enough when you go to work for the paper. Trust me, there’s plenty goes on, and Timpson knows it.”
    â€œLike what?”
    Dad raised his eyebrows. “Black and white tensions.”
    â€œI thought we were past that.”
    â€œThere’s this black preacher and politician, Gerry Judence.”
    â€œI know who he is,” I said. “Snappy dresser, quick-witted and full of shit. I’ve seen him all my life on televison.”
    â€œThere was a time when he was a serious civil rights leader. Marched with King, did good things. But as the nature of civil rights changed, he had to find a new way to keep himself in the spotlight. Recently, members of the black community decided that a school should be built down in the black section of town.
    â€œIdea was some of the rich black folks, some rich whites too, would try and raise the level of the kids in that area by building a school. Most of the black people in town, and people in the white community, were for it. Judence threw a monkey wrench in that. He’s got antennae for that kind of thing. Some assholes down in the black community made it out to be some white man’s plot to change them from being black to white, and Judence latched on to that. It got him back in the news.
    â€œSome of the kids down there don’t even have birth records. Drugs are an everyday thing. Lot of those kids have never been inside a school. They need a chance. Education isn’t white. It belongs to anyone who’ll reach out and take it.”
    â€œI hadn’t heard about this.”
    â€œIt’s ramping up as it gets closer to the time when the school is supposed to be built. Judence is doing a lot of talking up in New York, where he’s from. Getting lots of camera time. He’ll come down here a week or two before the ground for the school is supposed to be broke, make a big speech, and it’ll get people fired up. And to make matters worse, to make him seem more the hero, there have been death threats from racist groups saying Judence is an outside agitator, which, in fact, he is. But calling a black man an outside agitator is old racist language for ‘uppity nigger.’”
    â€œAnd that fires things up more.”
    â€œSchool was proposed to be built where the old black Baptist church stands, partially burned. Someone set it on fire a year or so back. Rumor was it was white racists. Those who support the school want to build it where the church stands as a kind of gesture of spirit. Judence is telling the community that whites are trying to segregate them again.”
    â€œSounds like segregation to me, Dad.”
    â€œI don’t want segregation, and the school wouldn’t technically be segregated, but building it in that community shows there’s a chance for students to be educated there, and with good teachers, mostly black, it could happen. It would be a special school, privately funded, better than our public schools, which are just warehouses for warm bodies.”
    â€œCould it be some of the investors hope to run for office of some kind?”
    â€œThere’s that. But the whites who don’t want the school are strangely enough on the side of the blacks who don’t. The idea there might be a school in the black community with the potential to be better than the schools their children attend annoys them. They say, well, the black people don’t want it, so don’t give it to them. But there are a lot of local black leaders, lots of parents down there that do want it. Most, I’d say. It’s the loudmouth few, black and white, who are kicking this bee’s nest around.
    â€œThere’s this white group that calls themselves the League for the