For any brand-new teacher, the first day of school is terrifying. Everything you learned in classes and practiced as a student teacher can never quite prepare you for the moment when you stand in front of the two dozen children who will be yours to teach and to keep under control for the rest of the year. The fact that Riccardo was only a few years out of high school himself didn’t help. The anxiety was only compounded when he learned where the district was sending him: Southern High School, in Okolona, the heart of the anti-busing protesters’ home turf.1 On September 4, the first day of school, an estimated 2,500 people had attended the Klan rally downtown.2 They confronted police in riot gear, throwing rocks and shoving, and ten demonstrators were arrested. In the schools, the only violence occurred at Fairdale High School, where protesters threw rocks at the buses carrying black students.3 Among them was seventeen-year-old Jacquelyn Stoner, who would later move houses in order to ensure that her own children were sent to the wealthier—and less hostile—East End.
