That’s when I saw the photograph.

Facing us, on every newspaper kiosk

on that wide, tree-shaded boulevard in Paris

were photographs of fifteen-year-old Dorothy Counts

being reviled and spat upon by the mob

as she was making her way to school

in Charlotte, North Carolina.

There was unutterable pride, tension, and anguish

in that girl’s face

as she approached the halls of learning,

with history, jeering, at her back.

It made me furious,

it filled me with both hatred and pity.

And it made me ashamed.

Some one of us should have been there with her!