When I was five or six living in Oregon, my mom helped me write a letter to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., thanking him for his work against racism. I enclosed my pennies. In 1969 (those tumultuous sixties) when I was ten, my family moved to Arlington, Virginia, two miles outside of Washington, D.C. What a shock suddenly to find myself in a school where racial tensions ran high. Still, I had both black and white friends.