K

Then my mother taught me one of the most important lessons of all.

You are as good as anyone.

You must never feel that you are less than anyone else.

I wanted to believe it, but every day I saw the opposite.

I saw you could be treated unfairly just because of the color of your skin.

If you were right, you went to a good school with great playgrounds and plenty of books.

If you were black, your school was small, sometimes with no desks or even windows.

Check it out, a playground.

Check it out.

Where's our playground?

It wasn't just the schools.

Black people had to use different water fountains, different elevators, even different bathrooms.

In fact, on a hot day when everyone wanted ice cream, if you were white, you could sit at the counter and eat from a nice dish.

But since I was black, if they served me at all, it was through a side window, and they put my ice cream in a flimsy paper cup.

This ice cream is perfect.

This ice cream is melted.

It got even worse when I was 14.

I had just won a speech competition.

My speech was about being fair to all people.

I was so excited.