Failed to befriend first black student

Lynn Scott Cochrane
Washington, DC

I grew up in a deeply segregated Charlotte, NC in the 1950s and 60s. When my high school, North Mecklenburg, was finally integrated in about 1963, there was one black girl who always sat alone in the cafeteria. She may have been the only black girl in the school that year. I KNEW I should befriend her, but I didn’t have the courage, to my everlasting regret and shame.