White After Labor Day

The first day of school in September 1959, finds the state of Virginia's Arlington County public schools integrated for the first time. That is to say that three schools, formerly all-white, one elementary, one junior high and one high school, have allowed a select few Negro students to attend. Wynn Horry Junior, known as Junior, is one of the six Negro students going to Arlington High and he has already become friends with Clifford Peterson, the white son of an upper-middle -class State Department family living in North Arlington near the high school. Junior, like Cliff, is a smart, articulate young man who does not necessarily fit the notion of how others might see him. Junior and Cliff have known each other since the summer of 1958 when the Peterson family first returned to the United States after a long tour abroad and Junior began cutting their grass. The friendship that develops between the two teens is more than most might be able to handle and they keep their friendship private. At this time when America was changing--the advent of the Civil Rights movement and the dawn of the Space Race - for the most part, African-Americans and whites were going off in different directions and there was yet no road map to explore certain other areas of life!