"I was alone, and those [segregationist] people were screaming, and suddenly I saw God smiling, and I smiled," one North Carolina girl of eight told me in 1962. Then she continued, with these astonishing words: "A woman was standing there [near the school door], and she shouted at me, 'Hey, you little nigger, what you smiling at?' I looked right at her face, and I said, 'At God.' Then she looked up at the sky, and then she looked at me, and she didn't call me any more names."