The Long Path From Arlington to an Inaugural

Fifty years ago, armed police were posted outside my school, Stratford Junior High in Arlington. A chain-link fence surrounding the school grounds was plastered with "No Trespassing" signs. Inside, plainclothes police officers roamed the halls. All of this because four "Negro" students had entered our school.

The media were banned from entering the school, so to obtain a story on how the day went, a Post reporter approached our junior high school newspaper to write about the day. The news editor, Claudia Dean, and I wrote the story. My parents did not want me to write it because they feared that the Ku Klux Klan would burn a cross in our front yard. I figured that if these kids had the courage to come to our school, the least I could do was to have the courage to write the story. As it turned out, ours was one of the few desegregating schools that had no disruptions. No crosses were burned in our yards.

When I recounted this story to my Rotary Club in Seattle last month, you could have heard a pin drop. Many of us have put that time behind us; others were too young to know what really happened when schools were first desegregated, or they never knew anyone who did. Some were new immigrants who did not know our long racial history.

I left Arlington in 1959 when my father was transferred to Japan. I have always wondered what happened to those four students. I think that their admission struck me so much because, being a Navy child, I knew what it was like to go to new schools. My entry into a new school was always marked with complete indifference by others, although I was always scared. I could not imagine what it would be like to go to a new school knowing that many people did not want me there. We were all so young -- just 12 and 13.

Every time I visit Washington, I think about those students and writing the story. So when I went to Washington for some business meetings the week before the inauguration of President Obama, I finally decided to track down the article, which had been lost somewhere in our many moves. I went to the Library of Congress, and within 15 minutes I had a copy of the story in my hands. I burst into tears. It had been written 50 years and two weeks before a person of color became our 44th president and tore down decades and decades of fences.

Walking the Mall on the Saturday before the inauguration, I realized how far we have come. We can all tell our children -- and mean it -- that they can live their dreams with hope and pride. We can go to the same schools, eat in the same restaurants and become friends.

I don't know whether what we did at Stratford made a difference. But, like a drop of water in a pond, perhaps its ripples did spread. All I know is that with this inauguration, I finally felt free as well.

-- Kathleen O'Connor

Seattle