Arthur Little said it all in high school

Lord Kadizzle went to High School in Wheeling, West Virginia. In our high school there were a hand full of black kids. For the most part they were all great kids. Arthur Little was a small black kid Lord Kadizzle had gym class with. We would pretend to box. Arthur could hit me twice before I could land one punch. Once in a while just out of the clear blue sky Arthur would break out and recite Emily Dickenson.

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us — don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

Arthur said it so eloquently. I was a poor kid, and felt like a social outcast, so it really hit home with me. To this day I feel so bad about what those black kids had to go through. They were troupers. They were in the school plays, and sang like angles. Having black kids in school was one of the greatest blessings in my life. There were no black kids until I got to high school. One day Arthur invited me to his house in Triadelphia. Arthur lived in an old coal mining camp. For wall paper there was just newspaper. When I realized how hard these kids had it, and how they managed to keep their heads up, I found it awful hard to feel sorry for myself. To this day I can hear Arthur just coming up to me and saying "I am nobody, who are you?" I am so happy for Arthur today, and I am so dismayed by the people I know who would have thought for one moment to deprive him of what has always been his, a right to be somebody.