A Negro child-let us call her Mary Jones-entering first grade that fall of 1954 probably had her thoughts elsewhere than on the Supreme Court and Brown v. Board of Education.'Whatever she might have heard about Brown was less absorbing than her new teacher and schoolmates and the novel environment of the schoolyard. And it was just as well. This noisy crowd of children would be together for years to come, adding and subtracting, reading and writing, studying maps and pictures of faraway lands. Twelve years later at graduation, some of Mary Jones's luckier first grade friends would still be standing beside her. Chances were, however, there