Joshua Sampson, a white history teacher in a black ghetto high school, throws the book away and lets his students take charge of their own destiny. The place is South Central Los Angeles. The time is 1969. Sampson’s students, with his guidance, begin teaching his classes. He sits among these future leaders as they voice their opinions on Vietnam, freedom, Black Power, drugs, police harassment, the grading system, capital punishment and whether Sampson is teaching them or not.

Excerpt from Chapter 13 “Two Stubborn Ol’ Mules”

Cleveland Jones was reading the notes from the “Ideas and/or Complaints” box to second period:

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Mr. Sampson,

Would you please stop using foul language in the classroom. I’m accustomed to hearing it on campus. And that can’t be prevented. But in the classroom I think you ought to have more respect for the young ladies.

From your 1st period student,

Nancy Vellon

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Mr. Sampson,

I think you’re a hip cat. I dig your style. You give everyone an equal chance. You really are doing your thing even if you’re not a brother. I still want to pat you on the back and call you a brother. You’re getting to look like a hippie more and more with that beard you got. You are a very copacetic teacher.

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Mr. Sampson,

Why don’t you grow a “Natural” along with your beard? I think you’ll look a little better. On second thought you should stay the way you are. It’s your thing.

The Enchanted Young-one

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Mr. Sampson,

If teachers grade students then students should grade teachers.

A concerned student

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I think the class is taking advantage of Mr. Sampson for him telling us that he’s going to give us A’s in History. I don’t know if giving us A’s is good or bad.

The Enchanted Young-one

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I thought the note about the students grading teachers was an excellent idea, and so I decided to let the class grade me that period. After I gave them the assignment, J.B., ordered me to her desk. It was the first time she ever said anything to me, so her command didn’t bother me a bit.

She handed me a piece of paper and told me to read it to the class.

I said, “Why didn’t you drop it in The Box for Cleveland to read?”

She said, “I want you readin’ it, Mr. Sampson.”

“You read it,” I told her, “you’re the one who wrote it.”

“You read it, Mr. Sampson.”

She was so darn stubborn we could’ve spent the whole period going back and forth like that.

The paper was torn from a 1969 desk calendar, dated July 4. It’s only the middle of April, I thought, why would she tear it from the month of July? The paper was folded in half and on the outside it read: “For Period 2/U.S. History/Mr. Sampson/J.B.” I unfolded it and studied the contents. By the time I finished reading it to myself, the class was in an uproar. I had to raise my voice several times to get their complete attention, because J.B. had done something that touched my heart. When I finally got silence in the room, I read:

“‘There never was a good war or a bad peace.’—Benjamin Franklin.

“‘To teach is to learn twice.’—Joseph Joubert.

“‘What a man thinks of himself, that is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.’—Henry David Thoreau.

“‘The Constitution speaks not only of the freedom of speech but also of trial by jury instead of trial by accusation.’—Senator Margaret Chase Smith.”

Here was a girl who didn’t say one word in class since the semester began. I thought she was just a shy, inattentive student. But by god, she was AWARE. She’d been listening, observing and thinking the whole time. In those four quotes, she extracted the essence of what I was trying to teach my students. I felt as if I had just scored the winning touchdown in the last second of the Super Bowl.

After class, I was sitting at my desk reading the grades the students in second period gave me: A, A, A, F, C, “No man can judge another man, for a man is what he is to himself and himself only,” A, B, B, B, A, F…

I heard a girl clear her throat and stopped what I was doing. It was J.B. She was standing over me, one hand on her hip and her head slanted to one side. She had on a yellow cotton blouse and a plaid skirt. Two rabbit teeth jutted from between her thick lips.

“Mr. Sampson,” she said, “I gotta talk to you.”

“About what, J.B.?”

“Why can’t you wait till the end of the semester to give us A’s?”

“Why should I wait for something I can do now?”

“‘Cause Mr. Thomas, he ain’t gonna understand why you givin’ us A’s. You gonna lose your job when he finds out.”

“He’s not going to fire me, J.B. Don’t worry about it.”

“You wrong, Mr. Sampson.”

“I’m not wrong.”

“You wrong!” she declared.

“No, I’m not.”

“Mr. Sampson,” she said, stamping her foot to the floor, “you just as stubborn as an ol’ mule!” and she turned and stormed out of the room.

“J.B.!” I shouted after her, “thanks for those four quotes!”