This chapter turns back to Irwin Brunson, the fourth grader at the Fullerwood Elementary School in February 1964. The beginning of school had been traumatizing for Irwin, filled with isolation and bullying. At one point during a parent-teacher conference, when his father, Charles, learned that Irwin was behind on his work, he summoned his son to the front of the room and beat him in front of the class.

For a short while at the beginning of the new calendar year, things seem to ease for Irwin. But they take a much darker turn before long, first by the torching of his family car while his parents attend a PTA meeting, and then by the firebombing of his next-door neighbors’ house. Like the Brunsons, the Robersons had sent children to integrate Fullerwood, and now their house is all ablaze.

Chapter 1 is set on August 28, 1963, the date of the March on Washington. It introduces readers to two characters who will play critical roles in the St. Augustine civil rights drama.

One is Irwin Brunson, a fourth grader who becomes one of five pioneer Black integrators of St. Augustine public schools that fall. August 28th happens to be registration day—meaning it is the first day he sets foot in the Fullerwood Elementary School. Later that day, Irwin watches the coverage from the March on Washington with his siblings and his parents, both of whom are deaf. It is a day of adventure and excitement, but the beginning of an utterly harrowing year.

The other is Kathy Fentress, a 19-year-old rising sophomore at Duke University who grew up an hour south of St. Augustine in Ormond Beach. Kathy, who had participated in some of the first civil rights protests in St. Augustine that summer, takes a bus up to Washington to attend the March. She is the only white person on that bus. It proves a day of unparalleled inspiration for her, but she, too, is set up for a very challenging year ahead.

Chapter 6 is the first chapter of Part 2. It resumes the forward trajectory of the book after the March on Washington, covering the dates of August 29-September 3, 1963.

It focuses first on the coverage of the March in the local newspaper. Tellingly, the page 1 picture features a caption about the trash left behind after the march—rather than the significance of what had taken place.

Labor Day weekend in St. Augustine includes some protests at the Plaza. Police use dogs and cattle prods, and a number of people are arrested, including Robert Hayling.

The school year begins on Tuesday. At still-segregated Murray High School, the absence of the St. Augustine Four (Audrey Nell Edwards, JoeAnn Anderson, Willie Carl Singleton, and Samuel White) is conspicuous. At the Fullerwood Elementary School, fourth grader Irwin Brunson has his first day and begins to sense the difficulty of the journey ahead.

This chapter takes readers more deeply into the story of Irwin Brunson, the fourth grader who is one of the first Black children to integrate St. Augustine schools in 1963-64. As autumn unfolded, many of the city’s deepening racial tensions bled into the atmosphere at the Fullerwood School, where Irwin is feeling increasingly isolated and targeted by bullying classmates.

Readers learn more about Irwin’s parents, Charles and Ruby, and their journey as deaf people. Charles works as a chef at the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind, where he had met Ruby. Charles also works on the weekends, gardening and doing odd jobs for white neighbors, often bringing Irwin and his older brother Billy along. One of the people they work for is A.H. Tebault Jr., who runs the St. Augustine Record. The family gets a daily copy of the paper, and Irwin follows the growing trouble in the city through its pages: everything from the shooting death of William Kinard in Lincolnville to the mysterious conviction of Robert Hayling for assaulting Klansmen at the rally where he had been severely beaten.