I had to live my life as I saw it.

I was sick of pretending, sick of selling my feelings for a dollar a day.

I was fifteen years old when I began to hate people.

I sat there listening to "We Shall Overcome," looking out of the window at the passing Mississippi landscape.

But courage was growing in me too. Little by little it was getting harder and harder for me not to speak out.

Their (the teenagers) way of thinking seemed to have been "God helps those that help themselves" instead of "When we get to heaven things will be different, there won't be no black or white," which was what my grandmother thought.

Before, the woods had always done so much for me. Once I could actually go out into the woods and communicate with God, or Nature or something. Now that something didn’t come through. It was just not there anymore. More than ever I began to wonder whether God actually existed. Maybe God changed as the individual changed, or perhaps grew as one grew.