costing my parents. Craig’s teachers were brown-robed priests who went by
“Father.” About 80 percent of his classmates were white, many of them Irish
Catholic kids who came from outlying working-class white neighborhoods. By
the end of his junior year, he was already being courted by Division I college
teams, a couple of which would probably offer him a free ride. Still, my parents
held fast to the idea that he should keep all options open, aiming to get himself
into the best college possible. They alone would worry about the cost.
My high school experience blessedly cost us nothing except for bus fare. I
was lucky enough to test into Chicago’s first magnet high school, Whitney M.
Young High School, which sat in what was then a run-down area just west of the
Loop and was, after a few short years in existence, on its way to becoming a top
public school in the city. Whitney Young was named for a civil rights activist and
had been opened in 1975 as a positive-minded alternative to busing. Located
squarely on the dividing line between the North and the South Sides of the city
and featuring forward-thinking teachers and brand-new facilities, the school was
designed as a kind of equal-opportunity nirvana, meant to draw high-performing
students of all colors. Admissions quotas set by the Chicago school board called
for a student body that would be 40 percent black, 40 percent white, and 20
percent Hispanic or other. But the reality of who enrolled looked slightly
different. When I attended, about 80 percent of the students were nonwhite.
Just getting to school for my first day of ninth grade was a whole new
odyssey, involving ninety minutes of nerve-pummeling travel on two different
city bus routes as well as a transfer downtown. Hauling myself out of bed at five
o’clock that morning, I’d put on all new clothes and a pair of nice earrings,
unsure of how any of it would be received on the other end of my bus trek. I’d
eaten breakfast, having no idea where lunch would be. I said good-bye to my
parents, unclear on whether I’d even still be myself at the end of the day. High
school was meant to be transformative. And Whitney Young, for me, was pure
frontier.
The school itself was striking and modern, like no school I’d ever seen—
made up of three large, cube-shaped buildings, two of them connected by a
fancy-looking glass skyway that crossed over the Jackson Boulevard thoroughfare.
The classrooms were open concept and thoughtfully designed. There was a
whole building dedicated to the arts, with special rooms for the choir to sing and
bands to play, and other rooms that had been outfitted for photography and
pottery. The whole place was built like a temple for learning. Students streamed
through the main entryway, purposeful already on day one.