In the history class, a young boy rose to ask Charles McDew whether the course would cover “the War for Southern Independence.” “The war for what?” McDew replied. He was puzzled until he realized that this was one of the diehard Confederate terms for the Civil War, and that even the young Negro crusaders in his class had absorbed unconsciously a great deal of the Southern point of view. Moses, McDew, and the other teachers knew they faced obstacles as subtle as they were enormous.
