And wasn’t I so much freer than any of them—born in England, in modern times—not to mention so much lighter, so much straighter of nose, so much less likely to be mistaken for the very essence of Blackness itself? What could possibly stop me traveling on? Yet when I sat down in my own school hall, on a stifling July day, outside of normal school hours—an unnatural time to be at school—and opened those test papers, to read through the opportunity my mother wished I would “grab with both hands,” a great, sullen fury came over me, I didn’t feel like traveling on their train, wrote a few words
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