My Best Friend

At the age of seven years old, I met my first best friend. This was before I even knew the meaning of the word racism. He was about the same age as me, and he lived next door to my house. My mother was the first person to tell me about him. She told me that the people moving into the house next to ours had a child around my age. I couldn’t wait …

…to see how badly people can treat each other. Without him I might have grown to feel that it is okay to treat black people differently. He showed me how to turn away from a situation instead of using violence to try to solve it. My friend moved away, and we have never communicated to each other sense that day. Even without his presence, I still follow the lessons that he taught me about equality.