We are products of the Los Angeles public schools, longtime residents of the city, and most importantly friends. We became friends even though the odds were stacked against us. It happened in 1969 when the two of us — one black, one white — ended up at school together as the Los Angeles Unified School District finally began to confront
its history of segregation. Race relations in L.A. were tense then. The scars were still fresh from the six-day-long 1965 Watts riots, and at L.A. high schools the races were, for the most part, separated.
Read more in the Los Angeles Times.