Six-year-old Yolanda Gabrielle, escorted by her mother, becomes the target of the taunts of a crowd of shouting segregationists as she makes her way to school, one of the few white children to continue attending after four African-American students were admitted to her first-grade class. Tessie Prevost, also 6, receives the protection of U.S. Marshals to enter and leave the nearly empty school, as do the other three African-American children. The ugly crowd swarms the Gabrielle’s home after school, and Yolanda’s father comes home only to tell his wife that he’s been provoked by angry co-workers to quit his job.