John Kennedy was President when five young men, one of them white, sat in at a New Orleans lunch counter. The same five sat in at the Tulane University cafeteria three months later. The University didn't change its "whites only" policy, nor did Woolworth's, but in May 1961, the Parish School Board announced they would open the Orleans public school system "a grade at a time" to children of all races.
Wood came to New Orleans on his motorcycle looking for adventure. The first night, he crashed a hotel wedding reception, hustled a Bourbon Street strip joint, was swept up in a police raid, got a part-time job as an animal caretaker, and met the women of his dreams--all three of them.
For a quarter of a century, Professor Mason lived in New Orleans hiding from life. All he wanted was to protect his daughters, though he didn't know how to begin. For Mason as well as Wood, the integration movement is an intrusion, at best scenery glimpsed from a passing train.
Can they really be one and the same person?
