A Friendship for Today

The only problem I ever had with this book was its title and that wasn't resolved until almost the last page. Once I understood what it was referring to, I could appreciate it. Either I was being dense, or I had never heard a friendship referred to in that way before. I will clear that up right now. Some friendships are forever and always and others are for a season. A Friendship for Today by Patricia C. McKissack is about a friendship for a season. A friendship developed out of need and common circumstances despite the fact that it was never meant to happen.

My favorite part about this book is that it is semiautobiographical. The heroine, Rosemary Patterson, is based upon McKissack herself. Nearly everything else has been fictionalized "in order not to embarrass anyone and also to tell a good story." The only character that is entirely non-fiction is Rags, the cat, to whom this book is dedicated.

This book takes place during the year after the Supreme Court ruled against segregation in Brown v. Board of Education. Border states like Missouri immediately moved to close the "colored" schools and build new schools for integration. Rosemary's elementary school was closed and all of her friends were split up between the old whites-only schools and the newly built Robertson school. Rosemary and her best friend, J.J., are both to attend Robertson, but Rosemary is left to be the only colored student in her 6th-grade classroom when J.J. contracts polio.

The situation worsens when Rosemary discovers that she is assigned to sit next to Tasteless Grace Hamilton, a white girl from Dead End. Dead End is a section of houses where several white families live and are surrounded by the colored community. Grace and her family have made it firmly clear that they believe coloreds are inferior to whites. It quickly becomes apparent that Grace is shunned by her classmates as much as, if not more than, Rosemary. Grace is poor white-trash and therefore untouchable.

Because both Rosemary and Grace start as outsiders, they become convenient friends. They learn to stand up for each other and in some circumstances protect each other when necessary. Grace chooses to be Rosemary's friend against her family's wishes. Rosemary chooses to be Grace's friend against her better judgement. Turns out they both have something to learn. Grace has been raised to be arrogant, stubborn and  subservient whereas Rosemary has been raised to be "proud but not arrogant, firm but not stubborn, humble but not subservient."

Their teacher, the unprejudiced Mrs. Denapolis, saves the year by making tolerance the word of the year. She shares her own immigrant history and encourages the children to focus on embracing their differences. The class is quite diverse. Stuart is Jewish; Katherine is wealthy; Jason is Chinese; Grace is dirt-poor. Mrs. Denapolis runs a classroom that survives integration because of a positive attitude. McKissack also shows how a child is negatively affected by a prejudiced teacher through one of Rosemary's old school friends who attends a different school.

This book is under 200 pages, but it is full of so much history, and yet it is easy to digest because it is so beautifully written. Rosemary is a stunning character. She lives through so much with a great deal of grace. I had never considered ... The adults, Rosemary's parents, worked and fought so hard against "separate but equal." They understand the benefits and consequences of integration. They understand the quality of education that was being denied them. And yet, the children, like Rosemary, are the one's who must carry the burden without understanding the "why". Rosemary loved her old school. She didn't really understand why it had to close or why the Supreme Court had to "okay" the issue if the whites really wanted to attend school with coloreds. Her old school would have made room for some whites ... Innocence thrown to the lions.