Greg said: “I had lunch with old Renshaw yesterday. I talked him into renewing Fawcett Renshaw’s job offer.”

Marga said: “Oh, that’s wonderful! George, you’ll be a Washington lawyer after all!”

Jacky gave Greg a rare smile. “Thank you, Greg,” she said.

Greg lifted a warning finger. “There are conditions,” he said.

Marga said: “Oh, George will agree to anything reasonable. This is such a great opportunity for him.”

She meant for a black kid, George knew, but he did not protest. Anyway, she was right. “What conditions?” he said guardedly.

“Nothing that doesn’t apply to every lawyer in the world,” Greg replied. “You have to stay out of trouble, is all. A lawyer can’t get on the wrong side of the authorities.”

George was suspicious. “Stay out of trouble?”

“Just take no further part in any kind of protest movement, marches, demonstrations, like that. As a first-year associate, you’ll have no time for that stuff anyway.”

The proposal angered George. “So I would begin my working life by vowing never to do anything in the cause of freedom.”

“Don’t look at it that way,” said his father.

George bit back an irate retort. His family only wanted what was best for him, he knew. Trying to keep his voice neutral, he said: “Which way should I look at it?”

“Your role in the civil rights movement won’t be as a frontline soldier, that’s all. Be a supporter. Send a check once a year to the NAACP.” The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was the oldest and most conservative civil rights group: they had opposed Freedom Rides as being too provocative. “Just keep your head down. Let someone else go on the bus.”

“There might be another way,” said George.

“What’s that?”

“I could work for Martin Luther King.”

“Has he offered you a job?”

“I’ve received an approach.”

“What would he pay you?”

“Not much, I’m guessing.”

Lev said: “Don’t think you can turn down a perfectly good job, then come to me for an allowance.”

“Okay, Grandfather,” said George, although that was exactly what he had been thinking. “But I believe I’ll take the job anyway.”

His mother joined the argument. “Oh, George, don’t,” she said. She was going to say more, but the graduating students were called to line up for their degrees. “Go,” she said. “We’ll talk more later.”

George left the family group and found his place in line. The ceremony began, and he shuffled forward. He recalled working at Fawcett Renshaw last summer. Mr. Renshaw had thought himself heroically liberal for hiring a black law clerk. But George had been given work that was demeaningly easy even for an intern. He had been patient and looked for an opportunity, and one had come. He had done a piece of legal research that won a case for the firm, and they had offered him a job on graduation.

This kind of thing happened to him a lot. The world assumed that a student at Harvard must be intelligent and capable—unless he was black, in which case all bets were off. All his life George had had to prove that he was not an idiot. It made him resentful. If he ever had children, his hope was that they would grow up in a different world.