I Love You Maggie

John Kennedy was President when five young men, one of them white, sat in at a downtown New Orleans lunch counter. The same five sat in at the Tulane University cafeteria 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 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 Wood, the integration movement is of no more interest than scenery glimpsed from a passing train, like a sit-in at a five and dime, a meeting of the Congress on Racial Equality, Leander Perez at the Civic Auditorium, a Citizen's Council fund raiser in the Garden District, and a riot at an elementary school.