Sublime

The colored boys frothed and speculated and stared off in class, slacked off in the sweet potato fields. Mulling the prospect of a black champion: One of them victorious for a change, and those who kept you down whittled to dust, seeing stars.

Gallien still held a picture in his mind of the odd, congenial youth striding down the trail in boots two sizes too big for him—Gallien’s own boots, the old brown Xtratufs he’d persuaded the kid to take.

Nnamdi Azikiwe was a miner in West Virginia, and as an activist in Nigeria, he stood with miners against colonial authorities.