requiescat in pace

I just heard (over facebook) that one of my students from my first year was killed in a car accident. He was seventeen.

The local paper up there has his picture on the front page, and two articles. I am surprised to learn from them that he had transferred this year to the private academy. The academy was founded when the white community fled the public school system upon its forced integration, and there may be some subtext in the articles (and some more explicit racial attention in the user comments below one of them).

The decision to transfer, says the article, "came after a lot of soul searching and praying about bettering the education" of Michael and his younger siblings. "He wanted to improve his grades and his chances of continuing his education at a higher level," and, "[e]veryone at North Delta welcomed him and his family with open arms."

The paper reports that he, "leaves a powerful legacy at the [academy]." According to the headmaster: “When my first child was born, my pastor shared an important lesson with me, telling me that God gives a parent children not just for what we can teach them, but mainly for what they can teach us [. . . . I]t is clear to me that Michael was sent to North Delta School because of the wonderful lessons he has taught us.”


Michael was surely a handful. I wrote him up and sent him out of my room many times, and had several conferences with one or the other of his parents. He was also exceptionally, unusually bright. I've had more than 400 students now (probably 500 if you count summer school) and he had without doubt one of the sharpest minds among them.

He died when his car hit a tree in the middle of the night on a road I often took in the middle of the night, on my way to or from friends deeper in the Delta, or blues shows in Clarksdale. It's one lane each way, and long and dark, and cotton fields and cotton fields, and hard to take slow. Michael sure did always get bored fast. I wish there could have been more for him in the world.