Footsteps shuffled on the stair/Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair/Spread out in fiery points/Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.

She was the teacher who lasciviously licked her thin lips each time she told our class that all black kids belonged in the trash baskets. How our little white classmates giggled under the psychedelic kick of these first trips on racism. ("Our Beloved Pauli," 1971)

Me black and beautiful’ was the first thing she taught me. Then she pointed to the policeman with the gun outside and taught me: ‘He pig.

His voice was right. She instantly remembered it. And his smell, his gait, his laugh. The way his beard abraded her cheek. All of it combined to shatter her self-possession. She could feel a massive stone seal being pried open and the first rays of light entering an ancient, almost forgotten tomb.

It was my teacher's genius, her quick sympathy, her loving tact
which made the first years of my education so beautiful. It was
because she seized the right moment to impart knowledge that made
it so pleasant and acceptable to me. She realized that a child's
mind is like a shallow brook which ripples and dances merrily
over the stony course of its education and reflects here a
flower, there a bush, yonder a fleecy cloud; and she attempted to
guide my mind on its way, knowing that like a brook it should be
fed by mountain streams and hidden springs, until it broadened
out into a deep river, capable of reflecting in its placid
surface, billowy hills, the luminous shadows of trees and the
blue heavens, as well as the sweet face of a little flower.
Any teacher can take a child to the classroom, but not every
teacher can make him learn. He will not work joyously unless he
feels that liberty is his, whether he is busy or at rest; he must
feel the flush of victory and the heart-sinking of disappointment
before he takes with a will the tasks distasteful to him and
resolves to dance his way bravely through a dull routine of
textbooks.
My teacher is so near to me that I scarcely think of myself apart
from her. How much of my delight in all beautiful things is
innate, and how much is due to her influence, I can never tell. I
feel that her being is inseparable from my own, and that the
footsteps of my life are in hers. All the best of me belongs to
her — there is not a talent, or an aspiration or a joy in me that
has not been awakened by her loving touch.

When I was a boy I was tremendously interested in scarecrows. They always seemed to my childish imagination as just about to wave their arms, straighten up and stalk across the field on their long legs. I lived on a farm, you know. It was natural then that my first character in this animated life series was the scarecrow, on whom I have taken revenge for all the mystic feeling he once inspired.