If Everyone Checked Their Assumptions, We Might Never Have Needed a Black History Month to Remember How Great People Are

By Kerrigan McCarthy
Third Grade, Hillendale Elementary School
Hendersonville, North Carolina

Kerrigan McCarthy

Back in the 1960’s it was the first time that a certain community pool let black people go swimming. That day a girl named Mary Stewart and her brother Paul went to the pool. Mary was 11 and Paul was 7 and they wanted to go swimming even though there were only a few other black kids there. Paul started to go near the deep end but didn’t really know how to swim. He started to drown so Mary was trying and trying to help him but she was too small to stand in the deep end. There were four white lifeguards and many white adults but no one would help. They waited for the black ambulance company to help Paul. On the way to the hospital he died. Mary felt sad because she thought it wasn’t the time for him to die. Back then, when those lifeguards didn’t help, they probably assumed that if they touched a black person it would harm them.

My friend Mary was the girl in the story. She inspires me because she taught me how assumptions about people who are different from you can hurt. Mary went to college for a PhD about assumptions and went into business to teach it. She found out that 70% of our assumptions about others are wrong. Mary used her sad time to teach the world to love.

Now I know to always recheck my beliefs again and again. Sometimes your fate is in someone else’s hands.

Kerrigan wrote this essay as his entry for a Black History Month contest.

(Uploaded June 2004)