Lakewood High School
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There were troubles at Lakewood High School in the years just before I entered, when my brother, Bret, was a student there. About a hundred Black students attended the school at the time, comprising less than 3% of the school’s 3,800 total enrollment. They were part of the Long Beach Unified School District’s racial balancing program. Every day, the Black students rode 30-minutes on a bus to and from downtown Long Beach — a long trip that must have seemed worth it because their families volunteered for the program. But when they arrived at school, the Black students were sometimes met with taunts and threats.