Washington Post: Fletcher's Stairway to Success
 

[url]http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/09/AR2007040901116.html[/url]

It is late in the afternoon in the mid-1980s and a young boy is racing across Superior Avenue. In his hand he carries a basketball and he flies over the curb, down Norwood Road toward the E.J. Kovacic Recreation Center, a building he and his friends call "the Rec." The trip from his home to the Rec is not long, just a few blocks, but once you cross Superior, everything changes. Here the houses are filled with white people. The boy and his friends are black. And there is a good chance that on this day -- like almost every day -- they will be chased simply for being in the wrong place.