School desegregation is a front-page news item in the fall of 1957, when nine Black teenagers try to attend an all-white high school in Little Rock, Arkansas. A showdown between the state and federal governments ends only when President Eisenhower sends Army troops to escort the Black students through the school’s doors. Just weeks later, Russia launches Sputnik, the first artificial satellite. The American press blames the United States’ failure to keep up with the Soviets partly on an education system that is more concerned with denying Black children a decent education than with preparing male and female students of all races for careers as scientists and engineers.

At the Allen School for Girls, a private all-Black school in Asheville, North Carolina, Christine Mann (no relation to Miriam Mann) has started her senior year. She has just turned fifteen. She showed unusual curiosity from a young age, learning how to maintain her bicycle and taking apart her talking dolls to see how they worked. The next spring, she is class valedictorian. She wants to attend a historically Black college, but not any of those her older siblings went to. In August of 1958, she begins her studies at Hampton Institute. There she will get to know Joylette Goble, Katherine’s daughter.