Published: April 1, 1996

Unconventional Wisdom

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Dalrymple Boulevard begins just yards from the Mississippi River and meanders northward, eventually becoming Park Boulevard. It once separated south Baton Rouge's white community from its poorer, black neighborhoods. In Jim Crow days, if you were black, you could not cross the boulevard after 6 p.m. And city police patrolled the area's graceful, tree-lined streets just to make sure you didn't try.

Lisa Delpit was born on the wrong side of that dividing line. The Baton Rouge she knew as a child was a place where her mother could not try on a hat in the department stores downtown. When she and her siblings visited the pediatrician, they had to enter through the back door. Black children could not go to...