Unlikely pioneer: Parker High's first white graduate

From there, they moved to a predominantly African-American housing project and then to a house in the west end. Crystal is the only breadwinner in the family. She works at Subway sandwich shop most nights until 10:30 and is often up past midnight doing homework.

"She's a hero, but these kids are all heroes," says Gene Edelman, one of Crystal's former teachers at Lincoln Middle School.

Her formula for peaceful coexistence as a minority is simple: Act natural. "You've got a handful of people who have hostilities [toward whites] still, but when I think of black people here, they're at ease, just laid-back," she says. "It's when you start tensing up ... and start acting the way they expect you to act, that's when they start kicking at you."

It hasn't always been easy. She's been called "Q-tip," "snow bunny," and "cotton ball." The words seem harmless enough, but they stung, she says. They made her question whether people were really as accepting as they seemed.

Technically speaking, Parker High was integrated in the 1980s, and some white students have attended in the past. But it wasn't until last year that the school graduated its first nonblack student, a Latino.

Once the largest black school in the US, with more than 3,700 students, Parker counts among its alumni former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Oscar Adams Jr., Tony Award-winning actress Nell Carter, and Alma Johnson Powell, wife of former Secretary of State Colin Powell. Today it has a student body of 950 that endures shabbier facilities and a much more limited curriculum than those at the high school in nearby Mountain Brook, Ala., one of the richest enclaves in the South where the student body is 98 percent white. "Our school is struggling because our neighborhood is dying," says Principal Joe Martin.

If choice is the trend, Mr. Martin says, Crystal's precedent could begin to change enrollment patterns and, in the long run, help revive Parker's legacy.

Others, though, are less sure about what her graduation portends for the school.

It "is important," says Marvin Lynn, an education professor at the University of Maryland in College Park. "My concern is that it's one person, and in this society people follow the numbers. A lot of people will see this as more of a fluke."

Classmates are proud of Crystal

Classmates give Crystal credit for courage. "We're proud of Crystal," says fellow senior Jessica Warren. "We've had other white students, but they all left. She's the only one who had the courage to stay."

Crystal can be unassuming, but she wasn't shy about asserting herself at Parker. She joined ROTC as a freshman and is going into the Army this summer. She tried out for volleyball but didn't make the cut. She was a member of the book club and the drill team. At the last minute, she overcame her resistance to the prom and attended last weekend, staying out until 3 a.m. at the IHOP. None of her classmates seems to mind the recent attention on her graduation. Quite the opposite, Crystal says.

"Everybody's kind of feeding off it. It's kind of making them proud and making me proud, where we're realizing we've come a little bit of a way ... and that maybe there might be a change sometime soon."

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