Summary

Emily Raboteau took her two children with her husband to New York City’s oldest standing bridge on the Saturday after the massacre at Mother Emanuel AME church. The High Bridge was restored after forty years of abandonment. It was originally built in the mid-nineteenth century, and it connects Upper Manhattan to the Bronx by crossing the Harlem River. For many New Yorkers, the bridge was just a normal, blighted part of the city. Many did not expect it to be restored. During that summer, as the riots were in full force in Ferguson, Missouri, Raboteau thought about what, if anything, to tell her children about how to interact with the police. She asks herself when it is appropriate to discuss police brutality with her children. She also wonders at what age the conversation becomes absolutely necessary. At the time, in...