She garnered attention with her book 'The Good Times are Killing Me' about an interracial friendship between two young girls.

The difficulties of an interracial friendship come to a head on a raft.

But with most blacks and whites still living in separate communities, even interracial friendships remain quite uncommon.

Blacks and whites alike told stories of interracial friendships and marriages.

And at the March table, a white boy wrote "interracial friendships."

Little wonder that sixth grade, when ability grouping starts here, is also when many interracial friendships begin to come apart.

Some blacks said the interracial friendships that come easily as a child grow more difficult with time.

The film, which plays Oct. 8 and 10, depicts interracial friendship and romance at a Detroit high school where the tensions eventually explode.

As best friends, their relationship is frowned upon by society, in the same way that interracial friendships in the South were thought of before 1960, but in reverse.

Some who had never shared so much as a cup of tea or a beer with a person of another race even formed interracial friendships.