Who Shot Johnny?
...I am at once repulsed and fascinated by the bullet, which remains lodged in his spine (having done all the damage it can do, the doctors say). The wound is undramatic- small, neat and perfectly centered- an impossibly pink pit surrounded by an otherwise undisturbed expanse of mahogany. Johnny has asked me several times to describe it but politely declines to look in the mirror I hold for him....
African American lawyer and essayist. Raised in St. Louis, Missouri, Dickerson earned degrees from the University of Maryland and Harvard Law School. She has been an officer in the U.S. Air Force, a senior editor at U.S. News and World Report, and a lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. She is a Senior Fellow at the New American Foundation in Washington, D.C. Her writing has appeared in the New Republic, the New York Times, and the Nation, among other periodicals; she is also a blogger for Mother Jones. Her books, focusing on the role of race in American life, include the memoir An American Story (2000) and The End of Blackness (2004). See also debradickerson.com. 