Soon I ranged out of Roxbury and began to explore Boston proper

　　Soon I ranged out of Roxbury and began to explore Boston proper. Historic buildings everywhere Iturned, and plaques and markers and statues for famous events and men. One statue in the BostonCommons astonished me: a Negro named Crispus Attucks, who had been the first man to fall in theBoston Massacre. I had never known anything like that.
　　I roamed everywhere. In one direction, I walked as far as Boston University. Another day, I took myfirst subway ride. When most of the people got off, I followed. It was Cambridge, and I circled allaround in the Harvard University campus. Somewhere, I had already heard of Harvard-though Ididn't know much more about it. Nobody that day could have told me I would give an address beforethe Harvard Law School Forum some twenty years later.
　　I also did a lot of exploring downtown. Why a city would have two big railroad stations-North Stationand South Station-I couldn't understand. At both of the stations, I stood around and watched peoplearrive and leave. And I did the same thing at the bus station where Ella had met me. My wanderingseven led me down along the piers and docks where I read plaques telling about the old sailing shipsthat used to put into port there.
　　In a letter to Wilfred, Hilda, Philbert, and Reginald back in Lansing, I told them about all this, andabout the winding, narrow, cobblestoned streets, and the houses that jammed up against each other.
　　Downtown Boston, I wrote them, had the biggest stores I'd ever seen, and white people's restaurantsand hotels. I made up my mind that I was going to see every movie that came to the fine, air-conditioned theaters.
　　 On Massachusetts Avenue, next door to one of them, the Loew's State Theater, was the huge, excitingRoseland State Ballroom. Big posters out in front advertised the nationally famous bands, white andNegro, that had played there. "COMING NEXT WEEK," when I went by that first time, was GlennMiller. I remember thinking how nearly the whole evening's music at Mason High School dances hadbeen Glenn Miller's records. What wouldn't that crowd have given, I wondered, to be standing whereGlenn Miller's band was actually going to play? I didn't know how familiar with Roseland I was goingto become.
　　Ella began to grow concerned, because even when I had finally had enough sight-seeing, I didn't stickaround very much on the Hill. She kept dropping hints that I ought to mingle with the "nice youngpeople my age" who were to be seen in the Townsend Drugstore two blocks from her house, and acouple of other places. But even before I came to Boston, I had always felt and acted toward anyonemy age as if they were in the "kid" class, like my younger brother Reginald. They had always lookedup to me as if I were considerably older. On weekends back in Lansing where I'd go to get away fromthe white people in Mason, I'd hung around in the Negro part of town with Wilfred's and Philbert'sset. Though all of them were several years older than me, I was bigger, and I actually looked olderthan most of them.
　　I didn't want to disappoint or upset Ella, but despite her advice, I began going down into the townghetto section. That world of grocery stores, walk-up flats, cheap restaurants, poolrooms, bars,storefront churches, and pawnshops seemed to hold a natural lure for me.