ABSTRACT
Josh had finished his musical apprenticeship and was ready to embark on a solo career, but he was still only in his midteens and for the moment chose to return to Greenville. For the first time, he relaxed into the more or less normal life of a small-town teenager. He enrolled at Sterling High School, a block from the Humphreys’ house, though apparently his classes were only at a sixth-grade level (Sterling seems to have been the school for all older black students, regardless of scholastic grade). He did not stay long enough to graduate, but several of the remaining black Greenville residents in his age group remember him. His years on the road, though they had interfered with his academic achievement, had given him a degree of worldliness that was exotic and impressive to kids whose own experience did not reach beyond the surrounding farms, and his musical abilities further increased his popularity.
