As a little boy, Millard was constantly bullied and alienated because he was colored. He lived in a primarily white area that was on the wealthier side of middle class.

One day, an older boy named Henry punched him in the face, pushed him to the ground, and spit on him while Henry's friends laughed.

"You don't belong here, n*****." Henry said. "Get lost."

Millard ran home crying, his eye bruised purple. His father asked him what had happened, crouching to meet his son's eyes, hands on his cheeks. The little boy managed to tell him between gasps and sobs.

Mr. Nullings was greatly disturbed by this, albeit not surprised. He got Millard's eye cleaned off and gave him a wet rag to hold against it. The boy was silent now.

"Papa?" He asked as his father turned to go back to his study.

His father stopped and looked back at him. "Yes?"

"Am I worth more than the color of my skin?"

Mr. Nullings' eyes grew wide and he crouched next to the boy again. "Of course you are! Don't you let anyone tell you you're not."

"B-but they never listen to me... They act like they're better than me because they're white and I'm not." He adjusted his rag to the other side of his swollen eye.

His father looked around, stood up to retrieve a book from a shelf, and handed the book to his son, who looked at it, puzzled.

"You go read that book cover to cover, you hear me?" Mr. Nullings said.

Millard looked at him, furrowing his brow. "Why?"

"Because if you read that, and you keep reading books, then you'll be ten, a hundred, or even a thousand times smarter than those boys. Then they'll have to listen to you." The man explained.

Millard opened the book and looked down at the pages. "So reading this can do that?"

"It can." His father smiled widely, then ruffled his hair. "Now you go run along; I gave work to do." He waited for his son to nod excitedly and run down the hall with the book clutched to his chest, then he disappeared into his study.

Millard read that book twice cover to cover, so beginning his love of knowledge.