IN 1980, THE year I ran for president, the country was mired in inflation, the malaise of the Carter administration was about to be overtaken by Ronald Reagan's Morning in America, and like a lot of the country, Ooltewah High School was swept up in disco fever. Tucked next to White Oak Mountain, about 20 miles outside Chattanooga, my school had something else in common with America: a stark division between the white majority and the black minority. Alone among the three candidates for school president, I had a foot on both sides of that divide. My father was in...