When the boys were children, [their mom] sent them off alone to spend summer days on Chicago's Foster Avenue Beach, which they reached through a tunnel beneath Lake Shore Drive. After a few days in the sun Ari and Rahm could pass for African-Americans, which led to the occasional dustup on a beach that was segregated in custom and practice. "Certain people--mostly white males between the ages of 10 and 15--made it their business to enforce the unwritten whites-only rule," Ezekiel writes. "When they called my brothers niggers and tried to bully us off the beach, we--naturally--refused to move. Instead, one of us would answer, 'You can't make me leave.'" If shouting didn't work, the Emanuel boys had no qualms about throwing punches. "We were city kids, not anti-war activists."