Written during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, Toni Cade Bambara's short story "The Lesson" tells the story of a young African-American girl named Sylvia and the important life lesson that she learns one day while on a trip to a toy store in New York. Her neighbor, Miss Moore, brings Sylvia and a group of her friends to F.A.O. Schwarz and while there, they come face to face with the injustices they face because of their backgrounds. Miss Moore does this to teach them a lesson, one that she feels that they need to learn in order to succeed in life and overcome any obstacles they may face. Bambara identifies with race through class and demographics, using a trip to a pricey New York toy store to expose Sylvia and her group of friends to the reality of their classed society. Sylvia tells us "Then we check out that we on Fifth Avenue and everybody dressed up in stockings. One lady in a fur coat, hot as it is. White folks crazy." (89). She discovers that the rich, upper class whites don't dress like African Americans, even though the weather is the same. She realizes that they have money and a tendency to flaunt just how wealthy they are. "'Must be rich people shop here,' say Q.T. 'You are a very bright boy,' say Flyboy. 'What was your first clue?'" (92). One of the children in the group was able to identify with the demographic of the area, recognizing that only people with status and wealth would be able to buy the expensive toys in the store. Bambara gives the reader an insight about the 1970s and what life was like in both societies. White people (those in the upper class) could easily afford the costly toys at FAO Schwarz, while the African American society (including Sylvia and her friends) could not. Sylvia herself recognizes a certain aspect of behavior in White society as she compares being inside the toy store to being inside a Catholic church. She