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CHAPTER 1 A Typical African American and a U.S. Citizen My early life was typical for a Southern, rural African American born in the United States in 1922. My father, mother, two brothers, one sister, and I lived on a farm as sharecroppers for a large landowner. Our house was situated near the Colorado River, so close in fact that on occasion I could hear the roar of the flowing water, and at times the water would rise and creep dangerously near our house. During one such episode I asked my father, “What are rivers and where do they come from?” Despite having had only a fourth-grade education, he summed up the intricacies of rivers using his own language, combined with a surprisingly vast knowledge of rivers both in the United States and throughout the world. He had such detailed information that he must have had an excellent geography teacher. I remember hearing my parents having conversations about field work from a time when I must have been about five years old, but I do not recall going to a field at this very early age, even though I must have spent much of my time there. However, some memories are extremely vivid. I remember my brother and sister hiding in a closet one day in fear of a wild animal entering our house. We had a barn and a feedlot where Daddy kept his work mules and our farm equipment, which consisted of a plow and a seed planter. My mother had a round, black iron pot under which she would build a fire to wash our clothes. She kept a small iron bar nearby that she used as a poker to stir our clothes while they boiled. In the evenings, primarily on weekends, other sharecroppers would come to our house, and along with my dad, would engage in target practice with 22-caliber rifles. With what I am sure today would be rated as marksman aim, they practiced and entertained themselves by shooting match stems off posts. They also put their skills to practical use by hunting rabbits, squirrels, and other wild animals as sources of meat. Life was simple here—hard field work offset by small gatherings as a source of some pleasure. 6 CHAPTER 1 There is, however, one event I can remember that in hindsight could have caused a devastating blow to my family. Apparently, as many young children do, I had a bad habit of always putting things in my mouth, such as pennies and anything tiny and handy that I could get my hands on. My mother was constantly scolding me for this habit. One night, despite the warnings, I sat on our back porch with an open safety pin in my mouth taking in the adult goings-on. Suddenly, a decayed board broke and I fell through to the ground. With the impact of hitting the ground, I swallowed the open safety pin, lodging it in my throat with the open portion facing the front of my mouth. When my mother heard my gagging, she screamed and started calling to my dad, who was in the feedlot with our work mules. He rushed to me, jammed his fingers into my already open mouth, and pulled the pin out, flesh and all. In spite of my mouth being full of blood, my dad filled it with lard from a slaughtered pig. The bleeding soon stopped, and my throat and mouth healed with no apparent permanent damage. No more things went to my mouth after this mishap, and a possible disaster was diverted; but this seemingly tranquil life was soon to be plagued with upheaval of a more frightening kind. Two of the sharecroppers were white and lived on farms adjoining those of black sharecroppers. This caused them to share some of the weekend shooting pleasures of the black sharecroppers. I heard my dad tell my mother about a rumor floating around the farms that there was some kind of sexual activity going on between one of the white sharecroppers and the wife of a black sharecropper named Mit Welburn. When word spread that the sexual sharing was mutual and that Mit was having an affair with the same white sharecropper’s wife (a sort of spouse-swapping arrangement), white sharecroppers and farmers from the surrounding communities became hostile and organized a group to catch and lynch Mit. The mob surrounded Mit’s house and got close enough to him to...

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