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10. Showdown on Main Two types of people are interested in me. The first type wants to see me live long, happy, and successfully. The second would like to see me suffering, unhappy, or dead. It is the second type I intend to disappoint. J. A. De Laine By the end of the fiery Monday night meeting, Daddy was a hero. The people’s spirits were lifted and their determination strengthened. Lee Richardson, the sharecropper whose boss had sent a message to my father, declared, “If Rev. can take a stand like that, I sure can keep my name on that petition.” Rev. Richburg took the floor before dismissal, cautioning the people to use discretion when talking about the night’s events. Calmly he also instructed them, “Let Rev. De Laine, who you elected to speak for you, do the talking. But don’t sign anything unless Rev. De Laine calls all of us together to act in concert.” Tuesday, December 13, 1949 The opposition—men my father accused of hovering “on the border of being educational and political gangsters”—quickly learned what transpired, and the very next night they held their own meeting. Although the number of people attending that meeting and what transpired are unknown, it’s clear Daddy’s strong talk had made them furious. They apparently decided my father had gotten too big for his britches. Assembled in one of the most gracious houses in town, Summerton’s guardians of education in School District 22, perhaps along with other town fathers, devised a horrendous plan to silence the black man who dared to defy the KKK so boldly. The plan may have begun to take shape earlier in the day. My father was told that some white men had tried to recruit a workman at Mr. Carson’s lumber mill to lure him out of the house. Once he was outside in the dark, the dirty work was to be done by someone else. The worker refused the offer, declaring, “No, sir. Not me. I ain’t going near Rev’s house at night. Anybody who go to that house after dark want to die and I don’t want to die like that. I ain’t gonna get killed that way. If he’ll shoot the Ku Klux Klan, you know he’ll shoot me.” Showdown on Main 99 After the failure to find a double-crossing rat at the mill, a diabolical plan was devised in the gracious room. Thursday, December 15, 1949 With only ten days remaining until Christmas, it was downright cold. Daddy’s routine was to work in his study until about ten, then collect the mail from the post office and go to the farm. He needed to clear stumps from a field where he had recently cut trees for timber. Although the temperature inched up a few degrees as the sun rose higher, it was still cold at ten-thirty. Daddy pulled on his coat and gloves, backed the car out of the garage, and headed for the post office. On Main Street the traffic moved along as usual. A car or two waited for a green light at the town’s single traffic signal. Truckers who had slept upstairs at Godwin’s Hotel were, by this time, miles and miles away from Summerton, their bed linens already being laundered by women whose children went to Scott’s Branch School. Farther along a few cars were parked, one close to the entrance of S. E. Rogers’s law office. Stores had been open for business since nine, but the cold street was almost deserted. A couple of people walked briskly along, intent on reaching their destinations and getting inside. Across the street from the post office, six white men stood, smoking and talking, coat collars turned up and shoulders hunched against the cold. A vehicle rolled past the post office and Carrigan’s Sinclair station, headed west toward the “colored” side of town. To strangers whose cars passed along the sleepy street, Summerton was only an interruption in their driving speed, a place where something of importance had never happened—and never would. My father pulled into the angled parking space, barely noticing the men on the street. His mind was busy planning the rest of his day; even the cold had stopped commanding his attention. His pistol lay on the seat beside him. It was always there nowadays, ready to be...

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