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157 Sis February 2008 After months of being stymied, I sat with the unresolved story until I felt a nudge to revisit a primary source, Aunt Sis. Maybe time had softened her resolve to keep the secret to herself. I wrote her a letter setting out my findings and asked if she would talk with me again. On Sunday, February 20, she called after writing out her response to my letter. She started the conversation by giving me some context for the time in which the shootings occurred. “You have to remember that Tom and Jay were barely home from World War II and they had trained hard and served in the war. Your daddy was only twenty-four, and Tom was twenty-two. If you do your research, you’ll find that the NAACP was all over Mississippi and they had lawyers ensconced in the state capitol in Jackson. Whatever versions you have acquired from Tommy and Lib are secondhand hearsay as far as I’m concerned. Likewise anything told you by the descendents of the victims. Everyone involved is deceased save your mother and me.” Sis did not know that two men were shot, she didn’t know that the incident had been in the newspapers, and she was told, by Bill, not to discuss it with anyone. “Okay. What I know to be true is that I was in transit by train from Columbia, Missouri, to Memphis at the time of the incident. I left by train for Leland as my mother could not come for me in Memphis as had been planned. In Leland, I was met by Bill. I, of course, knew something was wrong. For the next hour Bill told chapter fifteen sis 158 me what had happened—in detail—and cautioned me about the fact that the NAACP was all around and that that was causing a lot of concern and it was best to keep it to ourselves and not discuss it. When I got home, Mother was in her bed with a black handkerchief over her head and Tom was in the boys’ room sitting up in bed. I don’t remember any discussion of what had happened over the joyful Christmas holiday.” The word “joyful,” spoken with gutteral emphasis, was not the only word used in sarcasm. “I do remember spending a lot of time with Betsy next door visiting with my nephew. I went to all of the Christmas parties and dances and tried to stay removed from the scene, as it were. Not one friend or social acquaintance ever broached the subject with me. Then or ever. And in that time everyone respected personal privacy among their families and friends. They did not gossip about each other’s bad times. We lived in a very closed and protected society in which we were very, very much the minority. I do not know where you are trying to go with all of this mystery as you call it, but I would caution you not to pursue this. Your search for blame may well lie in your own guilt in regard to your father. “Bill has four daughters who live in Mississippi and our family owns the family land and the gin property in Anguilla. I don’t think it is appropriate or admirable to put their well-being and sensitivities in jeopardy by your desire to shed light on this darkness , as you put it, in our family’s past. I’d just let it go, Molly. I think you are barking up the family tree. I would pray that out of respect for me and your own children and all of us who are proud to be roots and branches of the Fields tree, you will leave us at peace even if you can’t find peace in yourself. “I don’t know what your mother told you but she was the only one there but she wasn’t an eyewitness so everybody else is gone. She was a young woman of twenty-four, a young woman in a strange land and probably hysterical. She was there, I wasn’t. Judging from my seventy years’ experience of Miss Fields and her boys, I’m pretty sure what happened. I am almost positive that Bill was not on the site at the time the trigger was pulled but he did come upon the results of the actions immediately thereafter. [18.221.98.71] Project MUSE (2024-04-20 11...

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