“Well, it’s too late to fix what’s already done,” I said. “Hope you’re not going by Moe in Canada.”
“No. Least I’ve learned that much. Cassie, if they find me, arrest me in Canada, do I have to come back? Is there any way to fight the extradition?”
“Well, we can try to fight it, Moe, but there are international treaties on extradition and if there’s an arrest warrant for you in Canada, Canada is supposed to turn you over.”
Moe shook his head in despair. “Murder. That’s what they charged me with, Cassie. I didn’t murder anybody.”
“Mississippi can charge whatever it wants, Moe! You beat Statler, Leon, and Troy pretty bad and now they’re claiming Troy died because of the injuries you inflicted on him.”
“They had it coming!” Moe’s voice was hard and the look in his eyes harder still.
“I don’t dispute that, but the state of Mississippi will. We could contend that Troy’s death was aggravated assault, a result of the beating, at the worst manslaughter, but not murder, and if you have to go back to Mississippi, that’s what we’ll argue. We all know you can’t get a fair trial in Mississippi.” Lawyer Tate and I had discussed this at some length. There had been a number of cases in which blacks were accused of attacking whites, and in the outcome of each case, the black defendants were convicted and sentenced either to life or death row. In addition, there was the whole matter of Moe not having the opportunity of a trial before a jury of his peers. Any jury selected would be all white. I told Moe this. “We’ll use these facts to fight the extradition and the charges. There are also charges for hitting Statler and Leon with the crowbar. We’ll fight those charges too.”
“I’d have to go back to Mississippi to change the charges?”
I was honest with Moe. “More than likely.”
Moe looked to the peak of the pine. “I can’t go back to jail, Cassie. I was jailed when Stacey and I ran off to work the cane fields. Now, I’m sorry about Troy, I truly am, but I can’t go back.”
“You keep taking risks like coming here, you will.”
Moe kept looking at the tree. “Thing is, I want to go home. I want to see my daddy. He can’t travel, but I still can.”
“Don’t even think about going down there, Moe. The best thing for now is just staying in Canada and not drawing attention to yourself. That means not crossing that border again. Let Mississippi make the next move. If they issue an international extradition request on you and you’re arrested in Canada, we’ll fight the extradition on the grounds that you can’t get a fair trial in Mississippi since you won’t be facing trial before your peers, but in front of a white jury. But like I said, most likely Canada will still turn you over.”
Moe now looked at me. “New year, new decade coming up, Cassie. They say change is coming. Hope it’s good change for me.”
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
We walked back to the house, and I saw Big Ma standing at the breakfast room window, watching us. As we entered the house she turned and gave Moe a nod, then called to me. Moe smiled at her, crossed the kitchen, and went into the living room. “It’s too late now, Cassie,” Big Ma said when we were alone.
“What do you mean?”
“He taken now. You waited too long.”
“Big Ma, what did I tell you before? I never wanted Moe.”
“Well, you sho ain’t gonna have him now. You know I don’t hold with comin’ ’tween husband and wife.”
“Well, I don’t hold with it either. Moe and I were just talking about the arrest warrant and extradition.”
Big Ma grunted. “Make sho that’s all y’all talkin’ ’bout. That boy, he ain’t over you yet. Maybe never will be.”
“Ah, Big Ma,” I said, taking off my coat. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Gotta worry,” countered Big Ma. “You need to be married again.”
Stacey had called Christopher-John and Man to come over. Their families weren’t with them. All of us sat talking late into the night. It was past midnight when Moe and his wife and Dwayne left. If it hadn’t been for Myrtis and Dwayne being with him, I believe Moe would have stayed the night. He did not want to leave.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
I had waited for Stacey to say something about Guy, but it was Dee who brought up the subject. “Robert told me about that friend of yours in Boston,” she said when we had a few minutes alone in the kitchen. “You serious about him?”
I ignored her question. “What did Stacey tell you?”
“Said that he figured something was going on between you two. Something outside of marriage.”
I became defensive. “Stacey wasn’t there long enough to know anything. He just jumped to conclusions because he saw a white man in my apartment. He just got angry and left.”
“Well, what did you expect? You know how he feels about colored women being with white men. You know how they all feel.”
I took a moment before responding. “He tell Christopher-John and Man?”
Dee shook her head. “No, just me. Told me to talk to you.”
“What? He can’t talk to me himself?”
“Says he’d get too angry.”
“Well, Dee, you can tell him you did talk to me. You can tell him too that I know plenty of white people in Boston. I work with them every day. Sometimes I go to their houses, sometimes they come to my place. We go out together, we enjoy each other. That’s my life in Boston.”
“And the man who was in your apartment, he’s a special part of it?”
“He’s a good friend.”
“Good friend, huh? Don’t hedge with me, Cassie. Give me more credit than that.”
I was silent, then I said, “Dee, did Stacey tell you that man he met wants to marry me?”
Now it was Dee who was silent before she said, “No, Stacey didn’t tell me. But if you don’t want this family torn apart, you better make sure that a friend is all this white man stays.”
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
Stacey didn’t say one word to me about Guy, but he did speak to me about Rie. “She wants to go south to school. She says she wants to go to one of the Negro schools, not one of the schools up here. She talk to you?”
We were seated at the breakfast nook table. I pushed my empty coffee cup back a bit and folded my arms on the table. “She did, some.”
“I don’t understand it,” Stacey admitted. “All I wanted to do was get away from down there, and here she is wanting to go back down there to school.”
“And you don’t want her to go?”
“It’s not that I don’t want her to go. It’s that I’m afraid for her to go.”
“You’ll always be afraid for her, Stacey.”
“But going south?” Stacey shook his head. “I just don’t understand it. She wants to go to a Negro school so bad, she could go to Wilberforce or Central State right here in Ohio. She doesn’t have to go all the way down to Georgia or South Carolina or Tennessee. She’s even talked about Mississippi. She’s applied to all those schools down there—Tuskegee, Alcorn, Tougaloo, even Jackson State.”
“I know.”
Stacey fingered his cup. “I don’t know what to do, Cassie. What if she’s accepted?”
I smiled. “You know she will be.”
Stacey acknowledged that with a glance. “I don’t know if I can let her go to the South without me, Cassie, not without me there to make sure she’s all right.”
I understood my brother. He watched over his two girls with the strength of a lion and the magnitude of his father’s heart, just as Papa had watched over me. He wanted always to protect them and keep them safe. Everyone who came to live at the Dorr Street house, everyone who came to live in their new house, Stacey had let them know how Rie and ’lois were to be treated. He would never tolerate disrespect to them in
any way, and everyone adhered to his words. Stacey once confided to me that when the girls were little, before they got so grown that they wouldn’t have wanted him doing so, he had always opened their door at night with Dee, just to check on them, just to make sure they were all right. He said that during those moments, he wondered how he could have fathered such beautiful, talented, and vivacious daughters.
I reached over and laid my hand over his. “Stacey, you’re going to have to let Rie go at some point. You’re going to have to let both of them go, sooner or later.” Stacey looked at me, then out the back window to the snow-flocked spruce. I knew Stacey was not about to give up his mantle as protector of his girls.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
In the days following Christmas, the family had gathered first at Christopher-John and Becka’s house for another huge dinner and then, on the following day, at Clayton Chester and Rachel’s. Both sisters had spread out more fabulous meals for all to enjoy. In addition to all the Logans at the post-Christmas dinners were Becka and Rachel’s four nephews and their young families. All the nephews had followed their aunts from Mississippi, lived in their houses with them, and married Toledo women. Dee’s brother Zell and the Davises had married Toledo women as well, so their Christmas dinners were with their wives’ families, but during the holiday week, they all made their way back over to Stacey and Dee’s with their families and enjoyed some of the holiday cheer, so everybody in the family saw everybody else during the holidays. I couldn’t help but reflect on the fact that all this extended family was in Toledo because Stacey, the first one to come, had made the abrupt decision to leave Mississippi.
It was a good time.
On New Year’s Day, all of the Logan family gathered one last time at Stacey and Dee’s. In celebration of the new year, hog-head souse was on the table, along with chit’lings, baked coon with sides of sweet potatoes, collard greens, cornbread, and black-eyed peas, a New Year’s Day good luck tradition. It was a real down-home meal. Later, as we sat around the evening fire, we talked and laughed some more, squeezing in as much as we could before we had to part. While the adults talked, the younger children played way beyond their bedtime, but no one worried about that. We took comfort in just being together. Tomorrow Uncle Hammer and Aunt Loretta would be leaving, heading back to Chicago, then to Oakland. The day after that, Papa, Mama, and Big Ma would be taking the train south, and I would be heading back to Boston. We did not know when we would all be together again.
As the first day of the new year wound to a close and the younger children lay asleep covered by blankets on the carpeted floor, we sat talking quietly, reminiscing about what had been and projecting what was to come and dreading the thought that at some point, the day and our time together would have to end. Midnight neared, the older children yawned sleepily, and Becka and Rachel insisted they had to get the children home to bed. Finally, we had to part.
As always before a journey, we held hands and formed a circle and the children who were still awake joined in, and we prayed, each person in turn. Papa’s words were the final words, and in closing the family circle of prayer, he said, “Dear Lord, please bless us now and forever, and please watch over each and every one of us while we’re apart, one from another.” And with those words, amidst hugs and kisses, we said good night and wished each other a happy new year.
A new decade had begun.
TIME OF CHANGE
(1960–1961)
It was 1960. The year had hardly begun when Negro college students down in North Carolina decided to sit at the lunch counter of the local five-and-dime store. This was unheard of. Five-and-dime lunch counters in the South were for whites only. In fact, all stores owned by whites in the South that had lunch counters were for “whites only.” Yet students from North Carolina sat down at the lunch counter anyway. All the students wanted was to be served. They were not served. The North Carolina students weren’t the only ones who chose to sit down at “white only” lunch counters. Negro college students in South Carolina, Virginia, Missouri, and Georgia sat down at those exclusive “white only” lunch counters. They, too, were not served. Students were now being arrested, but more kept coming, again and again, to the lunch counters. Each day it seemed there was a new demonstration, not only in North Carolina but in other states that had “white only” signs. In Nashville, the police arrested some one hundred students for sit-ins. In Chattanooga, a riot broke out because of the sit-ins. White citizens clashed with the demonstrators, and the white police kept on arresting the peaceful sit-in students and hauling them off to jail.
The nightly news reported it all.
The students did not let up. They even challenged the Deep South. In Alabama hundreds of students from the Negro college Alabama State marched on the capital in protest of Alabama’s racist laws. Students participating in the demonstration were expelled. Across the South from Florida west to Texas, the sit-ins and the demonstrations were going on. Students were being jailed and high-velocity water hoses and police dogs were being used to dispel them, but mostly the hard line of segregation held, though now the world was beginning to pay attention. In September, Rie enrolled at Spellman College in Atlanta, and our family got worried. At Rie’s request, I went with Stacey and Dee and ’lois when they took Rie to the school.
“Now, I don’t want you getting into these demonstrations down here,” Stacey told Rie, not for the first time.
“I know, Daddy, you told me.”
“You’re at this school to study, not get yourself put in jail.”
“Daddy, wasn’t planning on getting myself put in jail.”
“Then stay out of trouble.”
“Seems like good trouble to me,” Rie said.
“You think it’s such good trouble, you can just get in the car and go back to Toledo and go to the University of Toledo. We let you come here, but we don’t have to let you stay here.”
Rie was wisely silent.
Later Rie said to me, “Just think, Aunt Cass, we’re breaking the chains.” Excitement was in her voice and her face was lit in full anticipation at the prospect of helping to break those chains.
“Be careful those chains don’t break you,” I warned.
Rie laughed. “Oh, Aunt Cassie, you know if you were my age, you’d be in this fight. All of us need to be in it.”
“Your daddy’s worried about you. It’s hard for him to let you go.”
“I know,” Rie said.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
After we left Atlanta, Stacey, Dee, ’lois, and I went on to Mississippi. From Toledo to Atlanta and now from Atlanta to Mississippi, we were frequently stopped, running into road construction all along the way. The federal government was building an interstate highway system across the country. The construction had been going on for several years and would continue for many more. It was tiresome waiting at the many stops as the big machinery took over the roads, not letting any vehicles through for many minutes at a time, sometimes thirty or more, but as wearing as it was to wait we all were happy to see the highways being built. Once they were finished, we would no longer have to drive the rural roads going south. We would no longer have to go through small towns to get to Jackson. It would lessen our fear and make us feel safer.
Once we were in Spokane County, we rolled on toward home, going first through the town of Strawberry. Soon after leaving Strawberry the paved road ended and we continued the drive on the narrow rusty road. As we neared home we passed the new Negro school, built of cinder blocks and ranging from grades one through eight. Soon after passing it, we approached the crossroads. The Wallace store still dominated one corner of the crossroads. Several trucks, a wagon, and a couple of cars were parked in front of it. Some white men sat on the store porch playing checkers. Other white men stood near the vehicles. Statler and Leon Aames and their uncle, Charlie Simms, were among them. They all stared at us. Stacey
came to a full stop, then turned west toward home.
The day after our arrival, Stacey took Dee and ’lois down to Dee’s family, stayed one night, then returned home for an evening meeting at Great Faith. A man from the Jackson NAACP was speaking. Little Willie had urged Stacey and me to be there. Mama went with us, but Papa and Big Ma stayed at home. Papa didn’t put much faith in any changes coming and Big Ma didn’t much either. Many people felt the same as they did, so when we drove onto the church grounds we were not surprised to see few vehicles parked in front.
The old classrooms and the small building that had once housed the principal’s office were vacant now, except for occasional church and community meetings and activities. The buildings looked quite lonely standing there. There had been talk of tearing them down, but the congregation couldn’t agree to it, so they remained standing. All the buildings faced the expansive lawn where children of the Great Faith School had once run and played. The church, set apart from the class buildings, also faced the lawn, but not the road. Beyond and behind both the church and the class buildings was the forest, still dense with growth. Forest also loomed on the other side of the road.
Little Willie Wiggins greeted the gathering as the meeting began. “Now, all y’all know me,” said Little Willie. “We all know what’s going on out there. We all know a lotta our young people are fighting to change things. And not just young people. Got older folks too putting their hands in this. We all know what it’s like down here and there’s not a one of us ain’t been touched by it. Now, we got a young man name of Medgar Evers who’s leading our fight in Jackson. He’s head of the Mississippi NAACP. He was a soldier over there in World War II, served along with fellas like me, some of you. He even applied to the University of Mississippi. Can you believe that! Ain’t been accepted, of course, but that’s how courageous he is! Anyways, I ain’t up here to preach. I’ll leave that to Brother Adams here. He’s real involved up in Jackson and he’s come to tell us a few things and get our support. Okay, I’m done.” Little Willie then turned to the man from Jackson. “All right, Brother Adams, all yours.”
All the Days Past, All the Days to Come Page 31
