The Converation

This is an excerpt from my novel, Aunt Donsy's Trunk.
It is my memory about a small town in NC and the place where Black people gathered - The Block... This type of place for social interchange was in every small town... So was the topic of conversations... Black people have always had to have "The Conversation" with their youth... The Mayor of New York was NOT playing politics as the leaders of the police union suggested... He was simply telling a truth that the Black community has always known... This concocted outrage displayed by the union leader and his cohorts is hard to stomach.

This excerpt tells about TRUE events that happened during the 1940 -50.

The colored residents of Reidsville, NC didn't have to spend much money on entertainment. They did their socializing daily on the block; it was their section of town. There were various gathering places within the block—which was actually two city blocks: across the railroad tracks, near downtown—anywhere around the colored drugstore, barber and beauty shops, and pool hall. If you wanted to send or get a message to someone, you went on the block.

A telephone was unnecessary—most people didn't have one anyway. The block’ was as connected to the colored section of town as the family room is to a home. ‘¬e block’ was family friendly, women and children were safe and respected there; of course, the ladies did not hang in the pool hall . . . ‘The block’ was where all the important, and not so important, news was mulled over, evaluated, and dispersed.

“I first heard the news about the Scottsboro Boys on ‘the block.’ We all knew someone who had hoboed, just like those nine boys. Even my own brother, William Jr., would hop a train boxcar anytime; that was how he came to visit us from Charlotte NC where he lived.” Daddy recalled.

“Sometimes there was a sudden unexplained disappearance of a Colored person around Reidsville or Leakesville that the people on the block talked about apprehensively, but this Scottsboro thing really shook everybody up. Heck, we saw our family and friends come into town riding the boxcars almost daily. So the Scottsboro catastrophe was the talk of the town—a worrisome thing that really hit home . . . Of course, we understood it was the type of news that had been heard before on the block and would be heard again.” Daddy continued.

“It was always about a white woman who accused a Colored man of rape or attempted rape. That was one of the main excuses used by terrorists, in white hoods, for lynching in the South. It was typical; it was always expected . . . As Colored men, we had to always be on guard!” my father told us.

The conversation on the block was a futile attempt to find some rational reason for such mob injustices that everyone knew would result in someone’s death. The Colored community always knew that when allegations, of this type, surfaced it was a “truth be damned” atmosphere. There was only one law; it was the white mob law . . . Any association or interaction with white women, no matter how innocent, could become detrimental for a young Negro man. 

Survival skills were shared on the block. Older men gave suggestions to younger men about “trappings” to be wary of in their daily environment; they preached about how to keep a situation from spiraling into a fatality. The youngest Scottsboro Boy was only twelve years old, intergenerational training had to start at a young age.

I remember as a child eating ice cream while I was with my father on the block, and listening to him talk to his friends; I was fascinated with the conversation of the men as they sat around the ice cream parlor/ drugstore.“¬ The old men on the block often told tales of men they knew who had left town under the cloak of darkness to escape being lynched—men who would never dare take the chance of being seen in their hometowns again.

They told of white women who lied to their husbands—to cover up their own infidelity, to get attention, or merely out of hatred for Black people.” my father continued. “If a white woman said it, then it had to be true ’cause it’s like butter don’t melt in a white woman’s mouth!” someone in the room said sarcastically.

I thought about one story that I heard told and retold with pride, throughout the years, by both the women and men on the block. I ate my ice cream and listened… The storytellers laughed, pranced, and danced around. It seemed that no one could set down throughout the entire account; they took turns telling parts of the story they knew or had heard, and the story expanded with each telling. It was as if there was a breeze of triumph for all proudly blowing through the crowd.

It was a shared memory when the Black community recalled the time one of the town’s escapees successfully managed to disguise himself as an authentic African King—so that he could visit his ailing mother. . . The breeze gained in strength. . . That self-made king had draped himself in a long, elegant robe, with a royal-headdress made of authentic Kenti Cloth; he had even contrived an African accent—which he embellished.

“You should have heard him! He held his head high and mumbled-jumbled some words together trying to sound like an African.” someone in the crowd on the block contributed to the story.

“It was hilarious because he really wasn’t saying anything,” someone else on the block interrupted—not able to contain what little they actually knew about the sham. “But, the White folks didn’t know that. They didn’t know what to think, so they left him alone.” This valuable detail was contributed from one of the women in the crowd while she snickered behind her hand.
“They didn’t even recognize him!”
“Yep! He just strutted around town like a King!
“Smart as whip he was—yes sir-re, sho was proud of him,” an old man added. “He’d figured out a way to see his Mamma fo’ she died.”

The entire colored community, in Reidsville, held their collective breaths until the African charlatan left town without getting caught; afterward, everyone felt as if they had been part of a big thing. . . No one ever called the impostor by name because of their concern for the safety of his family, who still lived in town; still, every time they told the story, they recaptured that moment with pride. It was a fragment of victory that no one could snatch away. . .

Unfortunately, years later—in 1955, the folks on the block would have the same conversation involving colored men and white women; this time it was about Emmett Till.
“One day a change gonna come,” one old man prophesied.
“Well, that might be so; just hope I’m here to see it,” said another, whose well-earned white hair glistened in the sun...