Coincidence?

Aside

At present I am slowly reading ‘How to write your own Life Story’ by Lois Daniel. In the past she taught creative writing in Missouri and yesterday I turned the page and read the following. I can’t scan it satisfactorily so I’m typing it.

“The next story, which was written by a young black man in a community college in Chicago, is a civil rights story. It had nothing to do with party politics, bur it is a political story nonetheless, and a tragic one.

On a hot summer afternoon in 1968, when I was nine years old, Dr Martin Luther King was shot and killed. After the news had gotten on the streets that King was dead, both blacks and whites went wild and started acting with mass rage. Riots broke out all over the United States; people went crazy in cities, suburbs and even in the country.

In Chicago people shot and killed other people and started acting like a bunch of fools. Some were killed while trying to rob others and some were killed for just walking down the streets’

The governor of the state called in the National Guard and the guardsmen were told that anyone on the street was to be put in jail. I got the picture and ran home, but before I made it to my house, I saw a guard turn and fire a couple of rounds at people running down the street. After I saw that, I ran faster toward home.

When I got up to the door, I tried to open it but it was locked. I began to beat on the green wooden door and to cry because I was scared now. When the door finally opened, I saw my mother. She was on her knees and she quickly yanked me to the floor. After she pulled me down, she slammed the door and told me to be quiet.

I could hear all kinds of guns going off with loud booms and bangs and they seemed to grow louder as time went on, but my mother didn’t worry, she just said quietly and kept saying, “It will be all right when your father gets home.”

But this was not to be, because my father was shot in the head as he was coming home from work. It happened right outside our door.

We heard a very loud boom and then a scream. We heard moaning and groaning and then my mother’s name. At first she thought the call was for someone else and she didn’t move, but then she heard the voice again and it was calling her name. The next thing I knew she was up on her feet and heading for the door. She flung it open as if it were a little toy and ran out onto the porch and disappeared around the corner. I heard a scream, but was too afraid to see what had happened. My little brother ran out the door right behind me.

Then my mother started dragging my father into our house. At this time a neighbour lady named Miss Jones started to scream. She had seen what was going on. Without another word, she too was on her knees pulling my father toward the door. When they pulled him inside we were told to get some towels. When I looked up, I could see my little brother; he was bleeding from the chest. My sister grabbed him and held a towel over the blood.

Next came getting towels for my father. I couldn’t see where he was shot, but I knew it was bad because I could see all the blood.

Then Miss Jones ran out of the apartment to call an ambulance, but she came back and said they would not come into our neighbourhood, so my mother got on the phone and called a couple of my relatives. They were there within minutes, and they rushed my father and brother to hospital. My father was dead on arrival and my brother had a bullet wound in his chest. They got the bullet out of his chest, but kept him in the hospital for a while. When I heard the news, I started to cry and so did everyone in the house.

Later, after the news had spread and the shouting had died down, we received a letter from a man saying he was sorry about what had happened. He sent flowers to the funeral.

The more I think of what happened and how my father was taken away from me and almost my little brother too, it makes me feel so sad, and I just want to take a gun and kill the first white face I see, but that would only get me into trouble. I now have learned how to hide my feelings and not show my anger even though sometimes I feel like I could blow up the world.”