--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, DJ-Anonyme@... wrote:
>
> Richard wrote:
>
> "And the cover was a bondage illustration of a
half-nude Velda
hanging
> by ropes from above."
>
> I've got that cover. It's still pretty trashy
looking, must have
really
> been something then.
>
> "I bought this in the same little drug store and
about the same
age of
> 14 in the segregated Georgia town where I bought the
Chester
Himes' ALL
> SHOT UP mentioned in the last post."
>
> I'm just wondering how a book by Himes ended up on
that book rack
in a
> little white drug store in a segregated Georgia
town. Weren't
there
> black people on the cover?
>
> Mark
>
There most definitely were black people on the cover. It is
what attracted me to the book. Teenagers are naturally
subversive to the established order and one glance at the
Himes novel told me that it was something most of the adults
I knew would object to--if they observed it. As teenagers
learn, most adults are rather oblivious. If the guy who owned
the drug store had looked at the book, he would never have
racked it but racking books was a routine chore and I am sure
he never gave it a glance. The subversive aspect of the Himes
novel made it competely irresistible to me at the time.
You see a kid tries to make sense of his world and growing
up, the whole black-white thing as it existed around me
didn't make much sense. But it was seemingly widely
accepted--at least all the people who mattered around me
accepted it. This is a world that is going to be lost to
history. We celebrate Rosa Parks but will lose the context in
which she made her brave stand.
One of my earliest memories--I was five or six--was outside
that drug store when the KKK conducted a parade in cars
through town. The Klan were in full regalia and every
black--they knew it was coming in advance--disappeared from
the street. What's this all about I asked my mother but she
gathered me up and said it's time to go home. I didn't know
what it was but I knew it was sinister. It is that atmosphere
that is in danger of being lost.
There was a general store in my little town run by two
brothers. There was a black kid aged nine or ten who hung
around and earned tips helping carry groceries out to cars.
He was a smart-aleck kid but that as much as anything else
endeared him to my father, who treasured a quick wit. He
said, or was reported to have said, something "smart" to a
white woman. The local Klan called for a boycott of the
store.
Now my father, who was himself a high school dropout,
considered the Klan to be a collection of the most ignorant
assholes in the area. He loathed them. Now another thing
about the country is that everybody know's everybody's car or
truck. So as a kid when I was riding with someone and we
passed a beer joint named the Pig Trail Inn and my daddy's
truck was parked out front, I was expected to blush. I didn't
because I'd been there often with him and they had the best
BBQ in the area and if I was good I got to play the pinball
machine. What's to blush about? But everyone else expected me
to be embarressed. In many ways, it was a very strange time
and place.
So when the boycott was called by the Klan against the store,
my father made it his business to drive in every day and park
his truck in front of the store. We didn't have any business
there but he wanted to "show the flag" and his well-known
truck did just that. He wanted everyone to know where he
stood on this boycott foolishness. The old man had his
shortcomings but I knew even then what he was doing and was
proud of him.
But that historic backdrop, which was common to all of the
southern U.S., is in danger of being lost except for the
heroic few who rebelled against it in the late 1950s and
early 1960s.
Now that I think about it Avon had to have factored in loss
of sales by the Himes novels normally expected in the
southern states. If you think that is an exaggeration, I
would counter with an experience much later in my life in
public relations. I had as a client a major consumer product
company and we were going through some historical metrics on
sales by region. There was a significant dip in the south for
years and the answer was simple. The company had been a major
sponsor of the Nat King Cole television program, the first
network television program hosted by an African American, and
for years that had cost them in store displays and slots for
products. The explanation was without complaint or any sense
of alibi. It was just a "this is what happened."
I have rattled on for too long about this, for which I
apologize. It is an era that I fear will be lost and so when
I see a soapbox I tend to climb on it.
Richard Moore
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