ABSTRACT
As a child, I spent summers traveling by car with my family from Alabama to St. Louis where my Uncle Richard lived. When I asked my mother why Richard with his lilting drawl and constant desire to go fi shing had moved to the city, she said, “He was going to be lynched.” As a young man, Richard had an affair with a white woman. When her family found out, they accused him of rape. Though the woman admitted that the affair was consensual, her admission only served to enrage the white townspeople. It was 1956, and Richard was charged with violating anti-miscegenation laws. Outside the courtroom, his family waited, while angry whites openly made threats against him. He was sentenced to thirty days in jail. The sheriff, knowing that he couldn’t protect him from the angry white townspeople, explained to Richard’s mother that it would be best if he got out of town immediately. After the sentencing, the sheriff walked Uncle Richard into the front door of the jail, and out of the back door, where my father was waiting in a running car. They drove straight to St. Louis where Richard started a new life. How many stories of black migration were like this one-not just blacks seeking better lives, but blacks seeking to stay alive? This terror shaped the geography of my family, impressing us with a sense of our vulnerability to violence.
