#CRITICAL RACE THEORY PRESENTS BLOOD AND BROTHERHOOD A Novel Of Love In A Time Of Hate Part Nine [abridged]

?#CRITICAL RACE THEORY PRESENTS

BLOOD AND BROTHERHOOD

A Novel Of Love In A Time Of Hate Part Nine

[abridged]

By

Eugene Stovall

?

EPISODE TWENTY-FIVE

It takes months, even years, before Julia really feels Pete’s loss. She is too young; they were both too young. Julia cannot accept that he is gone. Pete loves me. He promised never to leave me. No matter what Pete will always take care of me. Pete is not gone!! ?Julia tells herself each night ____ and this is what she believes. And no one understands. They want me to accept that he has gone, Julia tells herself, that he has left me, They don’t know that Pete will never leave me. He loves me.

Julia never understood her own feelings. There was a time that Julia believed she loved her husband, but Pete had always been too big, too strong and too distant. Pete was bigger than life. He was a hero. Everyone said so. How do you love a hero? Julia had tried, but now he was gone. Slowly the realization that Pete was gone works its way into Julia’s consciousness. It happens when she misses how protected she felt just being near him. When Pete was around, Julia didn’t fear anything. Pete was there to protect her. She could always nestle in his arms and feel safe. Now Julia has nightmares.

“Isn’t it just like a man not to keep his promises,” Julia complains to Grace, who came to Los Angeles to help her friend grieve. Grace doesn’t comment. Grace knows better than anyone ____ better than Julia, herself ____ how much Julia adored Pete and how much she will miss him. “Maybe it is a good thing that Julia doesn’t remember how much she loved Pete,” Grace tells Sharon. “People grieve differently.”

“She has her sons to think about, now,” Sharon observes. “They will help her forget.”

After Pete’s funeral, Sharon insists that Julia and her sons live with her and Ed. “You will need us to help you through this ordeal,” Sharon councils her daughter.

. “Grace is a great comfort,” Julia demurs. “She is a help with the twins. Besides I just can’t leave here. This is Pete’s home.”

Grace remains with Julia for several months, but ultimately she must return to New York. With Grace’s departure, the awful transition and adjustment becomes even more difficult. At night, Julia mourns Pete’s death, her days are filled with feeding and holding the twins and ?changing and washing their diapers. Taking care of twins is not merely twice the work, it is four times the work, Julia decides. After a week alone, Julia?begins packing her things to move in with her parents. Sorting through all of Pete’s things _____ ?his favorite socks, an old shirt___ is difficult. Moving ?to her parents’ home, taking care of the babies and grieving, saps Julia’s energy. Ed and Sharon, as well as Charlotta and Joe, try to see her through. And always, on the periphery, watching and waiting is Bif Meadows.

Through the difficult times, Chatsworth and Sidney Jenkins have their grandparents to ease the loss of their father. Ed and Sharon Duncan make certain that neither their daughter nor their grandchildren ever suffer economic want. Nevertheless, the fraternal twins suffer, mentally and emotionally, the loss of their father, more than their mother, understands. Pete Jenkins twin sons begin acquiring mental and emotionally scars, that will mark their lives, always. ?No matter how much Ed Duncan tried to be a surrogate father to his grandsons, the tragic loss of their father had a devastating impact upon Chatworth and Sidney Jenkins.

Actually, to call Chatsworth and Sydney twins obscures the true relationship between them. An unkind fate had intervened to make them more rivals than brothers. Two individuals could not have been more different. Some blame this outcome on Julia. Sharon continually chides her daughter for saying to anyone who happens to be around that Sid was mistakenly put in the wrong crib and that Chat’s real twin brother was given to another family. Not only did this unfortunate sentiment burden Sid with a lifelong feeling of being unloved by his mother, making him resentful of Chat, but the sentiment fed the unfounded rumor, that Chat and Sid were only half-brothers and that Pete Jenkins was not Sidney’s father. Over time even the brothers, themselves, consider the rumor a plausible explanation for their physical and personality differences ____ as well as for the intense dislike Sid feels for Chat. Everyone can see that Sid gets his fair complexion, wavy, auburn hair and green eyes directly from his mother, while Chat’s dark, handsome face and noble bearing, even as a child, identifies him as Pete’s son. But no one can see how Chat and Sid can be twin brothers.

?The twins get used to always having someone around to care for them other than their mother. Julia doesn’t know who spoils the boys more, her parents or Charlotta. The hectic days begin merging into one another, days becoming weeks, weeks becoming months, and months turn into years. And through the years, Julia’s realizes with absolute certainty that she had loved Pete more than life itself. She continues to miss him and his love. She always thinks of him. For a long time, Julia is unable to shake the feeling that any moment Pete will walk through the door and throw his arms around her, holding her close, in his special way. But it is just a feeling.?Julia continues to talk to Pete, telling him everything especially how much Chat and Sid get on her nerves and how Sharon and Ed continue treat her like they all were back on Tinker Street in Manhattan. She laughs at how her father often complains about her long-distance calls to Grace, just like Pete would do. She tells Pete all the things she had intended to say from the very beginning, from the time that she knew that she loved him and that he loved her. At night, she pretends to snuggle close and feel his warmth. She knows that he’s tired after walking his beat. She tries not to disturb his sleep, but just lies there and repeats over and over “until death do we part.”

Then comes the day when Julia blames herself for Pete’s death. I held back my feelings, she tells herself. I held them back from Pete and from myself. I kept him at a distance. He didn’t know how much I loved him. That’s why he was trying to be so brave; he wanted to prove himself to me. But her confession doesn’t matter because Pete is gone and will never return. And Julia is forced to get on with her life.

Though the twins have completely separate personalities, even before they are out of their cribs, they find ways to communicate with each other. Each understands exactly what the other is thinking.

“Look,” Sharon says after Julia moves into her parent’s home in the Central Avenue neighborhood, “they’re talking to each other.” Sharon does everything she can to get Julia to pay more attention to the twins.

“Impossible,” Ed laughs coming into the room where the cribs sit side by side. But it is true. From infancy, Chat and Sid often talk with and about each other. If one is wet and needs a diaper change, the other cries. When one is making a lot of racket, the other is certain to be hungry. If Julia holds one, the other demands attention. As they get older, Chat begins to talk for Sid. “Grandma,” Chat might say, “Sid doesn’t want to go to bed.” Or “Grandpa, Sid wants to go to the store with you.”

As they grow Chat does all the talking, but Sid speaks so little that, by the time the twins are ready for kindergarten, Julia worries that her youngest son is retarded. Chat has a mean streak which he sometimes takes out on the family pet, a spaniel named Freckles. “Momma, Chat’s teasing Freckles again.” Sid will complain, ?ambling into his grandmother’s kitchen.

“Go tell Chat not to tease Freckles,” Julia responds.

“Okay, Momma,” the youngster says and runs outside. “Chat, Momma says to stop teasing Freckles . . .”

“You see, Mother,” Julia complains, “he’s not getting any better. Now the only time he says anything is when he’s tattling on his brother.”

“You need to be patient, Julia,” Sharon counsels. It has been several months since Ed and Sharon moved into their new home, giving Julia and her sons the house on Jefferson. Julia and the twins are always at her parents’ new westside home.

“The doctor wants me to send them to different schools,” Julia says. “Sid could live with you and Daddy. Chat could stay with me.”

“You can’t really consider splitting them up,” Sharon protests.

“Why not? The doctor says the separation will be good for both of them.”

“They’ll resent you for it,” Sharon responds, “especially Sid. He’s not as strong as Chat. He needs you more.”

“Didn’t you tell me that Sid prefers staying with you and Daddy?”

“Yes, and this may have harmed his development.”

“Well I don’t see how you can say that going to ?different schools would be bad for him. It’s not as if he won’t see us, we’re over here almost every day as it is.”

“Still Julia ... ,” her mother protests.

“Something must be done soon,” Julia interrupts. “You have been telling me for years that there is something wrong. Now that I have sought professional advice, you don’t want me to follow it. Don’t you want your grandson to live with you for a while?”

“It’s not that ...,” Sharon begins as Ed barges in to catch the tail end of the conversation. This feud between his wife and his daughter bothers him. It’s been going on for months. Ed loves Julia but he agrees with Sharon.

“Give the boy some time,” Ed says. “He’ll soon come around.”

Sid is Ed’s favorite. Sid likes to go outside with his grandfather and help him rake the leaves or watch him water the yard. Ed takes Sid to the furniture store, which has expanded to the building next door. Ed has ten employees. In spite of LA’s restrictive covenants and other obstacles to Negroes purchasing homes or living in upscale neighborhoods, business is so good that Ed has purchased another store on Central Avenue and he and Sharon purchase a beautiful Spanish home on the westside. Ed and Sharon are foreign-born and, with Julia’s Hollywood contacts, easily slip over Los Angeles’s color barrier that bars Negroes from living west of ?Western Avenue. Though it is 1929, the stock market has not yet collapsed and the economy is booming. People are buying houses and everyone needs furniture. The still lurking, the klan is underground and, in Los Angeles. money talks louder than color. Little Sid, when he is with his grandfather, grandmother or in his grandparents’ house on the westside, surrounded by white folks, has no problem talking. It is only when he is alone with Chat or Julia, that Sid is quiet, subdued and passive.

“I don’t know why you two think you know better than the doctor,” Julia says, lapsing into her Jamaican accent. “Where did you get your medical degrees?”

“There is no need for your sarcasm, young lady,” Ed replies. “Your mother and I are just thinking about the boy’s welfare.”

“Are you now,” Julia says. “And whose welfare do you think I’m thinking of? Tell me that, will you now?”

“Possibly you are thinking overly much about your own career and what Bif Meadows is telling you,” her mother replies, giving Julia a sharp look.

Julia cannot hide anything from her mother. Sharon reads her daughter like a book. It is true that trying to manage two preschoolers impacts her budding Hollywood career, if one can call her film appearances as an extra or the bit parts that Bif has gotten her, a career.

“That’s not a very nice thing to say, Mother!”

“It may not be very nice, but it is the truth, now,” Sharon scolds. “You tell me it isn’t so, if you can.”

But Julia can’t. After Pete’s death, Bif Meadows pursues Julia, persistently. Other men court Julia, but respect her grief. But from the day the klan machine-guns Pete down in front of the California Eagle offices, Bif pursues Julia, continually and unabashedly, using all the persistence at his command. A career in the newspaper business makes persistence a part of Bif’s character. He does not quit until he gets what he wants, whether a photo, a job ___ or a wife. From the very beginning, Bif makes himself indispensable. He takes care of all Pete’s funeral arrangements. He helps Julia with the mountain of paperwork. When the police department denies Julia the pension of a fallen police officer, claiming Pete’s death was not in the line of duty, Bif doggedly pursues the matter until he forces the city attorney to honor Julia’s claim. Bif is successful, in no small part, because his Garvey contacts go all the way up to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. The City Attorney had denied Julia’s claim because the klan still had influence in the LAPD and the klan hated Julia as much as Pete.

Bif and Windows helped move Julia into her parents’ home and continued to hang around even though Julia rebuffed him time and time again. “Bif, we can never be more than friends,” she would tell him. Nevertheless, he would appear, unexpectedly when she needed something done. After a while, it becomes clear that her widow’s pension will not meet her living expenses, especially since she never learns to budget for her expenses. Bif introduces Julia to King Vidor, who is directing Hallelujah, his first talking picture. Though lacking any acting experience, King Vidor adds Julia to Hallelujah’s all-Negro cast as an extra. Then Bif gets her a bit part in the movie Hearts of Dixie, the picture that makes Stepin Fetchit a star. From then on, under Bif’s tutelage, Julia becomes a Hollywood groupie. He knows everyone in the film industry and makes himself indispensable in developing Julia’s film career. Bif and Julia become inseparable and Bif works hard to befriend the twins. Chat likes ‘Pops’, but Sid can’t stand him. Sharon suspects her film career is Julia’s true motive for separating the twins.

“Well, Mother, if you don’t want to help me, why don’t you just say so instead of beating around the bush.”

“I didn’t say that I would not help. I’m just concerned. Do you know what you are risking? You have always been such a selfish child.”

“Just tell me will you help me or not?”

“I will do what you ask,” Sharon, finally, agrees, though she ?knows in her heart that the separation will devastate Sid.

“Then I would like Sid to stay with you and Dad for a while.” Noticing the look on her mother’s face, Julia quickly adds, “Just until Sid has a chance to become his own person and not depend on Chat so much.”

“Certainly Sid is welcome to stay with us,” Sharon says. “But I hope you know what you are doing, for both of their sakes.”

Julia doesn’t really understand what she is doing. Not to the twins, not to her parents, not even to herself. All Julia really understands is how much she misses Pete.

EPISODE TWENTY-SIX

Chat and Sid are both members of Jefferson High’s senior class of 1941. Sid and Chat go to different grammar and middle schools. Sid even goes to Dorsey High for one year before joining his brother at Jefferson High. Both are finishing their final days in high school and making career plans as Bif and Julia plan a gala graduation party for the twins.

Chat has grown into an exact replica of his father ___ handsome, strong, athletic, with a quiet, shy personality. ?Chat enjoys a stellar high school athletic career, an all-league basketball and football player for the past two years. Everyone loves him and Julia adores him. She wishes that she had named him Peter. UCLA offers Chat an athletic scholarship, a rare honor for a Negro kid from L.A.’s Central Avenue neighborhood in the 1940s. With Chat’s grade point average, the university could have offered him an academic scholarship as well. Chat’s future is as promising as ‘Jeff’s’ most famous alum, Ralph Bunche, who graduated in 1923, the year Chat and Sid were born. Ralph Bunche received an athletic scholarship to UCLA but made his mark in international politics.

On the other hand, ?Sid is neither athletic nor intellectual. Sid is ?two inches shorter and weighs ten pounds less than Chat. Though no weakling, Sid is neither as muscular or athletic as Chat who stands over six feet tall. Friends of the family often comment, Pete would have been so proud of his son, referring to Chat. At Jefferson High, Sid is known as Chat’s younger brother and his only school activity is ROTC.

“Sidney,” his grandfather tells him, “you will make a fine Army officer one day.” Sid loves his grandfather and likes nothing better than working in Ed’s furniture store while listening to his grandfather’s stories about Harlem and Jamaica. When he is still a little boy, Sid dreams of working with his grandfather in the furniture store, but since the depression in 1929, Ed’s business has all but folded. Ed was forced to close his furniture store on Whittier and sell the building. His Central Avenue location, barely ekes out a profit, never again to attain its predepression success. In his advancing age, Ed’s furniture store begins to resemble his Tinker Street thrift shop. But this does not matter to Sid. He loves spending whatever time he can with his grandfather.

The depression destroys Negro businesses all over Los Angeles including the California Eagle. Joe dies and declining subscriptions and advertisements force Charlotta to discharge all her full-time staff. The California Eagle must struggle along with the part timers. Bif finds a position with the Los Angeles Times and Windows with the Los Angeles Mirror. The other Eagle employees are not as fortunate. Working for a publication that crusaded against the klan for decades opens few doors in Los Angeles. Sharon and Ed sell their westside home and move back to their house on Jefferson Street. Julia marries Bif Meadows and they buy a home in lower Beverly Hills. Both Chat and Sid live with their grandparents. While Chat looks forward to college and an intercollegiate athletic career, Sid dreams of becoming an Army officer. While Bif slips Chat money, Sid makes his money any way he can ____ selling newspapers, serving as a houseboy for Julia’s movie actor friends and working whatever odd jobs he can find. Once in a while, Sid even works in his grandfather’s furniture store, although he doesn’t consider it work, since he never gets paid.

“Hey, Mary,” Sid calls out to a coed strolling through Jefferson High’s quadrangle in front of the administration building. “Wait up, where are you going?”

Mary is Sid’s girlfriend. She’s a senior and very pretty. They meet when Sid transfers from Dorsey High to Jefferson High in his junior year. At Dorsey, just as in grammar and junior high school, Sid is just about the only Negro in the entire school. When Sid first enrolls in grammar school on the westside, his grandparents register him as Jamaican, confusing teachers and principals, right along with Sid, himself. When he moves with his grandparents back to the Central Avenue community and transfers to Jefferson High, Sid’s records still identify him as Jamaican. Chat is registered as ‘Negro.’ So, when Chat takes Sid around introducing him as his brother, it confuses teachers, students and Sid, even more. In addition to being confused, Sid is angry. He doesn’t like being called the little brother of Jefferson High’s star athlete.?“Why do you always tell people I’m your younger brother,” Sid asks Chat one day.

“Why not?” Chat replies. “You are younger.”

“By only three minutes,” Sid replies belligerently. “We’re twins and we were born on the same day.”

Chat looks at his brother and smirks. “We may be twins,” he says, “but you don’t look nothing like me. You’re one of those yellow niggers, high bright, almost white.” Sid never knows whether Chat is mocking him or just jealous. In 1941, color really matters at Jefferson High, but what matters more is being a celebrity, and even though Sid has light skin, Chat is a big man on campus. It’s ironic. Negroes idolize light skin and straight hair. The bleaching cream and hair straightening business is booming. That is why everyone in L.A. fawns over Julia. But Sid’s light skin and wavy hair denies him the only thing that really matters to him: his mother’s love. Chat’s brown skin and coarse hair reminds Julia of Pete. That makes all the difference.

“You look just like your father,” Julia tells Chat, holding him close. Sid sees pictures of his father and it is true. Chat looks like Pete. As far as Sid is concerned, his light skin and wavy hair are a curse.

“Grandma, why doesn’t Momma love me, too?” Sid would ask Sharon when Sid was a very little tot, attending kindergarten, all alone, surrounded by mean white kids. Sid would feel so unloved that tears would pour down his cheeks.

“Of course, your mother loves you, Sidney,” Sharon would say. “And your grandfather and I love you, too.”

“But she lets Chat live with her and not me. Why not?”

It was enough to break Sharon’s heart, but she knew nothing could be done. Julia would sooner send Chat to live with her and Ed than allowed Sid to move in with her and Bif. That might have been better than separating the twins, Sharon thinks. Had Sid known what the actual relationship between his mother and father was like, it might have made a difference. Sid might have learned that he had far more in common with his father than did Chat. But how could he have known that Julia treated Pete the same way that she treats Sid now? How could he have known that his father often felt unappreciated, rejected and unloved by his mother? Despite all he does for the Julia, Bif’s reward for having successfully pursued and won Julia is to become another member of the club. Won her? Bif can’t say he won Julia. Bribed her, maybe. Bif knows that Julia doesn’t love him now, not ever. None of this matters to Sid. All that matters is that his mother loves Chat and doesn’t love him. Not only does Chat prevent Sid from receiving his mother’s love, but the ghost of his dead, martyred father is in his way, a well. Chat thinks of his father as a hero, but Sid thinks of him as a fool. Why else did he allow that pig, Bif Meadows, take his wife? What kind of a man would do that? Certainly not a hero. My father paid for being a fool with his life, Sid tells himself, and, one day. so will Chat. But for now, Sid decides, if I can’t have my mother’s love, Mary’s love will do.

Mary is slim and tall, with light skin and wavy brown hair. If someone told Sid that he chose Mary because she looked something like his mother, Sid would have been forced to agree. Mary has Julia’s looks except her green eyes. Of course, Mary chooses Sid strictly on the basis of color.

“Don’t we make a fabulous looking couple?” Mary tells Sid, or anyone else who will listen, including her family, friends and club mates. The only people Mary cannot convince that she and Sid make a perfect couple are Mary’s parents. After graduation, Mary’s parents plan to send her as far away from Sid as possible, which, in this case, is to Howard University in Washington, D.C.

“You’re still planning to come to my graduation party Saturday, aren’t you,” Sid asks. Being flighty and not very bright, Mary has a habit of looking all around to see who is looking at her, even when she is talking. “Of, course, silly,” Mary coos. “You know I wouldn’t miss it.”

“So, what time should I call for you?”

“Maybe I should meet you at your party,” Mary says slowly.

“Your parents again?” Sid asks, his face clouding over.

“You know the problem,” Mary replies. “My father wants to send me away to school.” The Reverend Arthur Smith is the presiding pastor at Tabernacle Baptist Church located at the corner of Central Avenue and 12th Street. Tabernacle is a spin-off of the venerable Second Baptist Church, Los Angeles’s first all-black church.

“What’s that got to do with you coming to my party?” Sid asks.

“It’s not about coming to your party,” Mary responds, “It’s you and me, the two of us, ____ dating. My father is afraid that if we continue to date that I might decide against leaving you.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Sid’s face brightens and his eyes twinkle.

“I don’t know,” Mary says coyly as she moves closer, entwining her arm through his. They stop to sit on a bench. The afternoon classes have ended and students spill out all over the campus. “Hi Mary,” several of Mary’s friends call to her as they pass. “Remember, there is a Key Club meeting at four o’clock, Mary,” one of them shouts.

“I’ll be there,” Mary shouts back.

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Sid says pulling her closer. “That’s exactly what my father is concerned about,” Mary says stiffening, “and quite frankly, so am I.”

“What do you mean?” Sid asks, feigning innocence.

“You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t! What do you mean?” Sid asks again. “When I take you for a spin in my jalopy, you enjoy being close to me.”

“I do, but . . .”

“But what?”

“I’m always inviting you to come to church, but you never come,” Mary complains. “My parents don’t think that you’re a man of God.” Sid looks at her. He doesn’t even know what being a man of God is. His family is not particularly religious; they are not even Christians. Not that Sid or Chat can tell. In Jamaica, Sharon practiced Santeria. But in New York, she didn’t continue. Julia received no religious upbringing.

“Jeez, Mary,” Sid responds, “I thought you loved me.”

Mary just sits there, a forlorn look beginning to creep down from her furrowed brow into her sympathetic but worried eyes.

“I do love you Sid. You know I do, but that’s just the problem.” She takes his hand into the two of hers. “You don’t seem to understand. I can’t even tell my father that you’re going to college.”

“We’ve been all through that,” Sid says matter-of-factly. “You know that I’m enlisting into the Army after graduation. With my three years of ROTC, I should do just fine.”

“That’s just the point, Sid.” Mary’s face definitely begins to cloud over and the moisture that has been collecting in her eyes begins to run down her cheeks. “I don’t know where you are going to be and neither do you. What do you want me to do? Wait for you? For how long? My father tells me that we’ll be in that European war pretty soon. Then what’ll happen to you?”

“Well I just thought that . . .”

But then Sid falls silent. He cares for Mary as much as he cares for anyone. He remembers that a man that his mother knew from her African Blood Brotherhood days, Harry Haywood, visited them several weeks ago. He had just returned from Spain where he fought with the Abraham Lincoln brigade against Franco’s fascists. Harry says that it is just a matter of time before the whole world would be fighting. Sid knows that Mary is right. He has no right to ask her to wait for him. Sid’s not like Chat; he’s not going to UCLA in the fall. He looks at Mary and says nothing at all. They just sit there, holding hands, their silence saying more than their words. After a while, Mary gets up quietly and says, “I’d better go or I’ll be late for my club meeting.”

Sid nods. “Yeah, you’d better go.”

?

****

Graduation parties are being held all over Los Angeles, but none are as rollicking, fun-filled and well attended as the graduation party for the ?class of 1941 thrown by Julia and Bif Meadows. Actually, the party is not just being given by Julia and Bif. Sharon, Ed, Charlotta, the colored club women of Los Angeles, the colored actors in Hollywood and most, if not all, of Los Angeles Negro society is participating. The affair is being held at the Elks Hall on Central Avenue and Santa Barbara near St. Patrick’s Catholic Church. The music is provided by the popular band leader, Gerald Wilson, fresh from New York with the Jimmie Lunceford Band. Wilson assembles a group of L.A.’s finest local musicians, including an up-and-coming young saxophonist, Eugene Stovall, and his bassist friend, LeGrand Mason. Both play in the local night clubs and live in the Central Avenue district. Invitations are sent to the entire Jefferson High graduation class and everyone is there.

“Aren’t you glad you came?” Sid yells to Mary.

The place is wild. The band is hot, the graduates are happy and the cream of Negro society are having a ball. With all the laughter, shouting and general pandemonium, normal conversation is impossible. Sid and Mary are swinging on the dance floor. Other dancers hem them in on all sides. The crowd is not limited to Jefferson High graduates. Each invitation admits a graduate and three guests, so the revelers include parents, chaperones, friends and everyone else who could finagle themselves into “the party of the year.”

Mary doesn’t answer Sid’s question; she just lets the music take over completely. Her body twists with the rhythm and moves with the beat. The riffs of one soloist after another drive the crowd into a frenzy of excitement and pleasure, taking Mary and Sid along with them. To and fro, the couples interweave their arms and hips, swinging in perfect unison to the beating drums, blaring trumpets and crooning saxophones. Mary is unaware of everyone and everything around her, completely lost in the rhythms that are not unlike those that transport her soul to glory every Sunday in her father’s Baptist church.

How different Mary seems, Sid thinks, as they bump and push against each other as well as against the other dancers. The silly, color-struck schoolgirl, that Sid has been dating, disappeared and in her place is an exotic African maiden whose body has been overtaken by Mary’s twin Orisha. In this moment, Sid decides that he loves Mary.

*****

“Well, dear,” Sharon says to her daughter, “this is certainly a memorable graduation party.” Sharon and Julia, sit in the Elk’s Hall balcony, along with other family and friends, watching the happy partygoers going wild on the dance floor below. The dance band is on the stage at the front of the huge Elks hall auditorium. Grace Campbell, who endured a four-day journey by train just to be at the twins graduation, sits on Julia’s other side, right next to Charlotta Bass.

“Yes, indeed,” Grace says echoing Sharon’s comments.

“Bif arranged it all,” Julia says. “He got Gerald Wilson, the hall, everything,” Julia glows with happiness. “I wanted to do something special for the boys, They’ve missed so much not having their father and all.” She wants to say How I wish Pete were here!

“Umph,” Bif snorts.

“Don’t get upset, dear,” Julia says, trying to soothe her husband ruffled feelings. “Bif doesn’t think I appreciate how much he has done for me and the boys,” she says to no one in particular.

Sharon gives her daughter a sharp look befor turning to her son-in-law and saying , “Yes, Bif, you really outdid yourself this time.”

It’s about time someone shows some appreciation, Bif thinks, indulging in his favorite pastime of wallowing in self-pity. Everyone knows how well Bif has looked after Julia and her sons, not to mention her parents. But it’s not as if he hasn’t been repaid many times over. After leaving the California Eagle, Bif advances rapidly in the Times organization. He is now in charge of the Times’s photographic department, a reward for being a Hollywood insider. He owns a split-level home in lower Beverly Hills with a Cadillac in the driveway. But Bif’s success is all because of Julia. Everywhere she goes she is all that people talk about. Bif’s connections and Julia’s beauty propel them into Hollywood’s exclusive circles as well as to the top of Negro society. Bif’s connections are responsible for getting Chat a scholarship into UCLA. Even though their relationship has often been downright bitter, Bif pulls strings for Sid to have a career in the Army. Yet only recently has Julia acknowledged how much Bif has done for her and her family.

“Yes, Bif has been a dear to the boys and me,” Julia admits.

“On that note, Ed would you care to join me for some punch?” Bif winks as he rises from his chair and pats the flask in his hip pocket.

“Don’t mind if I do, my boy,” Ed says, winking back.

Ed is fond of Bif. He thinks it’s a shame the way Julia treats him, but Ed has long since reconciled himself to Julia’s ways. Ed owes Bif for saving what was left of his furniture business during those tough years after the crash in 1929., Ed knows that Bif loves Julia. After Pete, she couldn’t have done any better, Ed believes.

“After you two finish, you can bring us back some refreshments,” Julia says sweetly.

Bif reserves the Elks Hall’s parlor area, off of the main auditorium, for he and Ed, and the other adult guests, so that they can enjoy alcoholic refreshments. “Thanks, Dwight,” Bif says, nodding to the burly six foot, two-hundred-pound security guard hired to guarantee that none of the teenagers gain admittance. Inside, the air is thick with cigar and cigarette smoke. Parents, chaperones and other adult guests sit at cocktail tables, conversing amongst themselves. All heads turn as Bif and Ed walk in. The partygoers nod their heads and tip their glasses to their hosts. “This is quite a shindig, old man,” someone shouts out from one of the tables. It’s Windows. He’s sitting with two attractive women who don’t look like anyone’s mothers. They are starlets who sing and dance in the chorus lines of Hollywood musicals. Bif walks over to Windows and says, “Do me a favor when you can.” ?

“Just name it,” Windows replies.

“Take some punch up to Julia and her mother, will you? They’re up in the balcony.”

“Sure thing.”

“Charlotta and Grace are up there with them,” Ed adds.

“Okay you two,” Windows says to his pretty guests, “you’re about to earn your keep.”

Bif motions Ed over to an empty table. “I remember when that boy was just a stumbling, bumbling kid,” Bif says, watching his long-time protégé? escorting the Hollywood beauties out of the room. “Now look at him, a charming sophisticate. LA is a great place to be young.”

“You should be proud of yourself,” Ed comments.

“Some say I’m just an opportunist,” Bif muses. He produces a hip flask and two tumblers and pours them each a shot of gin.

“Well, I say Negroes need opportunities,” Ed replies, knocking down his gin and chasing it with punch.

“After this war, there will be opportunities for a lot more Negroes, I promise you,” Bif replies.

“What do you mean?” Ed asks.

“There’s a Swedish fellow, his name is Myrdal, Gunnar Myrdal. He’s in the United States right now working on a plan to give coloreds opportunities for advancement. White folks are planning to integrate Negroes, the right kind of Negroes, into the entire American society.” “You don’t say.” Ed is always impressed with Bif’s range of inside information. One of the reasons Ed was able to survive the crash of 1929 was that Bif predicted the calamity in July, three months before it happened. Ed was able to sell his Whittier store for top dollar. After the crash, the store remained vacant for years. “But how do you know this”

“When you’re in the newspaper business, you hear a lot,” Bif replies quietly. “I just hope the boys can survive to take advantage of it.”

?

****

Family and friends. all assemble at Union Station to see Sid off to the Army. Even Chat is here, Sid observes. He quickly chastises himself. Why wouldn’t Chat be here. My brother doesn’t dislike me. It’s me; I’m the one who doesn’t like my brother.

“Now son,” Bif pulls Sid aside and says, “whatever you do, just get along with them.” Sid reads the worried look in his stepfather’s eyes. Bif has not aged well. His short stature is almost equaled by a protruding stomach that continually troubles the Times photographer with aches, pains and constipation. Bif appears like one big block of bulging flesh. His heavy jowls sag, pulling the rest of his face down into the sad expression of a bloodhound. Sid knows that Bif loves him. Bif even got Sid a favorable posting with military intelligence. All Sid has to do is get through basic training without incident.

“Don’t worry, Pops,” Sid smiles, “I won’t let you down.”

Both his grandmother and mother cry, as they each hug and kiss Sid goodbye. The last one Sid hugs is Mary,

“I’ll write you every day,” she whispers. Mary will write a total of two letters, which is one more than Sid writes Mary.

Then Sid boards the Southern Pacific that will roar its way northward to Monterey and the Army induction center at Fort Ord. As he leans out from the chugging train slowly making its way out of Union Station, waving goodbye to his family assembled on the platform, Sid notices Chat comforting his sobbing sweetheart, holding Mary a little too close for Sid’s liking. In the fleeting moment, Sid finally finds a good reason to hate his twin brother.

?

EPISODE TWENTY-SEVEN

For years the Democratic Party feeds Negroes propaganda. In the South, white Democrats prevent Negroes from voting, while in the North and West white Democrats urge the Negroes to elect Franklin Roosevelt president of the United States. Roosevelt becomes only the second Democrat in the twentieth century to win the White House. The first, Woodrow Wilson, was a klansman ___ as is Harry Truman, Roosevelt’s vice-president. Roosevelt initiates his New Deal program. It’s a ‘new deal’ for the whites but the same ‘old deal’ for coloreds. Roosevelt’s very first New Deal program, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, seizes Negro-owned farms that Roosevelt declares are uneconomic, without compensation and turns them over to larger white farmers and calls them cooperatives. Then Roosevelt’s New Deal ?subsidizes the so-called cooperatives paying white farmers not to grow certain farm products. Thousands of wealthy white landowners, including members of the House of Representatives and US Senate receive millions in federal government subsidies for not growing produce on lands stolen from Negroes.

Roosevelt’s New Deal creates an idle millionaire landowner class while driving moderately successful black farmers into bankruptcy. Roosevelt’s New Deal then bans Negroes from sharecropping, driving black families completely off ?all the farmland they and their families ?had worked for generations. When the white farmers complain about the lack of cheap farm labor, Roosevelt’s State Department negotiates a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ with the Mexican government to replace cheap black sharecroppers with even cheaper Mexican migrant farm workers.

The Social Security Administration, another New Deal program, replaces the Post Office, as the federal government’s primary domestic intelligence agency. Social Security extends government surveillance over the mails to government surveillance over all official public and private records gathering intelligence on every citizen in the United States. Modeled on J. Edgar Hoover’s card index file at the Justice Department Roosevelt’s New Deal creates an intelligence system by subsidizing IBM to develop the computer technology required to store massive amounts of information. IBM as well as other government-funded corporations provide Germany with the research that enables the National Socialist Party to overthrow Germany’s Weimar Republic and build its Nazi war machine. Another New Deal program, the Works Progress Administration, gathers information to feed into the government’s computer using intelligence gatherers are hired and organized by the Federal Writers workshop. Though not officially a New Deal program, Roosevelt’s administration negotiates and approves military contracts with Hitler’s Nazi government, directing American companies to provide the Nazis with military hardware, gas and oil supplies, aircraft bombsites and guidance systems as well as the computer technologies. ?The Nazis use IBM American computers track and incarcerate Jews and other enemies of fascism. Computer administer the concentration and death camps where the Nazis tattoo IBM computer codes on their victim’s arms. The Ford Motor Company provides the Nazis with the trucks that transport German troops into Czechoslovakia and Poland; Ford engines, fueled by American petroleum, and equipped with American-made bomb sights power Nazi war planes that bomb cities throughout Europe. Ford designed ?a half-track military vehicle. the Maultier, for Henrich Himmler’s SS to overcome the severe winter by converted a 3-ton Ford V3000 truck into a half-track truck. Over 5,400 were built for Hitler’s Wehrmacht in France at the Ford factory in Asnieres. In 1942 a total of 635 vehicles were produced, 1943 there were 13,000 and 1944 7,310 built.

At the conclusion of the Second World War, the Ford Motor Company collects millions of dollars in payments deposited into Swiss bank accounts by the Nazis as payment for goods and services provided during the war. Roosevelt’s New Deal allows the Nazis to help themselves to “America’s ‘arsenal of democracy.’ ?Roosevelt’s New

Deal ?designs a post-war economic system that will rule. The Bretton-Woods Accords, declares that all post-war economic transactions will be conducted using the American dollar and be handled by the Bank of International Settlements, a bank owned and operated by Nazi Germany’s Third Reich.?

As Roosevelt assists the Nazis to appropriate the personal and real property of Europe’s Jews, ?Roosevelt’s New Deal administration seizes ?hundreds of millions of acres of farmland and timberland in Washington, Oregon and California from American citizens who Roosevelt interns in American concentration camps similar to those in Nazi Germany. Adhering to a policy that sets aside petty partisanship, the Roosevelt Administration equitably distributes all the land he seizes to his ?wealthy supporters in both the Republican and Democratic Party. Harry Truman, Roosevelt’s wartime Vice President and a member of the Ku Klux Klan, manages Roosevelt’s land distribution policy, along the lines of Mussolini’s famous dictum, “We fascists pay our debts and make the trains run on time.” ?

****

Thanks to Bif Meadows, Sid is ideally positioned to survive World War II. ?Sid must follow ‘Pop’s’ instructions, ignore the continual racial slurs and nigger-baiting and apply every lesson he learned in the ROTC to his advantage. Sid breezes through basic training and is assigned to a colored detachment of Military Police stationed at Fort Dix, New Jersey.

Meanwhile Chat enters UCLA to begin his athletic career. Sometimes he thinks about Mary who is now a Howard University freshman. Few coloreds attend UCLA; none are coeds. But Chat decides it is best that he not give Sid another reason to hate him. On December 6th, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and Chatworth removes himself from the ranks of the chosen few, untouched by America’s virulent racism, and become one of the masses of American Negroes, marked for extermination. Whether it was by fate or free will, once the choice is made, Chatsworth Jenkins would never again enjoy the rights of a free American.

?

“I’ve got to join up,” Chat tells Julia a week after Pearl Harbor. “I don’t really have a choice. Sid is already in the Army doing his part; I have to do mine as well.”

“You are attending UCLA with a promising college and athletic career ahead of you,” Julia argues. “You are doing your part.”

But Chatsworth Jenkins is the son of hero and soldier. He is also a patriot and determined to do his duty. “If coloreds don’t join in this fight, how can we claim the benefits of citizenship?”

“You can’t enjoy any benefits if you’re dead,” Julia replies. “Be sensible. There are plenty of other colored boys available to do the fighting. But there aren’t many colored boys attending UCLA on a scholarship.”

“Do you think that they’ll find another colored to put in your place if you leave UCLA?” Bif adds. “Why do you think the government gives college deferments? The country needs its best and brightest.”

Julia doesn’t give Chat an opportunity to answer. “Of course, they won’t give another colored boy your scholarship.” she exclaims. “It’s your duty to stay in college and graduate ___ for the sake of colored people, everywhere.”

Chat looks at Bif. “Can’t you explain it to her, Pops? This is the colored man’s opportunity to serve his country. A lot of the fellows from ‘Jef’ are joining. All my friends are joining. If I don’t go, what will they think of me? Besides, Mom didn’t try to keep Sid from enlisting.”

“That was different,” Julia blurts out. But her rejoinder only gives Chat another reason for joining the Army.

Chat stares at his mother. “Sid always said that you didn’t care for him very much. I never believed him, until now.”

“That’s not true, Chat, and you know it!” Bif scolds his stepson.

Normally, Bif doesn’t get into his wife and stepson’s arguments. He knows that neither wants nor needs his help ____ and, if he dares interfere, eventually both mother and son would turn on him. But, if there was ever a time to come to Julia’s aid, it was now ___ especially since what Chat says is true.

“If it’s not true,” Chat says smugly, “then you can’t object to my joining the Army since you didn’t object to Sid joining up.”

Once again, family and friends gather at Union Station to see another son off. This time Julia’s son was not going off to an Army career, he was going off to war with the likelihood not to return. They are not the only family and friends seeing a loved one off. Thousands of parents, relatives and friends crowd into Union Station to see thousands of young men board the troop trains that begin the journey to faraway lands where these young men will fight and die on battlefields fashioned by the Treaty of Versailles in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles in 1919 ____ signed by the Germans under Allied threat to resume WWI. All are proud of these young lions, who willingly sacrifice their lives not knowing the evil plans of Wall Street bankers, the greedy designs of corporate war mongers, the sinister plans of New Deal administrators or the sinister ideology of the Ku Klux Klan kleagles, goblins and wizards who rule over America’s Invisible Empire.

Julia cries the whole night before Chat’s departure. At the railroad station, both Sharon and Ed’s eyes are swollen red from tears. While Ed continually dabs his eyes with a handkerchief, Bif is inconsolable. Chat’s stepfather is so overcome by emotion that he cannot control the great sobs shaking his heavy frame. Neither Julia nor Chat understood how much the crusty old newspaperman really loves his adopted family and how his great heart nearly breaks to see his stepson going off to fight in what the news photographer knows is a phony war. The only other time that Julia had ever seen Bif so overcome by emotion was when he lost all his friends in Tulsa

?“Is there anything you can do to help him?” Ed asks Bif on their way from the Union Station to the parking lot after Chat departs with all the other young soldiers. They are jostled by a crowd of weeping men and women already mourning the loss of their sons. ?Bif tries to pull himself together while Charlotta, Sharon and Julia comfort each other.

“Now that we’re at war, my contacts won’t even acknowledge they even know me,” Bif replies. “And they won’t return my calls. There’s abs nothing I can do for him.”

“Then he’s completely on his own,” Ed sighs.

“Yes,” Bif murmurs, “God help him.”

But Bif knows better than anyone that not even God can Chat, now.

?

To Be Continued ...

Copyright ó Eugene A Stovall III all rights reserved No parts of this book may be reproduced without expressed permission of the author

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