A Few Red Drops – Claire Hartfield

Three weeks later he wrote, “Everything is just like they say, if not better.” He made arrangements to bring his family to join him— first his wife to set up house; later, when all was ready, Mrs. Hunter would bring their six children. A little down the way, in Hattiesburg, the Defender was generating excited conversation at Robert Horton’s barbershop. Proud of his shop’s status as the community hub, Horton took forty to fifty copies of the Defender every week, magnanimously distributing them to customers at cost. The Defender’s talk of political freedom in the North fascinated him.

Blacks didn’t just have the right to vote; they had the right to vote their own into office. Horton could think of no greater satisfaction. But he was cautious. His barbershop, his Hattiesburg clientele, was his livelihood. It seemed too risky to go up north and start from scratch. He had been tempted once, when he traveled to New Orleans to attend his daughter’s graduation from Straight University. Looking to pass some time while his daughter was otherwise engaged, he had sauntered down to the local barbershop, where he met a man who was talking up the North, promising a bushelful of jobs, offering free train tickets to Chicago.

Horton shook his head. He wasn’t ready. But he couldn’t dismiss the idea, and he mulled it over with family and friends when he returned home to Hattiesburg. Moving day in the Black Belt. The word was spreading. Someone up north had sent a letter to someone in Georgia, and that letter was carefully handed from person to person, winding its way across state lines to Laurel, Mississippi, where it was taken up and read out loud at a meeting of the Sisters Home Mission.

Back in nearby Hattiesburg, a family—the Martins (first names unknown)—decided to test the waters. Mr. Martin went up first and reported back that wages in Chicago were high and that for the first time in his life, he felt like a man. Sell everything and join me, he told his wife.

Mrs. Martin showed the letter to her friends, who were excited, and to her pastor, who was very much against it. But she paid him no mind. She sold her house, chickens, cow, and as much furniture as she could, and led a group of ten to Chicago.

New York, New York 10016 Copyright © 2018 by Claire Hartfield All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016. Clarion Books is an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Cover photograph: Chicago Skyline, by Kaufmann & Fabry Co., retrieved from the Library of Congress Cover design by Lisa Vega www.hmhco.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-0-544-78513-7 eISBN 978-1-328-69904-6 v1.1217 1kitap1.com/en To Emily, Caroline, Corinne—and the generations of young people who will shape the future. 1kitap1.com/en Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red drops for history to remember. Then—I forget. —Carl Sandburg “I Am the People, the Mob” 1kitap1.com/en 1kitap1.com/en PROLOGUE ON A LAZY SUMMER SUNDAY in 1919, fourteen-year-old John Harris and his friends set out for a fun-filled, beat-the-heat afternoon at the beach. On that fateful July day, the boys’ water play went dreadfully wrong, sparking a blood-soaked race riot that would shake the city of Chicago and send shock waves across the nation.

The rage didn’t appear out of nowhere that day on the beach. It had been a long time coming, born in the city’s beginnings, written in the countless daily interactions of ordinary citizens and city leaders. Black migrants up from the South clashed with white immigrants from Europe; laborers and union leaders struggled to hold their own against mighty industrialists; police officers and gang members strove to control the streets; Democratic aldermen and a Republican mayor faced off over patronage and power.

This is the story of their conflicting interests built over time, layer upon layer, ultimately exploding in bloodshed on the city’s streets. It is also America’s story. 1kitap1.com/en PART ONE CATALYST Aerial view of a Chicago beach. And so I say On a summer’s day, What’s so fine as being a boy? Ha, Ha!

—Paul Laurence Dunbar, “A Boy’s Summer Song” 1kitap1.com/en ONE THE BEACH THE DATE WAS JULY 27, 1919, a day that would forever change the life of John Turner Harris and cause the whole city of Chicago to rethink where it had been and where it was headed.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: ba20eae6e0b7669d
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 7,233,743 bytes (6.899 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 9780544785137, 9781328699046
• Pages: 204
• Language: English (en)

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• Estimated Reading Time: 204.6 minutes
• Total Words: 40,921
• Total Characters: 244,156
• Average Words per Page: 200.59
• Average Characters per Page: 1196.84

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