A Thousand Never Evers

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  A Note to Readers

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Afterword

  Chronology of Events

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  With buckets of love for my father,

  Harvey Burg,

  who teaches by example

  that we’re all in this world together

  The things that I don’t like I will try to change.

  —MEDGAR EVERS

  A NOTE TO READERS

  Although I spent a whole school year in seventh grade, it’s the two minutes when my math teacher stepped out of class that I’ll remember for the rest of my life. In those two minutes, the boy who sat behind me took a thick black Magic Marker and drew a swastika on the cover of his math book. I knew that what he drew was a symbol of hatred toward Jewish people, and I had the feeling he knew too. To this day, I can still hear everyone’s giddy laughter as he opened the third-floor window and hurled the math book out with disgust. Being Jewish, I felt my heart fall right down to the ground with that book.

  Looking back, I’m not surprised it was during seventh grade that I began to ask my father all kinds of questions about his work in the civil rights movement—a movement in our nation to gain equal rights for citizens of all backgrounds, especially African Americans.

  Even though my parents are not African American, they wanted to help combat the racism they felt was unjust. It was the 1960s, and my parents believed that in the United States, all Americans deserved the right to vote for their leaders, attend good schools, and go to whichever public parks or public swimming pools they liked best. So my parents moved from New York to Alabama, the heart of the civil rights movement. My dad joined a law firm there. One case at a time, the lawyers in the firm fought so that African Americans could have the same rights as all Americans.

  My father told me that although the institution of slavery had ended with the Civil War in 1865, discrimination against Americans of African descent continued in countless ways. Leaders in many states throughout the country actually passed laws to ensure the segregation of white people from African Americans and other people of color. These laws were called Jim Crow laws.

  Dad said that according to the Jim Crow laws, African American children were not allowed to go to the same schools as white children. They had to go to older, smaller, more crowded schools with fewer books and desks. And even if there was a school right near their house, they often had to walk for miles to get to the Negro school because the school buses were only for white children. Under the Jim Crow laws, African American children and adults weren’t allowed to eat in the same restaurants, use the same restrooms, or sleep in the same hotels as white people.

  In addition, racist officials often prevented African Americans from voting by giving them unfair tests and making them pay poll taxes they could not afford. Sometimes African Americans who tried to register to vote were beaten up or fired from their jobs.

  My father told me that even in some of the states that didn’t pass Jim Crow laws, white people still treated African Americans poorly when they tried to get good work, live in decent houses, and attend good schools.

  Then he played me a cassette tape of an interview with the Imperial Wizard of a group called the Ku Klux Klan. This group of white people hid behind masks and robes and terrorized African Americans, as well as Catholics, Jews, and homosexuals. Much to my surprise, Dad said it wasn’t just Klansmen who participated in atrocious acts like burning churches and torturing and murdering people different from themselves. Lots of people, including government officials like mayors, governors, and sheriffs, permitted these terrible events to take place.

  In response to all this injustice, African Americans organized themselves into what was called the civil rights movement. They moved together to fight racism and demand equal treatment as citizens of the United States of America. And believe it or not, even though so many activists were threatened, beaten, and killed, for the most part they didn’t fight with weapons. Instead they used their minds, words, courage, and nonviolent resistance. They bonded together in groups. And they really started to make progress in the 1950s and 1960s when they boycotted shops that didn’t treat them fairly, refused to sit at the back of public buses, marched against racial injustice, integrated schools, and registered as many African American voters as they could.

  I remember asking my father why he wanted to work for the civil rights movement in the first place. He told me, “It’s because I am a Jew.” He said, “What happens to one minority group affects us all. There’s no place in my America for discrimination because of skin color, religion, or whether you’re a girl or boy.”

  If you believe, as I do, that ninety percent of writing is thinking, then you could say I started writing this book back in seventh-grade math class. I was supposed to be concentrating on negative numbers and equations but was thinking about prejudice and equal rights instead.

  After all the thinking I did back in seventh grade, I finished writing the book once I was grown up. As part of my research, I interviewed many interesting people: children and adults who grew up in the Mississippi Delta, vegetable farmers, a hat maker, and an expert on the black modeling industry. I read old newspapers and magazines from the 1960s when my characters lived. I hired my former middle school students to be my first editors. And, oh yes, I also baked butter bean cookies.

  A Thousand Never Evers is historical fiction. That means that while I made up most of the story, I also included many facts about where and when it takes place. Although most of the characters you will read about are fictional, Medgar Evers, Emmett Till, and the four girls who died when their church was bombed were very real individuals whose lives and deaths motivated civil rights workers to keep fighting for equality.

  CHAPTER 1

  June 12, 1963

  Now get this: there’s a boy in Jackson so rich that when he finished high school, his daddy bought him a brand-new car. At least that’s what I heard. In my family, we don’t have that kind of money, but my uncle gives a whole dollar to any Pickett who graduates Acorn Elementary School. It’s tradition.

  So here I am, soaring through the sky on my swing that hangs from the oak tree, when Uncle Bump calls out the door of his shed, “Go on. Get your brother. He’ll take you.” He stretches a dollar bill between both hands and I jump right off. Sure it’s not enough for a car, but that dollar can buy a whole lot of good, like twenty Hershey bars. After my brother graduated elementary school, he bought a baseball. But I’m not going to waste my dollar on something dumb. I want something important, like dye to turn my flour-colored dress new for the first day of school.

  “Mama will be proud you’re spending your dollar to make a bright impression at C
ounty Colored,” Uncle Bump tells me.

  “It’s West Thunder Creek Junior High School,” I tell him, and stuff the dollar into my sock. Sure I’m going to the Negro junior high school, but a school’s a school. Folks should call it by its proper name and make it sound important.

  “Don’t dillydally, Addie Ann,” Uncle Bump says. He pulls the harmonica out of his pocket and blows a chord. And it’s real good to hear him sound those notes, because ever since our boss, Old Man Adams, got the whooping cough, Uncle Bump hasn’t had time to play music. “Mama’s bringing home some hen tonight,” he says. Then he sinks down on the steps of his shed and slides that harmonica across his lips.

  I’m heading across the tracks to the white side and I reckon some furry company won’t hurt. My cat, Flapjack, and me have a secret code. When I whistle and click my tongue twice, he comes running. Tweet, click, click. Tweet, click, click. Other folk think it’s magic, but here he comes, dashing across the pine needles, purring as he threads a figure eight round my ankles.

  When we pass Brother Babcock’s chicken shack, my stomach growls. And when we get to Daisy’s Dry Goods, I kick up the dirt on the path, because I’ve been itching to buy a real new dress in there, but right about now, we don’t have the money.

  As always, once we cross the railroad tracks everything seems whiter and brighter, and I don’t mean just the people who live here. The fresh-painted shingles and the white picket fences gleam in the late-afternoon sun. Even Flapjack’s tan fur lights up a fiery orange. And my feet are glad to walk on pavement.

  By the time we get to the edge of Mr. Mudge’s place, the sun’s diving into the horizon. Flapjack and me pass by Mr. Mudge’s greenhouse and his stable full of cows and pigs, on the way to his farm where my brother works. “Now don’t squish the squash,” I tell Flapjack before we head across the leafy rows to meet Elias, who’s bent like a rainbow over the tomatoes. He’s been working this land since he was five.

  “Uncle Bump says you’ve gotta take me to get the dye,” I say, and hold up the dollar to prove it’s true. But Elias stares straight past me like I’m not even here. Mama always says he’s “half legs, half smile,” but today his grin is gone. His eyes are sad and distant.

  “What’s a matter?” I ask. He’s probably worried up about getting into college, so I tell him, “I bet you’ll even get a scholarship to Morehouse. Then I’ll come to Georgia and visit you and we’ll—”

  “Shut up,” he says.

  Usually Elias doesn’t live on the edge of his mind like me, so right about now I don’t know what to think.

  “Don’t you know ’bout Medgar?” he asks.

  “What’s that?”

  “Medgar Evers got shot. Down in Jackson. Late last night. Someone killed…” His voice stretches and tightens. Then he swipes the side of his hand under his nose. That’s what he does when he gets close to tears. Usually it stops them from sliding down.

  Here one guy I never heard of gets shot dead, and now my brother’s all ripped up and I’m just about crazy. “He a friend?” I ask.

  “No.”

  “He owe you money?”

  “No!” Elias rolls his eyes.

  “Well, if he ain’t a friend and he don’t owe you money, what’s a matter?”

  “Don’t you know anything?” he asks.

  I turn away. Elias knows I know something. Otherwise, why did I get the highest score on the geography quiz in the whole sixth grade? Okay, sure there are only four kids in the sixth grade at Acorn Elementary, but still, a ninety-six is a ninety-six. I want to remind Elias of this but my throat squeezes shut. I swipe my hand under my nose but my tears get out anyway.

  My brother puts his hands on my shoulders, tries to turn me round. “Sorry,” he says. “Sometimes I forget you’re a little kid.”

  “Seventh grade’s not little,” I tell him. Then I blink a lot to get the tears to stay inside. “Now come on. Tell me! Who’s this Edgar Mevers?”

  “His name is Medgar Evers,” Elias says. “He’s from the movement.”

  I nod so my brother will think I know what he’s talking about. But I wonder why he can’t answer my questions plain and simple. If he’s so smart, why doesn’t he tell me this: Why do they call it the movement? How can he swipe under his nose and stop crying? And why did Medgar Evers’s mama give him such a silly name?

  “Well, someone killed him,” Elias says, and looks away again. “Left three young children without a daddy.”

  I reckon Elias probably knows how those poor children feel.

  Our daddy died of pneumonia when Elias was four. Mama still says, “Your daddy went to Heaven proud of his little boy.” Whenever she says that, Elias grins, but truth be told, I get this hollow feeling in my chest because it’s not fair. I was nothing but a lump in Mama’s tummy when Daddy met his Maker. He never got the chance to be proud of me. He never watched me jump double Dutch. He never tasted my honey cake. He never saw my ninety-six on the geography quiz. Daddy missed my whole life because he went and died of pneumonia a couple months before I was born.

  Bad as I feel thinking about Daddy, I know Elias feels worse. So here I am, trying to think of a way to help him feel better, but I can’t. Still, Elias rubs his hand over my head like I’m his good-luck charm, and I get the notion he likes knowing I’m here.

  I follow my brother across the pumpkin patch into the forest on Mr. Mudge’s land. We don’t say a word. All we hear are blackbirds chirping in the trees. We cross the thick woods to the parking lot of Mr. Mudge’s Corner Store. Then we head out of the lot and turn down the road to the Very Fine Fabric Shop.

  At the Very Fine Fabric Shop, Elias doesn’t take but two seconds to get caught up chatting with my best friend Delilah’s second cousin Bessie. Bessie’s in tenth grade. She cleans all the shops on the white side of town. And I can’t deny it: Bessie’s fetching. She’s got green eyes and all kinds of curves. I reckon I shouldn’t be too surprised that the whole while I’m picking out the dye—and I could use some help deciding the color—Elias is yapping with Bessie about that Medgar guy. So without a hint of advice, I choose yellow and pay. And even though it’s getting dark, Elias won’t leave the store, not till Bessie sprays the counters and sweeps the floors.

  The sky’s between hawk and buzzard when at long last Elias and me set off home. I know Mama won’t be happy with us. But that doesn’t seem to bother my brother.

  The whole way back, Flapjack weaves round my calves while Elias talks about that Medgar guy and the movement to get us our rights. I reckon my brother thinks he’s the reverend and he’s got to convert me to the fighting side.

  “Now everybody’s got some fire, some rage,” he says. “It’s how you use your fire that counts.”

  While we cross the tracks, I tell him to stop preaching.

  “I’m just trying to help,” Elias says. Then he shakes his head like he’s thirty years older than me, not just five.

  By the time we get home, the sun’s under the earth. Elias and me slog into the kitchen where Mama’s sitting at the table with Uncle Bump. As expected, she’s in a dither. There’s no sweet smell of hen wafting through the house. Worse, her usual I-been-working-hard-and-I’m-glad-I’m-home smile is gone.

  “Where you been?” she snaps.

  My bottom lip shakes. I hate how that happens. Then everyone can tell I’ve got the fidgets. I wonder why I’ve got to have a giveaway lip.

  “Sorry,” I tell her. I pull out a chair and sit. And I don’t know how I think so fast under pressure but I do. I cross my fingers under the kitchen table so God won’t hold anything against me. “What actually happened is…,” I say. I’m about to tell Mama and Uncle Bump how a big mean dog came and chased Flapjack up a tree right outside the Very Fine Fabric Shop. I’m about to tell them that no matter how much I whistled and clicked, Flapjack wouldn’t come on down. I’m about to tell them that if I left Flapjack there, that dog would’ve eaten my poor cat for supper, but before I do, Mama cuts her eyes at me real mea
n and says, “If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a fibber!”

  And I just put my lips back together right there.

  Mama turns to Elias.

  “I’ve been worried sick! You know how I feel ’bout you being out late! ’Specially when you got your sister with you. She’s just a little girl, Elias.”

  “Sorry, Mama,” Elias says.

  “I’m not little!” I say.

  Uncle Bump tries to change the subject. He bows his head. “Thank you, Lord, for the food you placed before us,” he says.

  There’s a bowl of gray boiled potatoes in the center of the table. And one thing’s clear: they sure aren’t hen. Mama probably fixed up the hen so good that the Tate family ate it all and there wasn’t any left to bring home.

  “This looks delicious,” Elias says. He spears a potato with his fork.

  But Mama, she yanks that forkful of potato right out of my brother’s hand. “I don’t want to see no one eating till I get an explanation.” The fork trembles in Mama’s hand because she’s so worried and mad. Being worried and mad is like biscuits and gravy for Mama. The two just go together.

  “We were picking out dye for Addie Ann, when we run into someone to talk to,” Elias says. “It was real important.”

  But Mama doesn’t see it that way. Not at all. She points her potato fork at my brother, then at me. “When I send my kids over to the white side, I don’t expect them to come through that door after the sun has set.” Mama’s so angry she doesn’t even ask what color dye I have in my sack. “Now who’s so important to talk to when it’s already getting dark?”

  “It was just Bessie,” Elias says. “She was working at the shop. We got to talking ’bout Medgar Evers and…”

  It seems Mama’s heard the news too. She sets down her potato fork, closes her weary eyes, and starts praying for the dead man’s soul.

  But her prayer sounds more like complaining. “Dear Lord,” she says, “that Medgar didn’t deserve to die. He been stirring up trouble, trying to get them schools mixed up, colored and white, as they should. And he been helping sign up Negro voters, Lord, ’cause don’t every person supposed to have a voice in these United States?”