Day Two: Getting to Know You

Hello children, how are you all on this fine morning. I hope you are all right as rain. Now that I have had my coffee, I am. Well, where did we leave off, children. Oh, yes I remember, when last we spoke it was of Chicago 1966. Where does the story go from there I bet your asking yourselves. Well children from there we go to Mississippi. Mississippi!!!!!!!! I know, children I can hardly believe it myself. But our star cross lovers, Charles and Yvonne now have themselves two little bundles of joy, and they are just 14 months apart. While black folks are fleeing the state of Mississippi, many for their lives, and many ending up in Chicago, our couple is running head long into the fray like a pair of firemen into a burning house. Make no mistake children, it was the late sixties, early seventies, so Mississippi was indeed burning. August 16, 1969 Hurricane Camille, a level 5 storm devastated Mississippi's Gulf Coast. But storms were a brewing in Mississippi long before Camille. One of the most well know was over the death of a 14 year old boy. Who like Charles and Yvonne was also from Chicago. A little over 10 years, before our hapless duo decides to move to Mississippi, this young man is sent to visit his uncle in Money, MS.
Unfamiliar with the ways of Dixieland, Emmett, failed to heed the warnings of his mother and "mined his matters around white people". He was tragically murdered. His killing and the subsequent acquittal of the main suspects became a driving force in the American Civil Rights Movement. On June 12, 1963 Civil Rights leader Medgar Evers is gunned down in the driveway of his home in Jackson, Mississippi. He was just 37 years old. A year later on June 21, 1964 three young men, James Chaney 21, Michael Schwerner 24, and Andrew Goodman 20, who were also part of the Civil Rights movement were killed and their bodies buried in an earthen dam. Forty days later their bodies were found. Lynchings, mob violence and church burnings were common occurrences in those days. But for Charles and Yvonne, the only struggle they were aware of was keeping, their small family clothe, feed, warm and dry. A struggle that they succeed in, even managing to buy their own home, something that was rare for black folks back in those days.

What's that you say children, this is all ancient history? Well, you would be right children. This all happened a long, long time ago, and Mississippi, is a land, far, far away. Look at were we are today. Today there is a black man, or excuse me, children, an African American man on his way to the White House. A man who, just like Emmett Till and our fearless couple Charles and Yvonne, springs forth from Chicago. Life indeed, is a funny thing, children.

It is just amazing to me in a country were people of color were murdered with impunity, a man of color has now be elevated to the role of President. I have to say, I don't know what I think about that, children. I don't really know, what or how to feel. I think it just hasn't sunk in yet. It really doesn't seem real.

On that note I am going to have to leave you, children, until tomorrow, then. Your Auntie ZsaZsa can't just sit around blogging with you all day you know. Some many things to do, so little time. Till I blog again, mine your matters now, children.