Blues Highway

Carla D. Williams

Description

Blues Highway is one migration story of Blacks from the American South, aided initially by the Pullman porters broad reach into the world beyond. Moving on to the next generation, the porter Sidney sets up his daughter Janet to take hold of his barber shop. As she navigates her life, opportunities and social conditions shift. The power of Janet and Frank's relationship moves the saga forward, touching honestly and deeply on the forces of change. In the end, Janet's move to Atlanta illustrates the return of many African Americans to 'the New South,' where an educated middle class finds success. Blues Highway reclaims the impact of Pullman porters in shaping the black migrations, filled with richness and truths, emotion, love and loss. An early manuscript was recognized as a semi-finalist for the Inaugural Tuscarora Prize in historical fiction in 2019.

Sujets

• Historical
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 14 août 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669840947
• Langue: English

Extrait

Blues Highway A migration journey from the South to Chicago Carla D. Williams

Copyright © 2022 by Carla D. Williams. Library of Congress Control Number: 2022914128 ISBN: Hardcover 978-1-6698-4096-1 Softcover 978-1-6698-4095-4 eBook 978-1-6698-4094-7 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only. Certain stock imagery © Getty Images. Rev. date: 08/12/2022 Xlibris 844-714-8691 www.Xlibris.com 843690

CONTENTS

Chapter 1 Colfay, Louisiana Chapter 2 Colfay-New Orleans Chapter 3 Colfay-New Orleans-Chicago, 1943-45 Chapter 4 Gainesville, GA-New Orleans, LA 1946 Chapter 5 Colfay-St.Louis-Chicago, 1958-9 Chapter 6 St. Louis, 1959 Chapter 7 Chicago, 1959 Chapter 8 Chicago, 1967 Chapter 9 Chicago, 1970 Chapter 10Chicago, 1970 Chapter 11Chicago, 1970 Chapter 12Chicago, 1972 Chapter 13Chicago, 1972 Chapter 14Chicago-New Orleans-Chicago, 1974-6 Chapter 15New Orleans-Chicago, 1977 Chapter 16Chicago, 1976 Chapter 17Chicago, 1977 Chapter 18Chicago, 1978 Chapter 19Chicago, 1979 Chapter 20Chicago-New Orleans, 1979 Chapter 21Chicago - New Orleans, 1982 Chapter 22Chicago, 1983 Chapter 23Chicago, 1984 Chapter 24Chicago, 1988 Chapter 25Chicago, 1992 Chapter 26Chicago, 1994 Chapter 27Chicago, 1995 Chapter 28Chicago, 1998

Epilogue Acknowledgements

For Conrad, Williams, Fambro and Namboodiri families whose struggles and love shaped mine. And for my mother Carolyn, who told me I could write long before any other teacher did.

Chapter 1 Colfax, Louisiana

Sidney needed a scheme to make dough. His mother Ella and younger sisters depended on him. Pops had left them to stay with relatives during the hard times. His Pops moved to Baton Rouge to work as a rigger for Standard Oil, but he only sent a few dollars home. Then came his dad’s letter saying he wouldn’t be back with mama and them in Colfax, Louisiana. He’d taken up with another woman in Scotlandville, instead of coming back. The letter claimed that he was organizing unions for riggers in Texas. A family friend who passed through town said he’d seen him gambling in east Texas. Sidney never found out what the truth was. Sidney was just nine years old in the midst of the 1927 Mississippi River flood. He was twelve when he ate white dirt during the 1930 drought. He could never forget seeing his mother eat the sweet kaolin clay herself, and getting sick with constipation. Working on struggling farms barely kept his belly full. After high school, Sidney left home and moved in with his father’s cousin, who managed a grocery in Baton Rouge. He thought he might run across his dad if he joined him in oil rigging. Sidney became a delivery boy on a bike for pocket money from his father’s kin. They sold dry goods, meat from a larder and medicine from a small pharmacy. Town life and plentiful food made him think of taking classes to make more money. He showed up with his high school diploma and attended Southern University, the segregated state college near the Mississippi River. Work remained scarce and ends didn’t meet. People called it the Depression, but for his folks, it seemed like it just meant the same as the previous day. Louisiana spiraled with cotton dropping to less than five cents a pound, sugar to less than four. Timber, oil, and rice prices dipped and dove even deeper. Two years drifted by with little gains, so Sidney started thinking about joining the Army. He felt he was about ready to kill a man in 1939. Fully grown and owning nothing he could call his own but worn out clothes and second-hand shoes. It was a dull, chill morning when his mother’s brother John showed up at the house in Baton Rouge. Sidney was washing up at the tap next to the outhouse. Since he’d stood as a father figure, Sidney knew he had a message from mama Ella. “You need to make more money, son,” Uncle John cut to the point. “You’re too big to be on a bike. Your mother and sisters need you. I got you into Pullman. I showed them how far you’d gone in school.” “Why? I’m almost set. What will I do there?” Sidney had only taken a train ride to Atlanta once as a boy. “Will I get to drive the train?” Uncle John stumbled laughing. “They don’t have us drive the train. We serve the passengers and change rooms.” Sidney sat down with him on the back porch to listen. “Why do I need to leave here now?” Sidney asked. “I have four more semesters, maybe three more years, and I’ll be through.” “Count yourself done today,” Uncle John said, passing him a letter showing Sidney signed up asa Pullman attendant. “You’ll have to take cooking and bar courses to get started, but soon the vets will teach you the rest.” Uncle John told him to pack up and come see him back in Colfax, over 100 miles south on the Jefferson Highway. He told Sidney to be there by the end of the week if he wanted to settle on a future. Sidney never planned on going back to Colfax, the home of the worst ever clashes after the Civil War. Racist marauders tried to turn back the verdict of defeat with their Jim Crow laws and home grown terror and White League army. Even though he never experienced life under the Confederates, or the Ku Kluxers and their Democrats, each day white folks showed sullen disdain for him as if he were their slave. In Baton Rouge, Sidney worked hard and ate better than back home, yet he barely made enough to takea girl out. He’d grown to just under six feet tall, lean and nimble on the bicycle. His light brown skin turned golden honey cedar in the open sun. He fashioned a crate with a cushion over the back wheel and sometimes gave girls a ride across campus, staying there overnight. His best subject was math. He liked his professors. College gave him a sense of knowing a hunger for bigger places. Still he wondered what could move him forward except the Army. Signing with Pullman felt to Sidney like he’d hit the jackpot. Just 22 years old, he skipped the military draft due to this vital service. During World War II, Pullman railways hauled hundreds and thousands of service men. War brought scores of laborers off of farms into the training camps, onto naval ships and battlegrounds over Europe. Sidney’s new work as a kitchen helper and waiter took him between Los Angeles, New Orleans, Chicago and New York. Riding the rails moved him a step up and away from Colfax. During his childhood, money

grew short. Come winters, they all got by with a few bushels of sweet potatoes squirreled away from their small plot’s harvest, sometimes even less. Sidney had known hunger like a friend who never needed to knock. With Pullman, he swore none of his family would ever live so low again.

Chapter2 Colfax-New Orleans

Pullman rigor and discipline reshaped Sidney’s life in a way that serving as a bike delivery boy had not. For one thing, he had to wear the Pullman uniform, precisely as specified in the company rulebook: midnight-blue tailored jacket, crisp visored cap and pressed white shirt held in place with a polished belt buckle. Sidney didn’t show up with the jet-black skin that granddaddy Pullman preferred in the early days. Nonetheless his broad shoulders, ready smile and efficient manner won him change in his pocket and a wide group of friends – Blacks, Filipinos, Japanese, Chinese and Mexicans. Sidney ran his life around the rhythm of train routes. Sleeping at his mother’s off the Crescent run, his Aunt Marge’s in Chicago, or the Wabash Avenue YMCA, if he planned on staying a longer while. His Aunt Marge was his first and only relative up North. She was a big sister to his Uncle John and his mother. Strong willed and independent, she had a business doing men and women’s hair. Sometimes, she would show Sidney around up North. More often, he found space in a flophouse nearby the station. Some places had room for only two mattresses on the floor, to share with a fellow porter or a lady friend. Otherwise, he could not sleep too often on the job. Life as a Pullman porter became Sidney’s calling card into good money as part of the first black labor union to gain a big company contract. Pullman manufactured luxury train cars for white people’s overnight travel and pleasures. Pullman contracted Negroes to run, fetch and service them. They were sometimes faceless when passengers called crew members “George” instead of their name. George Pullman insisted on The Pullman Manual with close to 130 pages of rules to follow. Unspoken Rule No. 1: Never talk back if they called you outside your name. Sidney’s heart would beat to the freedom of travel. He longed for work that didn’t bridle his spirit. He started out hauling bags, when his back was young, firm and thick from field work and cycling. Besides paying extra attention to the smaller bags the ladies sometimes handed him, Sidney acted like a show host, rather than a helper. “Good afternoon, sirs and madams,” he bellowed in his smooth baritone voice. “How can I serve you well?” Sometimes he would sing a small tune, or perhaps whistle a few toots, in order to draw attention. He learned how to cook and cut hair on the train, and one Pullman veteran showed him how to make the best martini. He shared whatever tips he got with his mentors. One time, he saw a young red-headed girl moving up and down the carriage. He stopped her. “Excuse me, young miss,” he said, joking. “Are you Shirley Temple?” “No, sir. She’s a lady. I’m just a girl.” “Where are your parents? “I don’t know,” she said. “What’s their name? And what’s yours?” She told him, “I’m Jeannette and my parents are Mr. and Mrs. Chaney.” Without bothering to write it down, Sidney sang out, “I have a Jeannette for a Mr. and Mrs. Chaney! Come find Jeannette, come seek Jeannette.” Someone in the aisle further down picked up the tune of his voice and repeated it through the cars, until the Chaneys got their girl. Plenty of families put their child on board unsupervised. Sidney remembered each family’s name. He kept crayons and drawing paper, a word search booklet, a miniature puzzle and chess set in his stowage, setting himself up as the man most likely to safely transfer the child to grandparents. He lined up coworkers to keep them entertained, splitting the few dollars as they came. He learned to ignore the boarding school kids, whose parents were poor tippers. Extra favors for generous mobsters and their good-time girls, plus side work for clients who appreciated his ability to take careful dictation, added roughly twenty dollars a month. Sidney became a kitchen helper and waiter for a while. When he moved up the ranks to Club Car Attendant, his wages totaled eighty-five dollars per month. He began providing services on demand, including modest barbering, shaving and sometimes, with older male clients, assisting them in the bath. Riding in the sleeper car became an adventure for the well-to-do, but for Sidney, the long hours, sleepless nights and the demeaning service roles built a bridge into the world of money-making. Over the next few years, Sidney went back and forth between New Orleans, Atlanta and Chicago mostly, staying a night or two at his mother’s place in Colfax or settling in with a female companion elsewhere.

Along the train stops, small flophouses and juke joints, soul food, fine women and the blues became his vibe.

Chapter3 Colfax-New Orleans-Chicago, 1943-45

Coming and going between North and South and eOen West to Los Angeles, Sidney liOed suspended between worlds: climate shifts to ice and snow, weird ways of talking from New England clients and riders from the far northwest, racial diOides turned oOer and crisscrossed. He learned about making beds he would neOer sleep in, how to mix Mint Juleps he neOer enjoyed, how to whip up omelets, dice potatoes for hash browns and dish up salads he didn’t get to eat. He earned his tips, neOer begged for one, and got to line up workmates and split the pool. When generous tippers came on deck, the first to spy one would shout out “Fish! to the nearest man, or “Snake if it was a cheapskate. Sidney watched guys around the fish and picked up the tricks from one Wilson, who came from a family of porters. “Do a man a faOor, at an unexpected time, without his requesting it, Wilson told Sidney, who felt like he practically worked for free. He’d been on duty without rest for two weeks of heaOy summer traOel. “Is it right to treat a flabby, white drunkard who can’t eOen remember my name? Sidney replied. “Ôf course not, Wilson said. “It sure beats picking cotton though, don’t it? Ôr eating air pudding? “Yes, Sidney said. “But I could pick all my rows and not see the headman all day and get off the field back to school when the season ended. Trains neOer seem to stop. “This is men’s work, son, Wilson said. “No school bell, and a lot more money than a bale will get you. Get better at shining shoes, popping the rag, and smiling as you finish up. Show off your muscles when you’re hauling trunks. When someone asks you, try running to deliOer something and singing their name, Wilson added. “They loOe that. Always remember what a man likes to drink. And if you see him witha woman, neOer stare, eOen if she’s looking at you. “I get it. We get money if we shuck and jiOe. Ain’t we better than that? Sidney said. “You can go on and be better, Wilson said. “They ain’t neOer gonna know it. “You sayin’ a grown man should put up with them saying we’s boys? Sidney sneered. “Nooo, son. Do your best not to let it get to you, and keep it moOing. That’s what men do. It don’t matter what white folks say, as long as you know who you are and what you want. Sidney felt a grinding like his boyhood on Colfax plantations, picking cotton or gathering pecans. Despite the union’s bargain for better wages, the negligible sleep and uninterrupted chores differed only in the fact that the train made him think of moOing quickly elsewhere, setting his mind on becoming more than a man dependent on monthly tips. He also had to set money aside for his mother and sisters. What else he could do, he had not yet figured out, but he really wanted to get on with his own business, maybe a barber shop, or maybe a restaurant. Sidney had gone to his mom’s people in Chicago and was flush with pride and his Pullman card, and found friends and foes of the Pullman union, yet he always defended it. For years, Pullman porters organized for higher wages and better conditions, but gains stayed small until 1925, when A. Philip Randolph became the president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. He publishedThe Messenger,fought for a and wage beyond tips, a 240-hour work month, and four to six hours of regular sleep. Some folks hated the socialist talk of Randolph, saying he used the porters for his own agenda. At the Wabash AOenue YMCA in Chicago, Sidney heard people bad-mouth the porters’ demands for more rights and better wages. They would tell him how people who rock the boat would get into trouble and end up without their bread and butter. Sidney wanted to be engaged in union battles, but neOer could quite swallow the Brotherhood’s pact with the American Federation of Labor, those white crafters who cut brothers out of a job. Sidney didn’t want to get himself fired. He noticed that could often happen to Brotherhood organizers. Around one Oisit to Chicago, his Aunt Marge connected him with a friend Oisiting from New Ôrleans, and told him it was her friend Charles, a play uncle. Sidney simply noticed his fancy clothes, the gold ring on his finger and the confidence of his handshake. He listened to how he knew Uncle John and Aunt Marge as playmates in their youth. Sidney imagined himself eOentually shining like this uncle and agreed to help him with getting lower cost meat for his modest bar and restaurant back South.