Romeo & Julian: A Story of Love & Hate

By Aswad

What would happen if you were a Black boy, bussed to a white school because of Brown V. Board of Ed, and you fell in love with a white boy? This is that story. Romeo & Julian - A Story of Love & Hate tells the story of Romeo Jennings. Blond, green eyed, most popular guy in school. And Julian Long, an innocent and loving artistic basketball player who just wants to be loved. Will their love triumph over all the hate that surrounds them? Or will it all go up in flames? Romeo & Juliet like you've never seen it before!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Aswad
• Release date: Jan 20, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465724441

Aswad

I've seen a lot. Too much. How we treat each other as human beings seems to have fallen by the wayside as we gaze into our individual screens as we walk down the street. It seems more important to film somebody bleeding on the ground, than to help somebody bleeding on the ground. We are a society that puts locks on trash cans filled with food, and fines the unemployed and homeless for being unemployed and homeless. We attack and legislate against people who don't love, eat, dress or even sleep the same as we do. These are the types of stories I like to tell. These are the stories I think need to be told. I was gainfully employed until March 2009. I was the hardest working Temp in Portland, Or. from 2005 to 2009. Then I got "the call". Don't come back. No longer needed. Not going permanent. I spent all of the rest of the year and most of the next sending out resumes and going to the three interviews I got from them. No job. Then I go "the call" from the Unemployment Office. We can' renew you, you've been unemployed more than 99 weeks. After loosing my apartment, 95 % of everything I owned, 100% of my savings and my cat of 13 years (the only thing that mattered) I entered into a miasma of couch surfing and demeaning welfare appointments in Los Angeles. I asked myself; "Is this it? Is this what I worked all this time for?" I came in early, stayed late, wore a shirt and tie and my pants were pulled up! Why don't I have a job? I decided I wasn't taking this lying down. I'd written three ebooks, I could write more. I started an Internet Radio Show for the Unemployed; The New 99er on Blog Talk Radio. I will have a home again. I will have what I've always wanted. And what I've always wanted can't be outsourced. I don't do lazy.

Book preview

Romeo & Julian

A Story of Love & Hate

By Aswad

Smashwords Edition

© Copyright Aswad 2012

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold

or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person,

please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did

not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to

Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work

of this author.

Dedicated to James Baldwin, Bayard Rustin

& Marlon Riggs

Thanks for the inspiration

CHAPTER ONE

TEN WEEKS BEFORE GRADUATION.

He ran.

He knew if they caught his Black ass they’d burn him to a crisp and he’d never see his momma again.

He headed for the creek, hoping to loose them in the marsh.

If they caught him he was dead. How the hell did he get in this mess?

* * *

Sometimes when an event happens you don’t think it’s going to have any effect on your life. None at all.

You get up in the morning and you just don’t think about it.

After all they made that decision all the way up there in Washington, DC, it certainly has nothing to do with you way down here in your little southern town.

That’s the way Romeo Jennings was thinking as he tied his tie over his Sears short sleeve school shirt like he did every other spring morning.

He hated his name. As soon as he turned eighteen he was going to change it to something else. Anything other than Romeo.

His mother, Patricia, was a huge Shakespeare fan and had named him after one of the title characters of her favorite play.

Ever since he hit school every girl in town wanted to be his Juliet.

And why not? Romeo was one handsome fellow.

Captain of the basketball team. Blond with chiseled good looks and piercing green eyes.

Life had been good to him.

His father was a respected doctor and his mother a community leader and former debutante.

They were the quintessential American Family.

And with one little decision, their lives were about to change forever.

The decision was Brown Vs. The Board of Education.

Blacks kids were coming to school.

Romeo’s family never used the word Nigger; they were too respectable for that.

But they didn’t have any Black friends either. And it’s not like Black people sat at their dinner table on a regular basis either.

Although Dr.Jennings did treat Black patients at his office. And was very nice about it.

He said it was his civic duty.

His Mother’s charity group didn’t have any Black women in it. But this never really came up for discussion.

Romeo was nervous. He had never gone to school with Black Kids before.

He wondered what they were like. What they ate. How they dressed.

He had heard that they smelled bad and ate bananas for lunch like monkeys.

He didn’t believe it but he still wanted to check it out for himself.

He was seventeen now and had to start thinking about his future.

Graduation was in a few weeks and he hadn’t really put his mind to anything. Not even college.

He was constantly preoccupied with the strange feelings he felt welling up inside himself.

Feelings he didn’t understand.

Long hours after school in the library researching shed no light on his situation.

He wished the feelings would just dry up and go away. But they didn’t.

* * *

Julian Long sat on the bus with all the other Black kids.

And like all the other Black kids he had a knot in his stomach and was stunned into total silence.

He had never seen the white folks neighborhood before a day in his life.

It was so clean. So quiet.

Well-manicured lawns. Beautiful houses.

And he just couldn’t believe how quiet it was.

Till they drew up to he school.

Niggers go home! Niggers go home!

There were dozens of white people with red faces lining the street in front of the school.

They made the school look like an armed camp.

They chanted and ranted and raved. Some threw rocks. But the National Guardsman put a stop to that.

He clutched his books to his chest and then stopped because his father had told him it made him look like a girl.

He missed his father. Which was funny when you think about it because they had never really gotten along.

Raymond Long considered his son a sissy.

What with his pastel shirts and wanting to go to art school and all. He had no hopes for the boy.

That was the only reason that Julian had joined the basketball team.

Maybe his father would consider that a manly enough pursuit and leave him alone, he thought.

But he never got the chance to impress his father before his daddy died.

Murdered actually. By the Klan.

Raymond Long had always had a reputation of being an uppity Negro.

So it was no surprise when he decided to lead an NAACP boycott of the local Department Store and sit in at the lunch counter.

Hot Dog and a Coca Cola, please. He had asked in his dignified baritone voice.

Raymond Long had fought in World War two for his country and he felt he deserved a hot dog and a coca cola for his trouble.

His country however thought otherwise.

He and all the other protestors were dragged out of the drugstore kicking and screaming and thrown into the back of squad cars.

Then Raymond began attending more and more meetings at Church, and was branded a rabble-rouser.

He was snatched up one night by a pick up truck full of white boys with ski masks on.

They took him into an alley and told him he if he didn’t stop stirring niggers up they would kill him.

He didn’t. So they did.

Raymond Long was not a Black man who was scared of anything white men had to throw at him.

He had fought in Germany and been raised in the south. What more could there possibly be?

Julian’s mother, Mary had to go to work as a Domestic. She had wanted to be a nurse but didn’t have the money for the schooling.

She saved a little here and there. They got by.

Julian decided to honor his father by becoming the best-damned basketball player he could possibly become.

And he did.

His had never seen a player with such single-minded dedication to the game.

One coach even commented that he thought Julian was possessed.