Collision

By Carolyn Holbrook

This a fictional short story of a black family on vacation and traveling by trailer in 1958. On the home stretch of their trip back to Dayton, Ohio from Mexico City, they stop off at Paris Landing State Park in Tennessee and discover from a racist trooper that the area where they parked is for Whites Only and that they better get over to the Colored Side immediately. This public park is covered by the Separate-but-Equal (Jim Crow) Laws and in no uncertain terms he bellows: "Da Law's da Law!" A large travel group from Ohio is in the park when this ruckus happens and decides to intervene, making for exciting dynamics in the early years of the Civil Rights Movement.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Sep 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312556300

Book preview

Collision

Collision

By Carolyn Holbrook, Copyright 2014

I HAVE DECIDED TO STICK WITH LOVE. 

HATE IS TOO GREAT A BURDEN TO BEAR

–         MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

Table of Contents

Collision

By Carolyn Holbrook, Copyright 2014

Part 1

Prologue

Summer 1958: Meet the Bensons

South of the Border

Jim Crow – A Hard Road to Hoe

Stop the Pump

Butting Heads

Harlan Spews Venom

Harlan and Bobby Wayne:  A Difference of Opinion

Paradise Found

Paradise Lost

Guess Who’s Not Coming for Vittles

Peaceful Stance

The Law’s da Law!

The Trailer Club Speaks Up

Part 2

After-Burn  

The Bond

Harlan Shares His First KKK Rally and Lynching

Face Off

The Debt

The Sheriff and Deputies

Kindred Spirits

Roped into the Posse

A New Attitude

A Rally to Action

Whites on the Colored Side

Inequality--- Ya Think?

Part 3

Crossing the Burning Sands of Racism

Mixin' It Up on the White Only Side

It’s a Family Affair

A Response to Hate:  What Is Non-violent Protest?

We Ain't Singin' the Blues, but Singin' 'bout Freedom

The Clash

When Reason Fails

Some Thangs are Worth It

Epilogue

Part 1

Prologue

If people have a position on something and you try to argue them into changing it, you're going to strengthen that position.  If you want to change people's ideas, you shouldn't try to convince them intellectually. What you need to do is get them into a situation where they'll have to act on ideas, not argue about them. -- Myles Horton, Founder, Highlander Folk School

Summer 1958: Meet the Bensons

Dora Benson, read from Gunner Myrdal's An American Dilemma quoting a disturbing passage aloud to her husband, The South has an obsession with sex which helps to make this region quite irrational in dealing with Negroes generally.  The sadistic elements in most lynchings also point to a close relation between lynching and thwarted sexual urges.

Thomas sighed, Okay, Dora, give it a rest.  I'm getting mighty tired of hearing you read from that depressing book about white people's problems with us as Negroes, especially since we're in Tennessee.  It's been a long drive.  She smiled, I realize that.  I'll promise to stop reading, if you'll agree to stop for a while so that I can fix us a good meal.

I agree.  After I gas up in town, we'll be staying nearby in Paris Landing State Park.  We're in the home stretch, Honey, so we can stop early today.  We'll be back in Ohio, and home tomorrow. 

From the back seat, the kids had just finished singing the 'Oh My Darling, Clementine' camp song, when they immediately burst into another song with that same melody --  for out of their mouths flowed the words, "Found a peanut, found