Curfews, Coincidences, and Crazy People

On April 4, 1968 my youngest sister turned eight years old and in our very small very protected world, it was the biggest event of the day. We neither knew nor particularly cared what was going on in the rest of the world and we had no way of knowing that another event on that day would soon land, quite literally, on our doorstep.

The decade of the sixties was one of political and social change, and much needed reform. Boy that sounds really honorable and noble doesn’t it? It was both, but it wasn’t clean and it wasn’t pretty. It seemed no matter where you looked, the country was out of control. We were embroiled in a war nobody really understood and that seemed to have no end. Thousands of young idealistic kids were sent halfway around the world, not at all sure what they were fighting for, and they were coming home in wheelchairs and body bags. Segregation was still very much a reality dividing us by race, sex, economic status, and power. Two generations at odds, one trying desperately to hold on to what it knew and understood, the other equally determined to change the status quo.

Not all the conflict was about huge social injustice and insuring freedom for the oppressed however. Sometimes it was about haircuts, rock and roll, and curfew. Either way, it was in this decade that the powerless found its voice. A culture of personal freedom and the open questioning of authority emerged and was dubbed the “counterculture”. Anti-war demonstrations where young men burned the draft cards were held on college campuses all over the country. Women’s liberation began in earnest and the civil rights movement inspired marches, voter registration drives and a precedent setting sit-in by four A&T students at the Woolworth lunch counter here in Greensboro. This generation no longer trusted its government to tell the truth and it said so.

But change never comes without resistance or cost and sometimes protest marches escalated into confrontations and sometimes into violence. Those were the days of riot gear, police dogs, and fire hoses; and of three murdered civil rights workers in Mississippi. Death came to our living rooms every night with casualty counts from Vietnam leading every newscast, punctuated with disturbing frequency by assassinations, first of a young vibrant President as he rode in a motorcade in downtown Dallas, and later of his brother on the night he won the California primary for his party’s presidential nomination. Between the two was the April 4, 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, the charismatic civil rights leader who promoted nonviolent protest and who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

We learned about most of these events some years later, at least in terms of understanding them in any historical context. We were just too young and in many ways too far removed. We were only vaguely aware of current events unless we were somehow directly affected, as we were on that cold November day in 1963 when Mama picked us up early from school. We weren’t sure exactly what had happened, but all the teachers were crying and Mama said President Kennedy had died. A few days later, she made us all watch his funeral on a fuzzy black and white TV she had rented. She said it was important that we see – that we were witnessing history. Although I was only six years old and couldn’t really understand what all this meant, I do remember two things about that funeral – the riderless black horse and a very sad little boy trying to salute his father. Everything else I learned much later.

It was much the same five years later when we heard about the assassination of Reverend King.While we were older and understood a little more then, we were thinking of little besides Linda’s birthday. What we couldn’t possibly know was that the repercussions of that one senseless act of violence would send shockwaves all over the country and within a few days would come frighteningly close to home.

In April 1968, I was ten years old, my brother was nine, and my youngest sister was about to turn eight. My oldest sister was a senior in high school. On April 4th, we celebrated my baby sister's birthday and were probably aware on some level that something really bad had also happened that day. Daddy was a policeman and within hours of the birthday party, he was called in to work. Riots had broken out all over the country. Historians and political analysts would later attribute all the violence to anger and grief over the death of Martin Luther King, but at the time, all we knew was that Daddy went to work not knowing for sure when he would be home and Mama was scared.

Because of the unusually large number of colleges here, and particularly A&T University, outbreaks of violence and ensuring riots came to Greensboro. A sundown curfew was quickly imposed, the national guard was activated and, like most people, we nervously went through each day acutely aware of the tension in the city, confirmed by the presence of military vehicles on neighborhood streets. Unlike other families though, we also knew Daddy was right in the middle of it all. Days were bad, but nights were worse. As nightfall approached each day, we knew we had to be inside by dark and we all knew Mama would be nervous and ill as a hornet until she heard from Daddy.

For the youngest three of us, being in by dark was not all that big a deal, but for the oldest, Rita, a senior in high school, any curfew was bad but a sundown curfew was excruciating. By Saturday afternoon, she was going stir crazy. In 1968, cruising through McDonald’s was what teenagers did on the weekends and Rita, now the proud owner of a red Sunbeam convertible she had gotten for Christmas, was having a pure hissy fit to go out. Of course, she tried her best to convince Mama that she just wanted to run up to McDonald’s and get some fries, but I’m reasonably sure she didn’t buy it. I don’t know exactly what time she left the house but I do know that it wasn’t before Mama gave her explicit instructions about where she could go, who she could go with, and when she had to be home – about six times.

Now, our kitchen was at the back of our house and had a door leading to the carport on the side of the house. To the left of the door was the refrigerator and to the right was a wall phone with a long coiled cord. Opposite the door was the sink; the door to the living room and hall was to the right of the sink. A little later, it will become evident why the layout of the kitchen is important to know.

It was approaching dusk dark.Daddy was still at work, tonight supervising the special response team and the national guard on A&T’s campus, Rita had about a half hour left of circling McDonald’s parking lot before curfew, and Mama was cleaning up the kitchen after supper. She left the front porch light on, as she always did until everybody was safely home. The kitchen door was unlocked for Rita, but she had put the sliding chain lock on. As she was finishing up the dishes, it occurred to her that it was about time for Rita to be getting home. It was nearly dark so when she heard the kitchen door opening behind her, she assumed it was Rita and continued filling metal ice trays at the sink, her back to the door. As she turned to take the ice trays to the refrigerator by the door, she froze. The back door was open as far as the safety chain would allow and she saw an arm and a hand reaching through the door trying to release the latch, and she knew it wasn’t Rita. The arm and hand was black.

Mama was never really known for being able to remain calm in a crisis, particularly if she was scared half to death and at that moment, she was terrified. To her credit, she slowly continued to walk across the kitchen toward the refrigerator and the back door. She set the ice trays on the counter and with both hands and all the strength she had, slammed the back door shut on the hand still protruding through the opening of the door. The next few seconds were filled screams on both sides of the door, of pain from the outside and of fear from the inside. The intruder ran around to the front of the house and started banging on the front door all the while screaming to get in the house. Mama grabbed the phone in the kitchen and called the police, but was so scared she couldn’t remember her own address. She didn’t really need to. As soon as she said her name, they knew who she was and where she lived. The call went out as a breaking and entering in progress at 2802 West Florida St. As soon as she knew the police were coming, she ran to the bedroom and grabbed a pistol and a handful of bullets. Daddy always kept the guns in the house unloaded and the bullets in a separate place. Fortunately for everybody, Mama tried to load the gun as she was running back to the front door. That and her fear caused her to jam the bullets in the gun, making it impossible to fire. By now, we were all running behind her as she got to the front of the house.

She figured that the intruder didn’t know the gun was jammed and she had to somehow get whoever it was away from the house. She had three children inside and, most frightening of all, one more on her way home any minute. She never unlocked the front door, but went to the front window beside the door, opened the curtain and waved the gun where the person on the porch could see it. She was only momentarily surprised to see that the would-be intruder was a black woman who was still standing on the front porch demanding to get in the house, claiming it was her house and she lived there. Mama told her in no uncertain terms that if she didn’t get off the front porch and away from her house, she was going to blow her damn brains out – or something to that effect. She also saw a cab parked at the curb in front of the house, the driver evidently waiting for the fare he brought to our house. Mama told him a mouthful too as I recall, asking him what in the hell he meant bringing this crazy *#%&#* to her house. The cab driver yelled that the woman had given him this address, but later changed his story somewhat when questioned by the police, saying that she had told him to drive and she would show him where she lived.

At any rate, she was yelling and screaming, Mama was yelling and screaming and waving an inoperable pistol, and multiple sirens were heading in our direction. You see, when the call went out over the police radio that there was a breaking and entering in progress, Daddy was across town at A&T. He heard the call much as he had heard dozens of calls that night until he heard his own address, and he couldn’t get to Mama fast enough. Within minutes, multiple police cars and national guard vehicles (I swear I remember a tank) arrived at our house and sorted through the bizarre circumstances that led to Mama holding a gun on a woman who was now nursing a broken right hand.

Apparently, this poor soul was being escorted to Camp Butner (a mental institution located near Raleigh) by her son. They were traveling by bus and had stopped at the bus station in downtown Greensboro. She asked her son to get her a Coke andwhen he got off the bus, so did she. She hailed a cab and directed the driver where to turn until she found “her” house. I don’t believe she ever meant any harm and only stopped at our house because the front porch light was on. Of course, none of us knew any of that at the time.

Oh yeah, sometime during all this commotion,my sister decided to come home. Can you imagine what she thought as she came down the street, knowing she was already late, and seeing police officers, national guardsmen, and flashing lights all over the place? I can’t say for sure, but I’ll bet it was the last time she was ever late for curfew.