Virgil Williams

What good is a deed? My grandfathers and great uncles, grandmothers and great aunts, father and mother, broke, tilled, thawed, planted, plucked, raised, burned, broke again. Worked this land all they life, this land that never would be theirs. They worked until they sweated. They sweated until they bled. They bled until they died. Died with the dirt of this same 200 acres under their fingernails. Died clawing at the hard, brown back that would never be theirs. All their deeds undone. Yet this man, this place, this law... say you need a deed. Not deeds.

Man who is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower and is cut down. He fleeth as a shadow and continueth not. And doth thou open thine eyes upon such a one, and bringest me into judgment with thee? Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one. For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again. But man dieth and wasteth away. As the waters fell from the sea and drieth up, so man lieth down and riseth not. 'Til the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep.

That mule made me a share tenant, not a sharecropper. And had me dreaming about having my own piece of land. Maybe that's where the problem started.

Yeah, me, too. Over there, I was a liberator. People lined up in the streets waiting for us. Throwing flowers and cheering. And here I'm just another nigger pushing a plow.

Should my story end there? Silenced and defeated? Oppression, fear, deformity. It would take an extraordinary man to beat all that. I would have to wean myself off laudanum and self-pity... and travel with a little card in my shirt pocket that said "mute."And then, finally... I would have to cross the Atlantic yet again. This time not for war. But for love.

You know what? You're absolutely right. When we was overseas they didn't make us use the back door. General Patton put us on the front line. Yes, sir. You know what we did? We kicked the hell out of Hitler and them Jerries! While y'all at home, safe and sound...

Daddy borrowed Mr. Robert and 'nem truck to take me. That's what I remember most. The first things and the last things... they always stick the hardest.

Coon, spade, darky, nigger… . Went off to fight for my country to come back to find it hadn't changed a bit.