Mrs Jones Story:

One day, my Pa took my siblings and I to the grocery store. We lived in a very rural area in Georgia back then with a lot of poor black folk. We were going to do our monthly grocery shopping and as we walked into the store I saw a black family- a man, his wife and four kids . They were doing the strangest thing. Usually farmers who sold corn at the market threw the rotten ,pest infested and ruined cobs into the back of their carts. These were usually processed into livestock feed. This family was eating the corn right out of the back of the farmers cart- gobbling up the grains with relish and without a hint of self conciousness. Of course, I didn’t know exactly why they were doing it or the aspect of shame until I tugged at my Pa’s sleeve and asked him “Pa- why those folks eating that raw corn?”
My Pa looked at the family, and his face instantly crumpled, and he looked so so sad. He went to the family, and asked them to come with him into the store. They looked decent enough-as decent as poverty would allow.The children couldn't have been older than us, probably 5 to 9 years old.They stared at our well pressed shorts and dresses,our clean shiny faces, and well oiled plaits and pigtails.They had terrible hair- uncombed, unplaited, and bleached to dirty brown by the sun. My Pa told them they could choose anything they wanted from the store. They looked at him in disbelief- “Anything?”. My Pa didn’t even wait for them to realize what was happening- he began to throw everything within his reach into their basket- cucumber, cabbages, peaches ,okra- he even walked round to the corner butcher and got them a hog leg! He was in a frenzy-doing everything so fast, and I was so confused, because while Pa was doing all this, he was weeping. Streams of tears ran down his face and dripped off his chin into the big basket of groceries he had bought for these strangers.
As we stood outside the store, watching the family trudge away into the distance laden with food, our own shopping not yet done, I tugged at my Pa’s sleeve and asked “Pa? Why did you buy all that food for them folks?”. He stared at the family fading into the distance and said in a choked voice, with tears still flowing down his face “Chile…you don’t know what it is to be hungry”

A Tale of the Brief History of The South and My Life in North Carolina in Particular. Part 1
by MephisLee

"True Way Divine Holiness Church of Christ", the battered read, swaying in the dust of the churchs foundation. Next to the foundation stood a small brick building with a gleaming tan cadillac with shiny rims resting beside it. "Time to make a killing", the sunburnt salesman thought. Two minutes later, he was standing a a cluttered office facing a dark bespectacled old man with a full head of white hair.The man beckoned for him to sit down as he conversed animatedly on the phone,but the salesman could see that his eyes were hard and observant scanning his gaunt sinewy frame and taking in the sun burnt face and arms,sweaty brow, and disheveled jeans,in a prolonged glance. "Nothing external to me can have any power over me", he mumured to himself-the mantra that had pulled him through the most emotionally wrenching moments in his summer steeled him, and he pulled his shoulders back and swivelled the chair away from the piercing gaze towards the cluttered backdrop of files, monitors and legions of post-it notes scattered all over the room, as if some post-it gun weilding corporate assasins had sprayed the room with reminders to "check out the peach coloured brick for front of church" and "Iced tea from McD's after tire change".Various afrocentric paintings could be seen peeking through post-it peppered file cabinets,which were haphazardly placed about the office,creating a mini-labyrinth,that anyone under 5 feet, would probably have a frustrating time navigating through....
Eventually the salesman realized that silence permeated the room- a serene silence punctuated abruptly by the realization that the phone conversation had been over for quite a while. Swivelling round , he faced the old man who smiled through his watery oldman eyes and asked “How can I help you young man”. The salesman launced into his salestalk- eloquent, self assured and confident of the sale. The old mans demeanor changed the instant he heard the salesmans country of origin. He smiled smugly and cut the salestalk off with a raise of his boney hand. Settling back into the plushness of his leather chair he said “Before we go any further young man, I would like to give you a brief history of the South and of my life in North Carolina in particular”. The sunburnt salesman smiled his largest, most accomodating smile which to the old man might have seemed like an encouraging gesture-the poster hardworking young black immigrant grinning at the treat offered to him-the history of the downtrodden blacks of the South, and the narrators life in North Carolina in particular. Unfortunately, it meant none of those things to this particular hardworking young black immigrant.The smile covered up what would have otherwise been a grimace of extreme suffering.A suffering that only those who have to spend almost 6 hours of their day in an excruciatingly cramped squat listening to the droning of brief histories of the South and of my life in North Carolina in particular can fully appretiate and laugh at whilst massaging their suddenly curiously exhausted hamstrings. And so the tale of the watery eyed old man began…