November 13, 1927: A New Way Around

T.  That’s a T as in Model T.  Daddy bought a car!  The Model A came out this year, so the Model T dropped to just $300.  It’s a bit, but come on, it’s a car.  He’s gotten one just in time, too.  The Holland Tunnel opened today, and we’re going to get in the car and line up to drive through the tunnel.

It seems like their jobs are going well.  In two years, we’ve gotten electricity, a new gramophone, and a car.  It’s our first car, and while I trust Daddy to know how to drive it, how am I to trust all the other brand new drivers on the road?  I see those traffic lights in the city that, while they’re a few years old, aren’t obeyed by everybody.  I guess people slip up and miss a stop light or two every now and then, but with everyone who’s going to be out tonight to drive through the tunnel, I’m scared an accident is going to happen.

August 8th, 1925: Not Here

Momma’s freaking out.  Blasting through the house are the grave words of 2XN, which I doubt will be Momma’s go-to radio station after this incident.  But why’s she playing it on all the radios?  With radios as popular as they are now and Momma working with music, we have three radios.  One for my room, one for Momma and Daddy’s, and one for the kitchen.

“We predict thousands -- no -- tens of thousands of them are here.”

No.

“Them” is the KKK.  Tens of thousands of them.  They’re marching on Pennsylvania Avenue as I’m writing this.  Momma ran from them, with tons of other people, and now they’re making their way north.

Now Momma’s worried about Daddy, too.  The KKK doesn’t just go after blacks -- they perform crimes against the Catholics and Jews, too.  He’s in work in the big city right now, working with an architect on a new project, but she’s still scared that they’ll somehow get up here and find him, a Catholic.  I keep telling her that he’ll be fine.  They wouldn’t dare come this far north, would they?

She’s shut and locked the door and all the windows; she’s scared of a riot.  There hasn’t been one in New York in 25 years, but how are people going to react to this?  I mean, there was a race riot in Florida just two years ago.  Who’s to say one can’t happen today?

July 9th, 1924: Light!

We got electricity!  A few of my friends have it but not many.  I’d say that a little less than half of people in the city have it by now.  Finally, we can have proper lighting in here.  It’ll make it a load easier for me to read and do whatever at night, plus Momma can practice her sheet music and songs later.  I bought myself a copy of Time a couple days ago but haven’t found the time to read it.  Captain Rockefeller is on the cover, and boy, is he cute.

I know that electricity costs a bit, but Daddy got a new job in the city today!  He’s working with architects and designers on making buildings.  I’m not sure exactly what he does with them, but maybe he’s a supervisor or something.  He sounds important.  But I want to ask for a new gramophone.  I’ve heard that electrical ones are made now, and I bet they’ll run much better.  Mine’s still running on phonograph cylinders but doesn’t play right anymore.  I want to listen to my music, not the news and ads on the radio.  At least 2XG isn’t on the air with Lee de Forest anymore.  I swear he only made that station to play ads for his own products.  Other than him, I’ll have to listen to some boring old coot talk about what Silent Cal has to say, which is never anything.

May 5, 1924: The Autobiography of the Still-Colored Ebony

Drunk, probably.  I bet he was drunk.  Even with the Prohibition going on, I still see people wandering around the streets, not walking in a perfect line.  That’s expected, along with the drunken street gangs fighting for their places to sell illegal liquor.  But what I don’t expect, and what I don’t particularly want, is drunken audience members during my momma’s shows at the Cotton Club.  If you’re two years behind the times, the Cotton Club is the old Club Deluxe.

As I was cleaning up the stage after Momma’s performance, a white man in the audience came up to me and asked, “Young lady, why’re you associating yourself with all these people here?”  Excuse me, sir?  You mean my mother and all her friends, her colleagues?  The ones who are nice enough to give me sheet music and wax cylinders of their own music, free of charge?  I guess he meant them because he continued.  “Don’t you know that you can come off as white?  You look like a mutt to me, you do, but that’s because I just saw your mother perform.  But yer a whole lot whiter than her, and I suspect that you can get away with it.”

I ran off stage.  I wasn’t about to holler at him; he’d throw a fit and tell people that they shouldn’t see my momma perform, that her daughter will ruin the whole experience for them.  But I suspect that this man must have been from out of the state.  Maryland, maybe.  In all the history of New York state, never did they once pass a law against colored people and whites marrying.  Maryland has those laws.  They refuse to let the whites marry blacks and Filipinos down there.

It’s just like a book I read last year, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.  He was biracial, too, and someone in the book kept trying to tell him that he should just give up being colored and act like a white man.  He could pass, the person said.  He could pass as white.  But I’m not doing that.  I refuse.  That drunk man isn’t worth a second of my time.

July 4th, 1923: Dinner Time

Boom.

“Really?!” I shouted, covering my ears.

I walked into the kitchen then, still moaning about the loudness of the celebrations inside.  I appreciate the celebrations, sure, but living in New York is making a strong distaste for them grow inside me.  How are people celebrating so loudly when we have a president as corrupt as Harding?  If I were president, I’d actually keep my cabinet in check.

Sitting down at the table, I said, “Why do we have to live here?  It’s too loud with all the people.’
Whoops.  Here we go again.

“Ebony!” scolded my momma.  “I’ve never thought of hearing you say such a thing.”

Father thought it his place to chime in.  “We’ve been through too much to get to this point.  I had to stand for hours at Ellis Island just to get through all the checkpoints.”

There he goes again.  Really, he can’t go a week without mentioning that.  Coming from Scotland to New York on a boat apparently wasn’t the hardest part of immigration.  It was the standing at Ellis Island.  He came a week before they installed the wooden benches some time in 1903.  Ask him about it.  He’ll probably try to claim he still has blisters on his feet.

“And me, Ebony,” said Momma.  “It took a whole lot of effort for my people to move up here, and I was lucky enough to find work in Harlem.  Do I have to show you again?”

“No, Momma,” I groaned.  She was about to pull out a copy of Crisis, the NAACP’s magazine.  In a 1920 issue, a cartoon called “The Reason” was published.  A ribbon across the picture says “TO THE NORTH,” and the black man in the picture is running from the site of another being hung from a tree, white man right beside him.  So Momma and her family moved up north, just a few of hundred of thousands of black people who’ve moved out of the south because of all the lynchings.  Some were running from the lynchings; some were running for jobs and freedom.  Momma and her family were running for both reasons.

Yeah, I appreciate living in the city.  I’m fortunate to not live down south where Momma grew up, but dang, is it loud on Independence Day.