H/Lit Comp 1
Once upon a time, in a small town near Birmingham, there lived a regular black family who was struggling for their lives in a hostile society. With three kids, Jimmy Bruce, and Kiki, the father and mother, Jarome and Martha, were subjected into working hard for their children. Not many black families were able to succeed in this cruel world of the 1960's. The kids, each being too young and of the wrong race at this point in time, were unable to attend a school or even go to church. Instead, they went to a friend's house whose mom taught them things. This was their school. The life of this family was totally obscene. One day Kiki, their 12-year-old daughter, went for a walk in what they thought was a safe town. While she was walking down the street many racial slurs and comments were made toward her. White people were rare to these parts of the town, but every once in a while, a bunch of white kids, whom just graduated from high school, would drive around the peaceful town of cardboard boxes and lean tubes and yell out and even throw things at the black folks who were unrightfully segregated. As Kiki walked back to her home in an abandoned shack in the middle of a one-acre field, she had tears dripping from her precious brown eyes.
When she returned, she saw that her father had been beaten severely as well as her brothers Bruce, who was 13, and Jimmy, 14. "Why do they do this to us Daddy?" she asked out in a horrible cry, "What did we do to them?" She was too young to realize the concept of blacks not belonging in a country that was primarily white. Coping with the devastating treatment toward them, the Washington's kept living their lives. Jarome found a decent job at a farmhouse down the road. The Anderson's farm is what it was called. A rich white family owned it and had three other slaves working for them. The pay was $10.00 a week and a half-full grocery bag of canned corn or beans. The conditions in which they had to work in were horrible. The sun be3ating down on their dark skin tired them very quickly. Between six workers they were given two jugs of warm water for the whole day and a cold egg sandwich to eat. The plows were all hand driven and very rusty and sharp. They were given no shoes or boots to walk through the muddy fields or the cow and pig pens. Once a week they would have to stand in cow dung up to their knees and clean it out. Their bodies would reek so badly of cow dung that flies couldn't even stand it. Many times they would catch themselves puking from the outstanding sight and smell of cow and pig dung. If they were caught though, they received a slash across their sore backs by the ten-foot whip old man Anderson often used to motivate them. This was a fairly good job for the blacks. Once in a while they would steal a bag of corn ears or a bushel of tomatoes. The only way they could survive was to steal here and there. If they were lucky, sometimes the Anderson's would forget to lock the gate to the barn and they managed to pick up a watermelon or a few apples. This is how they got by. Margaret, the 39-year-old wife and mother, was a prostitute. She would walk up and down the streets looking for young boys who might have a few dollars. Most of the time she would end up getting beat up and raped by older guys, but once in a while she would get a nice boy who paid her $5.00 for an all day ride. Jarome did not know about this side job she had, but she covered it up by saying she was going to walk the kids home from school and white men jumped her. As far as he knew, she stayed home and tried to protect their home from others who were unfortunate enough not to have a wooden roof. Many kids in the neighborhood would often tease Kiki, Bruce and Jimmy. They would all say that their mother was a dirty nigger tramp and slut. Not knowing why they were saying this, all of them would deny everything and pretend that these kids were just trying to make fun of them. One day, Jimmy had enough. A few of the kids were joking around and calling his mom a doorknob. "Jimmy's mom is a door knob, because everyone gets a turn!" the children chanted. Jimmy ran home and grabbed a knifed out from underneath his bed. He had found the knife along the side of the road where there was once a murder earlier in the year. He proceeded to go to the boy's house that had started all of the teasing and knocked on the door. When the young boy opened the door, Jimmy stuck the shiny sharp knife in and out of his body about five times. When the screams from the boy let out, his mother came running. "What the he-, oh my GOD! Randy!" she screamed hysterically. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Jimmy wailed. "I didn't mean it." Jimmy really didn't intend to kill him. He just wanted to scare him. Something just snapped. A week later, Jimmy and his family, devastated at what Jimmy had done, were sitting in their shack watching the sun falls between the cracks in the wall. With blood shot eyes, Jimmy asked quietly if he could go to the bathroom. "Yes," his father replied mellowly. Jimmy picked himself up off of the floor and headed out the door to the outhouse. About 10 seconds later, there was a loud bang followed by a thud. The family then heard the screeching of tires on the partial
Some common words found in the essay are:
Jarome Martha, Margaret Jarome, GOD Randy, Sunny Ministries, Mifflin Mississippi, Douglas Jimmy, Boston Jimmy, Bruce Kiki, Christ Douglas, Baxter Kiki, douglas baxter, civil rights, bruce kiki, douglas jimmy, civil rights movement, rights movement, brown eyes, kiki douglas, mentor jimmy, jimmy douglas, douglas baxter kiki, introduced douglas baxter, douglas mentor jimmy, kiki started, douglas's shadow douglas,
Approximate Word count = 5500
Approximate Pages = 22 (250 words per page double spaced)
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