July 1942
Three weeks later, Sammie was standing on the platform at Union Station, ready to board a train for the trip to the Armored Forces School at Fort Knox in Kentucky, where he would do his basic training. His mother and Lizzie, as well as Louise, came to see him off. Wellington would not take time off from work and said a rather stiff and formal farewell at the front door. After hugging his mother and his sister, Sammie drew Louise away, in part because he wanted to say goodbye to her away from Lizzie’s baleful stares. Louise looked sad—and, Sammie thought, frightened.
“Why the long face? I’m doing what you wanted me to do. I thought you’d be happy.”
“I know, I know,” she said, looking at him. “But when I encouraged you to join up, I was . . . I was . . . It was all so much in the abstract.
Now, I realize how much I’m going to miss you and how scared I am that something could happen to you.”
Sammie wasn’t used to seeing Louise this way. She was always so assured in herself, in her beliefs, and in him.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be careful. I’ll be fine.”
He reached down and kissed her. He had meant it to be a light brush on her lips, but she grabbed hold of him and gave him a long, passionate kiss.
“Hey, boy! Leave that White lady alone!”
Startled, Sammie and Louise turned toward the shout. It had come from a group of White men, some of them in uniform, boarding the same train he was getting on. They decided to ignore them and turned away.
“Hey, Sambo! Didn’t you hear me? I said get away from that White girl!”
Sammie looked up and saw a beefy White man in a sailor’s uniform leading a group of other uniformed men down the platform toward him and his family. They were shouting and shaking their fists menacingly.
Sammie stepped in front of Louise, wondering what he alone could do to protect her—and himself, for that matter.
Suddenly, a score of MPs ran out, batons raised, forming a wall between Sammie and what he saw was a growing mob. As the cops held back the on-rushing group, Lizzie ran up to him and Louise. Sammie sensed that his sister had realized that Louise’s presence amid a Colored family was infuriating the mob. Apparently, she was not the only one who’d had that thought.
“Nigger, get on that train!” a White MP snarled at Sammie. The cop turned toward Louise. “Get your ass out of here, you fucking whore!”
Sammie and Louise glared angrily at the MP, enraged by his slurs. Before either could react, Lizzie grabbed Louise’s arm. “Girl, you need to leave! Now!” she shouted, pulling her away from her brother.
“Yeah, go!” Sammie said urgently.
Looking stricken, Louise allowed Lizzie to pull her back toward a ring formed by White MPs and by Negro soldiers who were trying to protect their families and friends who had come to say goodbye and now sensed a growing danger. The MP who had accosted him and Louise had now latched onto Sammie’s shirt and was trying to pull him toward the door of a railroad car. “Get on the train, nigger!” he yelled, brandishing his nightstick. “Get on the train!”
Frightened, but bigger and stronger than the MP, Sammie stood his ground, looking to see what was happening to his mother, Lizzie, and Louise. “Not till my family is safe!” he declared forcefully.
Find out what happens in Black Messiahs