Low Road Read Free Page B

to vote were a part of the state’s social legacy.
    Many so-called colored folks might have viewed the Baugh family’s mixed ancestry as a blessing in the clan’s relative prosperity. Deceptively light-skinned and silky-haired, they could have easily opted to join that cadre of the black race that elected to pass. In fact, George’s nephew Ford would become a police officer in Little Rock during the civil rights movement at a time when it violated segregation ordinances for him to be a member of the force. Probably more common than was ever discovered, passing was a method of virtual disappearance from the oppressed class achieved by those whose European physical appearance enabled them to join white citizens in their homes, churches, and places of work. Particularly during slavery and in the immediate postslavery era, terms like mulatto, quadroon, and octoroon —all designed as indicators of the amount of black blood in their overall genetic makeup—were used to describe people of mixed descent. Each member of the Baugh household, including George’s mother, Sabre, had been identified as mulatto in the 1910 census, and Myrtle would come to accept the term in describing her family. How ridiculous, then, it would have seemed for a woman who fulfilled the necessary aesthetic criteria for passing to make rage on an unsuspecting stranger who’d unwittingly insulted her baby daughter. If there was any proclivity toward passing in the Baughs, however, it didn’t seem to show itself. Their neighbors in Big Rock Township were black or of similarly mixed descent. They worked, worshipped, and socialized in the areas of Little Rock that found black presence acceptable. And perhaps it was for the best.
    During the last six months of 1919, after the end of World War I, twenty-five race riots erupted in cities, both northern and southern, including tiny Elaine, Arkansas, not quite 100 miles outside Little Rock. That same year, nearly 100 people of color were lynched, commonly by hanging, a number of them veterans still in their uniforms. More than 360,000 black men had entered the military, many of those serving overseas in defense of a perceived American democracy. But, as with previous wars, upon their return and completion of duty, they held onto expectations of increased opportunities for themselves and their families. Instead what increased was the resentment of Caucasian citizens who no more intended to share their rights with niggers than they intended to share their wives. Mobs controlled cities for days, burning, flogging, shooting, and torturing their victims. Black men and women who showed any new inclination to retaliate or defend themselves were only met with an intensification of the white violence. Before the war, soldiers in Texas, located directly to the south of Arkansas, had caught plenty of hell. In 1906, after a group of ten to twenty unidentified men had fired their rifles into buildings near Fort Brown, an army base close to Brownsville, a police officer was wounded and a white bartender was killed. Without a hearing or anything that could be regarded as solid evidence, President Theodore Roosevelt dismissed 167 colored soldiers by means of dishonorable discharge. It would be sixty-six years later when a black congressman spurred a review of the case that resulted in honorable discharges for all of the men. Yet, by then, only one remained alive: an eighty-six-year-old named Dorsie Willis. He had spent the remainder of his life sweeping floors and giving shoe shines.
    Living for the Baughs was, by comparison, uneventful, and they likely considered it a blessing. Myrtle enjoyed a relatively stable upbringing, in spite of the perils and hindrances of residing south of the Mason-Dixon. Few would have wondered what a railroad worker named Joseph Leonard Goines found appealing about Myrtle after she had matured into womanhood. Like the Baughs, Joe’s family experienced marginalization