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Meg had already turned her face away fro of her shoulders that she was crying, and that made me feel awful

I walked the girls back to their rooht cotton sheets that sufficed on hot nights like this

I kissed Aain, and As out

As I rose to leave, Aed me back down to her side

“Don’t go, Papa,” she said in a voice so sweet it nearly broke ain”

The ht that ht

Part Two

HOMECOMING

Chapter 19

I WAS SOON ENOUGH reers of the mission I’d undertaken for the president of the United States Two days into my journey south, I was in Memphis, about to board the Mississippi & Tennessee train to Carthage, where I would switch to the Jackson & Northern for the trip to Jackson I had just discovered so material

I had been waiting when the Memphis Public Library opened its doors at nine am A kindly lady librarian had succureed to violate several regulations at once to lend reed to return by mail

I had carefully chosen the most recent issues that carried sensational stories of lynchings on their front pages Many of those appeared in the Memphis News-Scimitar and the Memphis Commercial Appeal

I was instantly confused by one headline that declared, “Colored Youth Hung by Rope AND Shot by Rope” The article explained that after the fifteen-year-old boy was strung up by his neck—he’d been accused of setting fire to a warehouse—thecorpse that one bullet actually severed the rope The boy’s body crashed to the ground, a fall that would surely have killed him had he not already been dead

Another article blaring froro as the father of two young boys The man was taken forcibly from the Shelby County Jail and lynched within a few yards of the entrance The unusual thing here? A one to the

The “coverage” in these pieces read more like the review of a new vaudeville show or a lady pianist at a classical music concert To wit: