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Continued
But by watching me. I remember in those days when the next morning was going to be the fourth of July or Labor Day. We weren't going to the park but, we were having a picnic and a barbecue. It might be at our house because we had a real big back yard, a real nice back yard. We lived on fifty-sixth street. Everybody would be out in the back yard, and at night the men would be barbecuing. They used to barbecue much slower, charcoal burned differently. They got all this improved stuff with chemicals. It took all night to cook that meat. They took care of it all night. They basted it constantly; they really knew how to cook barbecue baby. It ain't dry, it's juicy. They'd all be out there with them little white cups. I didn't know what was in the cups then. They'd have their little drink. They getting their drink on. They'd be out there and I'd kneel down on my bed and look out my window, which looked out over the back yard. Me and my dog. I would watch them and listen to them talk and one, they were just fascinating to me, two, I wanted to hear their conversation, three, when I went to sleep, when I laid down in the bed or when I would watch them, it was the most secure feeling in the world. The women were up at the front of the house doing what they do. The potato salad, baking pies and cakes and what they do and talking and laughing and joking. The men were in the back, and baby, there wasn't nothing going to happen to me. I don't care what would happen. The Russians could come. They were going to get their butts kicked when they got to that house. That's what I thought. I wish the Russians would have showed up.
Looking back on it, the sense of security, all was right with the world. Those things were destroyed. If you all remember in the redevelopment documentary, early on in the film there's a little girl in a pretty summer dress, Sunday dress with the socks on, skipping down the street. The movie closes again with her. That looks like it was from the fifties or early sixties. Let me tell you all something. That was the safest little girl in America. When she was skipping up that street. Wasn't nothing going to happen to her. There were men on that street, in those days, that would die before something happened to her. In those days, if some man stopped her and talked to her like in our neighborhood and it didn't look right some man was going to go up and try to listen. If it didn't sound right:
"Uh, baby, do you know him?"
"No sir."
"Well, get on, man."
"Well I was ju—"
"Get on, man."
"But I wan—"
"Why are you talking to her at all? Get on!"
And that was it. The police were not fair to us. In large measure, we policed our own communities just by being on the street. There was so much in life on the street. Without the kind of welfare treatment all that we had. There were places folk could go to have their needs met, who were hurting, even in those days. It just was a different world, a different life.
A friend of mine, just retired, he was my barber for many years. And I knew another man. They grew up in Fresno. Different community, same thing. Talking about how men would come by there, the railroad tracks weren't that far from their house, and men, I guess we call hobos, but who rode those trains, would show up at the mama's house. They had a big yard and a garden and grew food and stuff. And they would offer to do work to eat. She would let them eat and they would sleep, in the summer, they would sleep on the porch.
In our community, we took care of each other. Let me tell you something. At night, on a warm summers night, everybody was out on the street. It was almost like an impromptu party. Somebody's music would be playing, somebody else would start dancing. The kids were playing, the old folk were sitting on porch after porch talking and laughing and joking. We don't have that anymore. I'm going to tell you something. That's how I grew up. That's how black children my age grew up all over this country, and certainly here in San Francisco. Anybody who thinks that the disruption and destruction of our communities of our economy and our way of life has nothing to do with the rampant violence you see in our communities now is out of their mind.
You don't snatch the heart out of a people and expect them to be healthy. That's what happened to us. I used to be able to walk up and down the street when I was a boy. I could go in places, businesses, and people behind the counter looked like me. I'll tell you one of the most devastating things to me there is now. I can't get over the fact, personally, that there are no African-Americans that own record stores. Now, there were certain things you could always own in a black community. A record store was one of them. A restaurant, insurance. We bought insurance from each other. I think you need to see that those things make a people unhealthy. When every time you do business, it has to be done with someone who does not look like you, the suggestion comes to you over time that you are not capable of doing business. That everybody else is, but your people. That's not healthy. It's not only unhealthy for African-Americans, it's unhealthy for everyone else. To have a group in society that's thought of that way. So what we do now is demonize people. Young black men are demonized.
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