The First Two Murders I Witnessed

The Memoir My Dad Wouldn’t Write is a Radically honest conversation between a daughter and her dad. My dad has had an incredible life as a poet, activist, professor, and cultural worker. He wouldn’t write a memoir, so this series of conversations is partly that.

East St. Louis’s Black community of the 1940’s and 50’s was a swirl of influences. Most Black people were recent migrants from the south or the children of southern migrants. They were a new citified version of Blackness, and with that newness came the stresses and pressures of urban life. A closer physical proximity. A different economic competition. More access to drugs and alcohol. More violence. In this burgeoning phase my father became a man and watched other men reckon with each other, even to the point of murder.

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