Her ears perked up when she heard the car door slam. Before the keys could start turning in her lock, she was flinging clothes at the man sleeping beside her.

“What’s the matter?” He asked, roused by her clothing barrage, his Hindi accent thickened with grogginess.

“I am in the autumn of my life, I do not need to be dealing with things like this!” She scoured the floor, searching for her unmentionables.

From downstairs, a voice called out, “Mom? You home?”

They shot each other looks. His one of restrained humor, hers of abject panic.

“How long does it take you to wrap this thing ‘round your head?” She clenched his turban in her fist.

He shrugged lazily, “I don’t know, how long does it take you to get your hair done?”

“Don’t you test me, Patel. You may be the man partaking of my sweet pleasures, but don’t think I’m afraid of unleashing a stereotypical big mamma switch whoopin’ on your tan ass.”

“I love it when you talk dirty.”

“Keep it up! I’ll make you climb out the window using that thing as rope!”

“Just so long as I can use it to get back in later.”

Memphis Note
One of the best Indian grocery stores in Memphis is a predominantly African American neighborhood. But, you don’t open up a cuisine-specific food store without clientele looking to buy it. Which means that there is some blending between those two cultures, and I can only imagine what shape those blendings might take.

“Brothers and sisters, we are gathered here, in a meager structure, not fit to weather the fury of God.” Were the words Rabbi William Fineshriber opened with, glowering over his wire-rimmed glasses, not at his congregation, but around them.

“A man is dead.” He followed, his gaze not lessening. “Hundreds, no thousands, witnessed his dousing in gasoline and his being lit a’fire. Yet not one of them raised a voice in protest over the lies and neglect and absenteeism of his arrest and illegal trial by public jury.”

The rabbi paused, and swept his gaze across the room. What came next would cause him, and all that followed him trouble.

“Our faith, our people, should not be at issue here. But, rather, the issue should be the life of a man lost in vain. A poor man. A humble man. A man, whom in all aspects, was unequivocally righteous. He was the same as us in his love of God.”

Fineshriber paused, taking a breath, judging his words.

“To take a stand now is not a noble thing. That was lost before this hour, before the lynching of an innocent man. All that remains is what we do after.”

Memphis Note
In 1917, a man was burned alive with out trial or jury. His name was Eli Person, and his only crime was living too close to a murder scene. He was burned alive on the Wolf River bridge in front of nearly five thousand spectators. One of the most vocal protestors of that act was the rabbi of Temple Israel, one Rabbi William Fineshriber, who lead a protest that crossed religious boundaries. His was a legacy of civil rights before there was any such movement to give a name to.

“Now, tell it to me again,” said the mocha-skinned man behind the bar, sliding the young man across from him a glass with a finger of whiskey in it. “And tell it slow, so I know what you’re on about.”

“Yessir. Thank you, sir.” The young man took the whiskey and sipped at it. It burned his nose, stung the cracks in his lips, and tasted absolutely terrible. But he dared not refused the gesture from a man like this.

He began, trying to talk slowly. “Well, sir, us house boys, we’re all out of work. We can’t find nothin’ since the fever. And it’s not that we’re bein’ turned away. The houses are empty, sir They’re empty all over the place!”

He took another sip before continuing, it didn’t taste any better.

“And so I told my brother the idea, and he told me to come see you. ‘Go see Robert Church,’ he said. ‘He’s solid for Memphis, he’ll know what to do.’ And, so that’s what I set my resolve to do, to bring you my idea.”

He winced the last sip down.

“Why not buy all them houses?”

“Why not, indeed?” Robert Church said back, grinning.

Memphis Note
The son of a steamboat captain and his slave, Robert Church was a self-made man who went on to become the South’s first black millionaire. Shot during the race riots after the Civil War, he refused to leave the city he loved. After the Yellow Fever Epidemic, he took the opportunity to buy large tracts of land that had plummeted in value. In the years after, he helped establish a stable black-owned savings and loan and built the city’s only black cultural center, Church’s Park and Auditorium. It was said that he would never turn away a request for help or a philanthropic cause. He was one of Memphis’s best.

It is Monday night outside the Ellis Auditorium, and the lines of folks waiting to get in wrap around the building. There are two lines, one for the whites and another for us coloreds. When the doors kick open, the whites go streaming in. Our line moves a bit, then stops.

I’m near the front, with my big brother and dad. The man at the door is saying our section is full.

From inside, a giant with a puffy, mean face and a shock of white hair down the middle of his head appears. He gives us a nod, pulls out a money clip and slips the doorman a few crisp bills. The doorman starts waving us in.

As we pass him, I can’t help but ask, “Why’d you do that?”

He grimaces down at me.

“Shit, son. I get thrown in that ring nearly every night of the week. And every mornin’ I wake up with bruises darker than you are. Skin don’t mean nothin’. Payin’ folks is payin’ folks.

“Now get in there. Don’t want to miss Bell Time. Me and Billy Wicks are gonna put on one hell of a show.”

And they sure as hell did.

Memphis Note:
The man with the white hair in this story is Sputnik Monroe, a Memphis wrestler from the 60s. He single-handedly desegregated wrestling audiences in Memphis. At first he would bribe the doorman to let more blacks in than their section could hold, then once the management caught on to that, he refused to go on unless black patrons could sit anywhere they pleased. He was such a big draw, the management had no choice but to agree.