The Last Boyfriend (Forever Love #1)(36)
Author: J.S. Cooper

“Sure. Y’all better have a seat.” He laughed. “And some tea and cookies.”

“Sidney can talk, so I hope you have a long time.” Betty laughed at us, and I smiled back at her.

“Thanks.” I helped myself to a cookie and sat back.

“Well, I was born in North Carolina, you know. Back in those days, most of us were still in the South. I was born in the 1930s, right before WWII and the Great Depression.”

“Sidney, that was long before WWII.” Betty rolled her eyes.

“Well WWII began in 1939, when were you born, Mr. Johnson?” I asked.

“He was born in 1930.” Betty laughed.

“Wow. You look great for your age, Mr. Johnson.” Zane complimented the older man.

“It’s because my wife has treated me so well all these years.” He laughed, and Betty hit him with a cloth.

“He is always trying to butter me up.”

“So, like I said. I was born in North Carolina. But back in those days, we didn’t really have any opportunity for jobs or school. My parents had six kids, you know. They had a lot of mouths to feed and they wanted us to get a good education.”

“So they couldn’t get jobs in North Carolina?” Zane interrupted.

“No, not back in those days.” I interrupted. “The South was still very much full of Jim Crow. I’m sure his parents would only have gotten sharecropper jobs or work on some farm.”

“Exactly.” Sidney smiled at me and nodded. “My momma got a job cleaning houses for some of the rich white people in town, and my pops worked on a cotton field. They made okay money, but they got no school for the blacks in the town we lived in.”

“Whites didn’t want blacks to get education.” I interrupted, as I noticed Zane’s puzzled face. “Back in those days, not many people went to school. Only rich whites. Poor whites had some opportunity, but blacks only had access if another black decided to teach them, or if a teacher came down from the North.”

“Thanks.” Zane smiled at me, and I noticed the respect at my knowledge in his eyes.

“And boy, let me tell you. There was no opportunity for any education in my town.” Sidney shook his head. “So when the man came down from the North, telling my parents that he had jobs for them and that there was schools for us to go to, well they got real excited.”

“I was already in the North.” Betty interrupted. “So my family didn’t go through this.”

“Yes, Betty’s great grandfather freed himself.” Sidney nodded. “He was a butler for a rich white family in New York.”

“They treated my family real nice.” Betty nodded. “The whole family was real nice. They treated us well.”

“He freed himself from being a slave?” Zane leaned forward excitedly. “I bet that’s an exciting story.”

“One we don’t have time for today, Zane.” I reminded him gently and Sidney laughed.

“You two remind me of me and my wife.”

“Oh, we’re not—” I started, but Zane frowned at me, shaking his head slightly.

“Continue with your story, Sidney.” Zane spoke over me. “This is all new to me, and I’m excited to hear what happened next.”

“Well my pops packed us all up and we moved up to Chicago.” He paused. “It wasn’t normally like that though. Most times, the man went up to the North by himself and got everything ready and sent for the family later. But my daddy didn’t want to be without my momma.”

“That’s so sweet.” I exclaimed touched.

“Yeah. Well, it may have been sweet, but I’m not sure it was smart.” He shook his head. “By the time we got to Chicago, the Great Depression had hit. They weren’t giving the jobs to blacks no more. There weren’t enough jobs to go around and we was at the bottom of the pile. It didn’t help that neither of my friends had a high school diploma either.”

“So what did they do?” I leaned forward.

“They had some money saved, so they tried to rent an apartment in Hyde Park. It was a nice part of Chicago and they had good schools. They wasn’t segregated at the time and so we could go to them.”

“So it seems like all went well?” Zane looked at Sidney curiously.

“It wouldn’t be worth a documentary if it went well, would it?” Sidney cackled and shook his head. “At first we thought it would, we got a two bedroom place and my momma found a job as a cleaner for a nice family. But then they raised the rent. They wanted us to pay double what the whites were paying or we had to leave.”

“That’s not fair,” Zane interrupted again.

“There was no housing laws then.” Sidney shook his head. “When we said we wouldn’t pay more than the white folks, we got evicted. My parents, they tried to find another apartment in that part of town, but no one would show them any. Said we weren’t qualified. Well, we knew that what they meant was that we weren’t white.”

“It happened all over Chicago, and New York, and Boston.” I nodded. “Residential segregation was rampant after The Great Migration.”

“The Great Migration?” Zane frowned.

“That’s what they called the time period when a huge mass of blacks moved up North from the South. At first, the whites didn’t mind, they didn’t have the same institutionalized racism as they did in the South. I mean, there was still racism, but that was towards anyone new really: the Irish, the Italians—they were all met with skepticism. But the big cities, they grew too big too fast, and as jobs were lost, the new migrants were the ones that the hostilities were taken out on.”

“They lost jobs due to the migration?”

“No, do you know about The Great Depression?”

“Not really?”

“Oh.” I frowned suddenly confused. Why was Zane making a documentary on a subject he knew so little about?

“You’re very knowledgeable, Lucky.” Sidney smiled. “Unfortunately, there was a lot of corruption in Chicago and a lot of politics going on. They created a ghetto in the South side and basically all the blacks were forced to live there.”

“Forced?” Zane interjected. “How did they force you?”

“I’ll explain it, Zane.” I laid my hand on his arm and stared into his eyes. “Let’s let Mr. Johnson finish his story.”

“My pops eventually left the family.” Sidney looked at us with intense eyes. “He thought he was a failure. Momma was still washing clothes. He never got a job. My brother got recruited by the mob and became a smalltime drug dealer, and me and my other brothers, we didn’t really get no education.”