My People Are Rising by Aaron Dixon Read Free Book Online

him that I heard whispers in the background saying I was in for it, because Howard Redman was a cousin to James and the rest of the Redman gang. I immediately got off of Howard and refused to fight any further. When I came home from school that day, word had already spread to the park about what had happened. As a result, I got into two more fights while playing football.
    But I was not really a fighter. I didn’t like to fight, unlike some of the kids I hung out with. I did it to keep from being beaten up, which I was determined never to let happen to me. I soon began running with a Madrona gang called the Inkwells. After a few months I got into an argument with the younger brother of one of the leaders. But I refused to fight him. Ma had sent all of us siblings our own Bibles. In her letters, she was always quoting scripture. Some of the verses she quoted had connected strongly with me, and I gradually resolved to avoid fighting. At this point I was also pretty tired of it. After refusing to fight, I ran home in tears.
    Poppy was very angry with me for not sticking up for myself. “You’re a coward!” he yelled at me in disgust. The word “coward” rang in my head for a long time. I often wondered if that were true.
    Music was one of my first loves. I enjoyed sitting and watching Mommy while she delicately played the piano, swaying from side to side, playing Beethoven and Tchaikovsky. Our house was always filled with music, and each day there was a different kind of music in the air. On Saturdays the sounds of Lionel Hampton, Dizzy Gillespie, Dinah Washington, Duke Ellington, and Errol Garner could be heard late into the night on the hi-fi. Sunday morning would be gospel, giving way to opera— The Tales of Hoffman, Carmen, and Madama Butterfly. During the week it was musicals like Oklahoma, South Pacific, and My Fair Lady, and, as we got older, artists like the Temptations, Otis Redding, and Aretha Franklin began to be heard more frequently.
    When I was in the fifth grade, Joanne, Elmer, and I began to study music in school. Joanne took piano lessons from my mother, and Elmer started the guitar and later the trumpet. I was uncertain of what I wanted to play, so Ma, who was paying for the instruments, decided I would take up the violin. I loved the sound of the violin, but it was not what I wanted to learn to play. I struggled through my violin lessons, barely learning to read the notes. Mommy and Poppy would fuss and yell, trying to get me to practice. One day on the way home from school, my friends and I stopped off in the alley and traded instruments. I took Ronny Hammond’s drumsticks and he took my violin, and I also played somebody’s sax. We had a lot of fun. However, my violin strings broke, along with the bridge, the small piece of wood that holds up the strings. That evening, Mommy and Poppy angrily told me I couldn’t play an instrument anymore. Michael eventually got my violin, and sadly the opportunity to play music was taken from me. I was the only sibling who did not learn to play an instrument.
    I began hanging more with Elmer, trying to avoid the gang of tough cats who always seemed preoccupied with fighting. Elmer had transferred schools after the move to Madrona and was attending Madrona Elementary, a well-integrated school with whites, Asians, and Blacks. He had met a couple of white boys—Mark Sprague and David Booth. Mark did some professional acting work and was from a well-to-do family. In contrast, David and his older brother and sister were raised by their working mother. Yet Mark and David lived across from one another down on 35th Avenue, a predominantly white part of Madrona. The four of us spent a lot of time playing war and archery, and we even put on our own abridged production of West Side Story. David was more mischievous than Mark, and, as time went by and Mark became more occupied with his acting, David, Elmer, and I began to get into pranks that