Try as they might with volatile words, the White Mississippians’ way of life was becoming part of history. The White Citizens’ Council failed in its promise to stop “something they did not understand and could not handle. And that was the determination of Black Mississippians to change the condition of their life and to sustain that effort in the face of murder, mayhem, riots, and arson.” Bewildered, beaten, and embittered, Whites found ways to make do in this new world. Some embraced it; most did not.
If Whites living in Greenwood in the early 1900s had an almost “exhausting vitality,” by the late 1960s they were just exhausted, and they were not alone. The White response in Greenwood to integration left many Blacks feeling a different kind of sting, a different form of humiliation. It’s one thing to be hated from afar, but to look into the eyes of people who don’t want to put their hands where yours have been or sit where you’ve sat might wear on the soul just as heavily as physical wounds from violence.
Before integration, Blacks in Greenwood had pockets of society, streets and neighborhoods, where Whites were reluctant to enter. Black business owners often mentored the young and took fatherless children under their wings. Many Blacks who grew up in Greenwood before the movement lived in a bubble where everyone they interacted with looked just like them. They only had to think about Whites when they went into downtown Greenwood.
By the late 1960s, it seemed as though true change might never come. With their private schools and private clubs, Greenwood Whites had managed to take a detour, circumventing integration altogether. As young Blacks grew older and had children of their own, many felt the promise of the movement had somehow missed Greenwood. Many of them packed up their families and moved out of town.
Booker’s primary residence continued to be in Greenwood, but he was also making a life for himself in Chicago, where he often went to visit his mother and siblings. There was something about Booker during those years that wasn’t quite right. He seemed unsettled. Unless he was in Chicago with Rosie.
When he was in Chicago, Margurite noticed that Booker was able to completely relax. He’d take Margurite out and show her a side of the city she’d never seen, to restaurants she’d never visited, where they’d eat dishes she’d never heard of before.
“And the money; that man had plenty of money, and he loved money, and, see, that’s what I thought would’ve gotten him hurt. When he’d come to Chicago, I’d always tell him, ‘Don’t you pull out all that money at one time; you can’t do that, you’re not in Mississippi.’ He was something, he was something. I tell you, my brother was something else, and I enjoyed that brief time, but it was so—what should I say—so full of everything that this family needed at that time. It sure was. He meant a lot to us. He meant a lot to us.”
It was when he was in Greenwood that Margurite noticed something odd about Booker. He seemed distracted. Not unhappy. He was distant and quiet. In Greenwood, Booker had a shadow he couldn’t shake off.
What she didn’t notice was that people all over town were growing in their hatred of Booker. He still had to toss people out, but something in him was changing. Instead of it being a necessary evil, his treatment of poor Blacks turned into an expression of something unresolved inside of him, like something he was trying to expel.
A Black woman who worked at Booker’s Place for years to put herself through school remembered him as an angry man who didn’t pay her well. He screamed at her for making mistakes, even though he hadn’t provided proper training, and he let her walk herself home in the early morning hours through the dangerous streets of Baptist Town while never once offering her a ride. “I just figured that’s how he was treated over there at Lusco’s, and so that’s the only way he knew how to treat people.”
Still, Booker’s family continued to grow. He fathered two sons, one with a woman in Chicago and another with a woman in Greenwood. He even reconnected with his “adopted” father, Willie Wright, who had grown too ill to care for himself. Booker arranged for him to be moved into a nursing home and began taking his children to visit him.
In his final years, Booker spent a lot of time with Rosie. The thing that eluded him his whole life was finally in his grasp. Booker Wright knew where he came from. He had family—one that seemed to never stop growing. In the early 1970s, his oldest daughter, Vera, gave birth to a child whom Booker cherished. Whenever Vera brought her son into the restaurant, Booker would proclaim, “This is my grandson!” Vera remembers those years with fondness. She was older, out of school, and her relationship with her father had grown from one of parent and child to one of friendship.
The two of them spent hours together laughing and talking. Sometimes, when they were alone, Booker would tell Vera something that would eventually have great meaning to her—something she would hold on to in her darkest hours. “If anything ever happens to me, I want you to know that I’ve lived my life. I have lived my life.”
A Murder Story
Seven years after Booker’s news appearance and the last time he’d stepped foot inside Lusco’s, he died. It was on a Saturday night in May 1973, and about fifteen people were at the club, including Booker. Blackie came in around 1:15 a.m., walked over to a booth where two White people were eating, and sat down with them. Booker stopped what he was doing, went to the booth, and told Blackie to leave. He knew Blackie; almost everyone from the neighborhood knew him. He was dirt poor, often drunk, and rarely had even a few dollars to his name.
When Booker asked him to leave, Blackie stood up, but he didn’t go. Instead, he walked toward the back of the restaurant. Booker followed him, and the two began to argue. Finally, Blackie made his way to the front door, but instead of leaving, he turned around and continued to argue with Booker, who took out his gun, held it by the barrel, and hit Blackie in the mouth with it.
Then Booker shoved Blackie out onto McLaurin Street, following him to make sure he really did leave. When he was satisfied that the encounter with Blackie was finally over, Booker went back inside to check on one of his tables. He acted as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened, because nothing out of the ordinary had happened. The whole thing took less than a few minutes and was over almost before it had begun.
That same night, an eighteen-year-old girl named Irene married her high school sweetheart. The two of them made their way down McLaurin, stopping at each of the clubs to share their good news with the locals. By the time they arrived at Booker’s Place, the ruckus between Booker and Blackie was already over. The young couple went inside, found a few friends, and told them they’d just gotten married. It was getting late and the couple didn’t want to stay for too long, so just a few minutes after they arrived, Irene and her new husband were heading for the door.
As she made her way through the tables, Irene looked out onto McLaurin, which was illuminated by the light pouring out of Booker’s Place. In that light, she saw people hanging out on the sidewalk and in the street. Then the scene began to change. Just before Irene reached the door, she noticed the people in the light were starting to run. McLaurin was a rough street, so she just figured a fight was breaking out. Then her eyes narrowed in on something. Booker’s station wagon was parked on the street, and by the rear bumper, standing next to the curb, was Blackie, and in his hands was a gun.
It would later be revealed that what Blackie was holding in his hands that night was a sawed-off shotgun with #00 buckshot shells. When someone saws off the end of a shotgun, it’s either to make it easier to conceal or to make it more deadly, because a sawed-off shotgun has a wider spray. From a short distance, one shot can leave a large hole in a thick door. The #00 shells are large and were designed to hold eight or nine pellets each, but that night they were holding many more. Someone had refilled the cartridges with pellets designed for much smaller shells. Depending on their size, the cartridges could have been holding anywhere from fifty to well over a hundred small metal pellets. The gun and its ammunition had both received adjustments that made them more efficient at destr
uction. Blackie only fired one shot that night, but one shot was all it took.
What happened next happened incredibly fast. Facing the barrel of a gun, Irene turned and threw her back against the wall next to the door. Before she could gather her thoughts, a loud blast exploded into Booker’s Place. Without registering pain, she felt shotgun pellets quickly sink into her flesh, then her body slid to the floor.
When the shot was fired, Booker was standing in front of his register, giving change to one of his waitresses. Just as she turned to walk away, someone screamed, “Watch out!” The waitress was hit with pellets in her forehead and her arm. She started to run, but then heard someone else yell, “Don’t run. Get down on the floor.” So she threw her body to the concrete floor, and while she was falling, she saw Booker grab his right side, come from behind the counter, and run out the front door.
With that one shot, Blackie had blown open the door and wounded four people. Afterward, he turned and ran up McLaurin Street toward the tracks. Booker climbed over the people on the floor, the broken glass crunching under his feet, and made his way out to the street. Holding his side with one hand and his gun with the other, he chased Blackie, firing shot after shot at him. After running to the end of the block, Booker’s body gave out and he fell to the ground.
Back in the club, there was confusion.
Someone said, “Booker’s been shot. Somebody should call his wife or the police or something.”
The stunned patrons slowly began standing up and heading toward the broken door past Irene, who was still sitting with her back against the wall. Her husband came over and knelt down in front of her.
“I’m shot,” Irene told him.
“No, you’re not,” he said as he pulled her up.
“Yes, I am.”
“No, you’re not,” he said again, but helped her to lie down in one of the booths anyway.
Booker made his way back to his restaurant. Maybe he crawled or maybe he was able to walk, but by the time his customers were coming out into the street, Booker was lying on McLaurin with blood pouring from his side.
A young officer named Jimmy Tindall got the call over the radio about someone being shot at Booker’s Place. He knew Booker and he knew his café, so he and his partner headed over. As he made his way down McLaurin, he saw a crowd of people standing out on the street. Someone may have helped Booker up, because by the time Tindall pulled his patrol car up, Booker was standing. His white coat was soaked with blood. Booker looked at Officer Tindall and said, “I’m hurt bad.” Tindall helped Booker into the back of the squad car and rushed him to Greenwood Leflore Hospital. After dropping him off, Tindall and his partner returned to McLaurin to interview the witnesses.
Bo Williams, Booker’s nephew, had been working at the club earlier that evening. His apartment wasn’t far from Booker’s Place, and he was just getting ready for bed when he heard sirens. He looked out the window and saw a crowd gathered in front of the club. He put his shirt back on and headed out. By the time Bo arrived, Booker was already gone, but the customers told him what had taken place.
There was a large puddle of blood on the ground in front of the restaurant and plenty of blood and glass on the floor inside. Not knowing what else to do, Bo began to clean. He picked up broken glass and used white towels to soak up the blood. He figured the place would need to be clean for business the next day. Booker was larger than life; it hadn’t occurred to Bo that he might never return.
As he worked, the noise that had summoned him there was dying down. The officers who’d come back to collect statements from Booker’s customers had released them. Stunned and confused, the people in the crowd slowly made their way back to their homes.
Eventually, everything was quiet. Later, still in the early morning hours, the pay phone inside the restaurant rang, and Bo answered it. The woman on the other end of the line was one of Booker’s waitresses. She was on vacation in Chicago and had called to speak with Booker. Bo told her that Booker wasn’t there, leaving out the reason why.
A few moments later, another phone rang; this one was in Chicago inside Margurite Butler’s house. It was the waitress. She told Margurite she had a funny feeling. “You call Booker’s Place, because something’s wrong there. I called and Honey’s nephew, Bo, was there, but Bo doesn’t work this time of night.”
Margurite hung up and immediately called Booker’s Place. Bo answered the phone again, but this time he told the whole story. Margurite called her mother and broke the news to her.
Years later, Margurite would struggle to find the words to describe her mother’s countenance during those days. “I just thought my mother would not make it. I really did. I just thought she would not make it, because, you know, at the same time she was dealing with all that stuff with Erby.”
Erby, Booker’s half brother, had been living in Mississippi and working for a moving company when the owner, a man named Archibald, fired him earlier that year. Two days before Booker was shot, Erby returned to the moving company. He went inside while one of his cousins waited in the car. Inside, Erby brutally murdered Archibald, his sister, and his adult daughter. When he returned to the car, Erby told his cousin that he “beat them because they wouldn’t die.” It was later determined that after shooting his three victims, Erby Butler Jr. had used his bare hands to beat Archibald and his sister to death.
Word of his violence quickly made its way back to the neighborhood in Chicago where Rosie was still living. Reporters and neighbors were constantly calling Rosie’s home to ask her questions or to harass her. Within hours of receiving the call about Booker being shot, Rosie left her house. On the lawn, someone had placed a sign with the word “murderer” written on it. Rosie caught a flight to Mississippi, where she had two sons in trouble. Rosie was in danger of losing Booker again. Along with that fear, she also had to carry the horror of knowing that a child she’d born had taken three lives for no reason at all.
* * *
AT THE HOSPITAL, IT was discovered that numerous pellets had moved through Booker’s arm and into his side. He had several small holes in his arm and the right side of his chest, but the majority of the shotgun pellets had gone into his abdomen, where they penetrated his stomach, small intestine, and liver. He also had huge, gaping holes in his large intestine and was in shock from having lost so much blood.
Vera and Rosie rarely left his side. “I’m gonna be alright,” Booker told them over and over again from where he lay in his hospital bed.
Even though he was on the run from the FBI, Erby stopped by the hospital, but Vera refused to let him see Booker. Andy Pinkston also came by to visit his old friend, and one of the last people to see Booker alive was Andy’s father, Jess Pinkston. As Jess walked down the hospital hallway toward the room, he could smell the infection rotting inside his friend’s body. Just as he had with everyone else, Booker assured Jess that he was going to be alright, but Jess could tell that Booker was near the end.
After Jess left, Vera was in the waiting room collecting her thoughts when the doctor came over and asked for the family of Booker Wright to gather. She walked over to him. The doctor looked down at her and said, “He’s gone.”
Vera was stunned. “How can he be dead?” she thought. “I just saw him.”
The story of his death spread through Greenwood like wildfire, because, Black or White, almost everybody knew Booker. Honey and Gloria were broken up, and Rosie Turner had lost her firstborn son for a second time.
The one thing people took solace in was that he had three days in the hospital, during which time he got the chance to see the people who mattered to him one last time. Booker shared his final days with the family he loved. Everyone, that is, except my mother.
Greenwood
The film crew left after eight days in Greenwood. I rented a car and stayed a couple more days to do additional interviews and to spend some time with my cousin Rena and a few other family members. In the end, I spent a lot of time in my hotel room, thinking. Alone and
exhausted, I found myself going around and around with thoughts about my great-grandmother, Rosie Turner.
The amount of pain she experienced in her life struck me as unquantifiable. Just thinking about what Rosie must have been experiencing in the days before and after Booker was shot left me speechless. An aching scream welled up inside me, rattling my very bones, but I couldn’t get it out. Rosie ran away from home to avoid rape when she was eleven or twelve at the oldest. Then she became pregnant and was a single mother at thirteen, only to have her child taken from her through a form of manipulation too complicated for the young mother to understand, let alone undo.
Decades later, another child of hers killed three people out of spite, and within days of that horror, the child she wasn’t able to raise was lying in a hospital bed fighting for his life. I pictured Rosie sitting with him until the end, inhaling the foul stench of his infection.
That was too much pain for one life.
I felt such love and such sorrow for my great-grandmother. I wanted to find a way to carry her burden with her, to walk with her, to let her know that, after decades of living in silence, someone saw her, saw her pain, her perseverance, her triumph, and her solitude. I was going to stand with my great-grandmother in that place of burden and tell her that when the world saw her body as an object for work or sexuality, I saw a little girl. When the world saw her as the mother of a murderer, I saw a mother with broken dreams whose child had lost his way. Each day, I woke up in my hotel room with an intention to write burning inside me. I wanted to write my way through Rosie’s story, using her voice in the hopes that somehow, all these years later, I could lighten her load, lessen her sorrows. But her story was too painful for me to meditate on for long periods of time. In the end, I didn’t have the courage to do it.
The Song and the Silence Page 23