Free Low Road by Jr. Eddie B. Allen Page A

Donnie.
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    Not completely aware of the vice her brother struggled against, Marie was contending with other stress. She had married at seventeen, while still a student at Cass Technical High School in 1951. Myrtle and Joe were against it, but she raised such hell that they finally relented and gave their consent. Charles Glover had grown up in the neighborhood along with Marie and Donnie. He was employed at the post office and struck Marie as a pretty stable young man. At nineteen, he decided he was ready to be a husband. Not long afterward, the couple began having children. Marie’s first baby died, but in all, there would be three boys: Charles Jr., Robert, and Sammy. In time, Marie began to see another side of her young husband. Charles was a gambler, and she came to view their marriage as a mistake. He became abusive toward Marie. Charles took to manhandling, not difficult to manage with a lady of Marie’s weight and size. She was wholly unaccustomed to anything besides peace, refuge, and formal table settings in a home. Now, with not only herself, but also little ones to consider, she had to review her options carefully. She learned to fight back. Marie had gotten around a bit after all, it appeared. One time she opened up Charles’s head with a fireplace poker. She borrowed a page from the days of slavery resistance and crushed bits of glass into her husband’s food. Occasionally, she would add a laxative to the recipe. Marriage became psychological warfare. Then Donnie came to mind. Knowing that he was around gave Marie relief from her sense of helplessness. After getting the word from her, Donnie rounded up a few of his partners and they paid Charles a visit. The confrontation made its point, but the marriage would not last.
    Before she was twenty, Marie became a dancer for the Harlem Globetrotters. Neither well-traveled nor from New York, the athletes, whose collective name was conceived as a marketing gimmick, had at one time been regarded one of the best basketball teams in the world. During the course of her road trips, Marie would encounter a player who briefly appeared on the Globetrotters roster before signing professionally with the Philadelphia Warriors. At seven feet and one inch tall, Wilt Chamberlain was destined for greatness. He had attracted attention since his days as a high-school athlete on the East Coast. Chamberlain and the eldest Goines daughter began dating. At barely sixty vertical inches, Marie chuckled when she thought of the fact that she was the height of “Wilt the Stilt’s” belt buckle, which suited him just fine. The high-scoring center was only one of several celebrities Marie met during her travels. She had also become a “pony girl,” or backup dancer, for Cab Calloway. While Marie toured the nation with the different troupes, she observed a society in the process of change. There had been no reported lynchings since 1951, but in 1955, three Negroes fell victim to the familiar southern evil. One was fourteen-year-old Chicagoan Emmett Louis Till.
    The boy had badgered Mamie Till Bradley to allow him to visit family in the town of Money, Mississippi, as they had paid him a visit in Illinois. One day during his trip in late August, Emmett and about eight of his cousins took his uncle’s old Ford to a nearby market in Money, where they had what proved to be a fateful encounter with the pretty white clerk, Carolyn Bryant. Big-talking Emmett was urged to make a pass at her. So, choosing not to back down, the city slicker went inside, where he hugged the woman’s waist and squeezed her hand, whistling on his way out. Bryant claimed later that he said “Bye, baby,” as his companions rushed him away, fearful that he had gone much too far.
    Days later, outraged men, including Bryant’s husband, showed up with pistols at the home of Emmett’s uncle, Mose Wright, about 2 A.M. In short order, they snatched the