Free The Litter of the Law by Rita Mae Brown

250.”
    “Or condominiums, which would bring the county more revenue than what we used to call the poorhouse.” Reverend Jones drained his glass.
    “What do you mean?” Harry, one of the younger people in the room, asked him.
    The reverend clarified, “Honey, back when the earth was cooling, every county in this state had its own poorhouse, and it was usually a farm. Those down on their luck worked the farm. Wedon’t have that anymore, but a place for the aged is somewhat like that in that anyone dependent on government-subsidized living is usually poor. ’Course, at Random Row, they wouldn’t have to do farm work.”
    “Random Row?” BoomBoom repeated. “I remember Mother saying that once or twice, but I figured she was just forgetting the actual name of the place.”
    “It’s a great name,” Neil said, nodding to Reverend Jones. “Be a great name for condominiums.”
    “ ’Tis, but I doubt they would be called that,” Reverend Jones quickly replied.
    “All right, Rev, what’s the story?” Harry plied him.
    “Well,” he said, “those schoolhouses were built for the African American children. When I was little, you didn’t use terms like ‘African American.’ The polite word was ‘colored’—polite among white folks, anyway. Really, back then no one said things like ‘Italian American’ either. Well, I’m getting off the track, but I do think about these things sometimes. Anyway, so many of the children at the schoolhouses had white fathers. Rarely did the men visit the school, because often they were married to white women, but many of those men did support their children, the random children, economically.”
    A silence followed this, then Susan said, “Nothing is simple, is it?”
    “Not when it comes to human beings.” Reverend Jones smiled. “What always strikes me is how most of us try to normalize an abnormal situation. I guess I learned this in Vietnam. We just struggled to keep things tied down. I mean, all I could think about apart from staying alive was, how were the Baltimore Orioles doing? We’d all try to get baseball scores and then football scores. If my team lost and one of my buddies gloated, fistfight. Here wewere in a war in a different world, and we’d fight over a football score. But it felt safe in a way. Random Row was kind of the same thing, people normalizing a difficult situation.”
    “The desegregation act was enforced in 1965,” Susan informed them. “That resolved it.”
    “You weren’t born yet.” Reverend Jones smiled at her. “It resolved political issues; it did not nor could not resolve personal issues. If your father is white and doesn’t claim you, you may not be thinking about desegregation the same way.”
    Neil looked at the reverend. “What’s the old saying, ‘The personal is political’?”
    “Is and isn’t.” BoomBoom was firm about this. “But in 1965, what happened to these so-called random kids’ schools?”
    “Abandoned,” said Reverend Jones. “It was a political victory but it came at an unintended price. At least, I think it did. Basically, the children from Random Row were crammed into the white schools with no support system. The assumption was and still is that white ways are better. I don’t exactly see this as black and white, I see it more in class terms, but the reality of the children at Random Row was most of them were African American or mixed race, and poor. They were thrown into schools with children from a higher socioeconomic group and with vastly different needs. Not a good thing, in my mind.”
    “Well, it’s a done deal,” Wesley replied with no emotion.
    “It is.” The reverend nodded. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from it, and not repeat our mistakes. We have to think of people’s emotions.”
    “What happened to the teachers at Random Row?” asked BoomBoom; at forty-one, she was the same age as Harry and Susan.
    “I suspect they were bought off. You know, early retirement