What Is The Plan?

More than anything I want to know. I want the whole story. Not just the civil rights story, but all of it. My mother mentioned that Booker was an orphan and that he spent his life wondering who his real mother was. How does she know, what did he do that revealed how important this was to him? How interesting to have so much in life except the knowledge of where you came from. I would like to explore how this idea played out in Booker’s life.

Booker never learned to read or write, yet he was one of the most successful black businessmen in his town. Was this luck? Was owning a business a dream that he had for years or did he seize a last minute opportunity? What drove him? For many years he worked two jobs, did he get a lot of sleep? Was he sloppy on the job because he was tired?

It seems like Booker was an accidental activist who, in the end, embraced this role. Why? What prompted his actions during the interview he had on the national news? Did he ever waiver in his convictions? Was he conflicted? These questions and thoughts are just the tip of the iceberg. I sense the making of a wonderful story and I want to know the whole of it.

I guess this is the research aspect: learning and getting a glimpse of a day in his life, piecing together the puzzle so that I can best recreate the man in my own mind, half a century later. The next question is, what will I do with what I learn?