Anthony Bourdain - Parts Unknown

I found out a little late that Booker's story, or at least part of it, was going to be included in one of Anthony Bourdain's food shows.  Parts Unknown is the name of the show.  I'm hoping to be able to get my hands on  the episode to see it for myself, but I did hear that they aired Booker's monologue.

I'm thrilled, beyond thrilled really, because more people are learning about his story. No one in my family even knew my grandfather made those statements until about seven years ago.  He protected his daughters and my whole family from his thoughts and feelings about his work at Lusco's.  When we finally found the footage it brought both joy and heartache.  Joy because we could see him, moving and speaking and laughing.  Heartache because of how much shame he endured every night just to make a living.

I read Anthony's blog post about the Delta.  Yes, it is an amazing place.  It's virtually impossible to measure all the things we have as Americans that originated there.  But like an Achilles heel, the history of slavery and the legacy of segregation will always be a part of the South's rich inheritance.  The story of man's subjugation to man is written all over the Delta.  It's painted on people's faces, it's in the space that often still separates whites and blacks, it's in their laws, their customs, and is an integral fiber in the every day lives of today's Mississippians.

If you find yourself interested in the Mississippi Delta's rich, tragic past try not to gawk as though observing a car wreck or even a horrifyingly beautiful work of art.

Howard Zinn, one of the nation's most beloved historians, said the South is a mirror.  When we look at her, we're seeing a concentrated version of the rest of the nation.  The Mississippi Delta is not some random, scandal-ridden anomaly, a stain on our nation, and the excuse for why the state ranks last in almost every barometer that measures quality of life.

The Delta is none of those things.

What is it?  It's us.  It's all that we're capable of - good and bad.  It's what is beautiful and tragic about the human spirit.

It's really not all that different down there after all.

A Delta Discussion

I've been working hard to bring Greenwood to life on the page, and it's working.  I have an amazing research assistant who tirelessly scours digital archives and reaches out to professors in an effort to get the most accurate data we can.  The more that I learn about Greenwood in the 1960s, the more amazed I am.  There's so much about what happened in that small town that sheds light on how regular, everyday people could seemingly ignore systematic, sustained societal racism.

When the documentary about my grandfather premiered in New York City in April, 2012, someone from the audience asked how I would respond to black Christians who hate homosexuals.  He seemed to feel that it was hypocritical for blacks to talk about the oppression of yesterday if they were actively engaged in oppressing homosexuals today.  I agreed with him, but then I explained that every group has their jihad.  Every group has that subset of extremists.  Just because a person is a member of a group, doesn't mean that they represent all of the other members of that group, or that they agree with every idea that comes from that group.

In towns like Greenwood, there were men and women who made it their mission to maintain a segregated state.  What blows me away is the lengths that they went to in order to achieve their goals.  Very, very, very few books talk about this, but there was a newsletter called "A Delta Discussion" that was distributed door to door.  The newsletter was filled with dire predictions about what would happen if the schools were integrated.  They included stories from far off communities that had tried to integrate and then had incidents of violence.  These newsletters also included the names of white store owners who were enforcing the Civil Rights Act, by allowing blacks to patronize their establishments.  Whites were encouraged to stop going to these stores all together.

It's important to remember that Greenwood was a small town, surrounded by plantations.  Most whites in Greenwood had known the other whites in Greenwood for all of their lives.  These relationships had been establishments generations before the civil rights movement came along.  Most whites had grown up with a distorted view of blacks.  They were too close to it to question it.  Then people from the outside (from the Northern states) began to question how Southern blacks were being treated.  Those questions were challenged, not by strangers, but by the neighbors.  Whites who were racist in Greenwood had an enormous amount of influence over other whites because of the familiarity between the two groups.  

Imagine having someone come into your town for a visit and tell you that your wife is unhappy in your marriage.  Your friends tell you not to listen to this stranger.  They can all but prove to you that your wife is happy  Your wife is silent.  Most blacks over the age of 25 were relatively silent on civil rights until the tide started to turn.  Pretending that things weren't as bad for blacks as Northern whites were describing was pretty simple to do.

The efforts to maintain segregation became a complex, intricate, and expertly executed campaign.  The campaign struck people where they would feel it the most.  The average Greenwood citizen was made to believe that if they let integration occur that they would lose their children.  Their children would marry blacks who, according to the campaign were beast-like illiterates.  Many believed that blacks were more sexual than whites.  Why did they believe these things?  Do you believe the earth is round?  How do you know?  Have you personally conducted science experiments to prove it or do you just know because that's what someone in authority told you?

Obviously, I don't support or condone racism or people who ignore racism.  But if I seek only to distance myself from the "white Southerner" and lump then all in with Byron De La Beckwith, then I'm missing an opportunity to learn an important lesson about human nature.  I've forced myself to really ponder whether or not I would have the eyes to see past the rhetoric and see the oppression of the people around me if I was a white middle class person living in Greenwood in the 1960s.

What I know is that Booker Wright provided that opportunity for many Greenwood whites.  He did something that removed their blinders.  And for that, I am thankful.

Silence

I’ve been silent because I know that I need to write about what happened when I went to see Cork.  I can’t write about that, yet.  That’s it.  I’ve written down the details, but nothing else.  They’re waiting on my laptop for me to revisit them and bring them to life with more details and a description of my emotions.  I just can’t to it, yet.  That’s the story. 

This Sunday

I've been quiet lately.  I've been telling myself for a few days that I need to blog before my next trip.  Really, there's only one thing going on right now, one topic to write about.  This Sunday I will share a table with the man who blasted a hole into my grandfather and our family as well.

This past week I distracted myself by trying to see if I could get cameras in to film my meeting with Cork.  Three state representatives and two state senators called the Mississippi State Commissioner on my behalf.  The final answer was no. Then I was writing or working hard to build Booker's Place. I've also been setting up interviews with more people who knew my grandfather.  I found the guy who worked as a DJ at Booker's restaurant.  I've been volunteering at my kids' school, shopping for groceries, watching A LOT of The Walking Dead (which, by the way, presents some really complex questions about what it means to lose ones sense of humanity), and so on.

What I have not done is thought about what's going to happen this Sunday.

Someone asked me today how one prepares to meet the man who murdered their grandfather in cold blood.  I said, "I don't know.  I guess this is how I prepare, I don't."  I have hopes for what may come of my meeting with him, but no expectations.

I hope he tells me the whole truth.  I hope he provides the monumental final piece to my grandfather's murder story, the piece that will complete the picture so that I can finally make sense of it.  But maybe there is no making sense of death, especially murder.

I know I won't get "closure."  I don't think I even like that word anymore.  It sounds like a place to stand, a perspective from which one can observe, from a distance, a devastating hurt and examine it without emotion.

The raw intensity of the feelings are gone.  The loud blast, the shattering glass, the blood that pooled on the floor, all of it gone.  Left in its wake is supposed to be a peaceful silence.  A hazy, sepia-toned version of the memory.  One that brings back only a faded replica of what once was, with none of the hard hitting, vivid color of it all.

But with closure, I lose him.  These feelings are all I have to connect me to him.  Solving his murder, or finding out whether or not it even needs to be solved, sometimes seems like the only gift I can give to him.  The logical side of me says that my children are a gift to him.  Every time I speak about him to a crowd of students I am planting a seed of him and that is a gift as well.

Sometimes I feel stupid about this whole murder question.  At times the answers have been clear, like a face on the other side of a freshly cleaned piece of glass.  Then a bit of dirt gets kicked up and I can't quite see the answer anymore, but I remember it and I'm holding to it tight.  Then mud is splashed on the glass and suddenly the answer is ripped from my sight.  Thankfully, someone cleans the glass.  I look through it excitedly only to find a different answer, someone else's face staring back at me.  Each new face seems less real than the one before it.  I can't seem to get as excited as I was the first time.  I wonder if, after I meet with Cork, I will look through that glass again only to find that no one is there at all.

Murder Theories Abound

As if I wasn't already chasing a multitude of leads, last night someone gave me something else to think about. First let me say that a lot of people believe that Lloyd Cork was hired to do what he did.  Primarily because Booker was notorious for kicking people out of his club if they were acting up or simply didn't have the money to buy anything.  This simple fact was common knowledge.  The idea that he would go in there, act up, and get kicked out smells fishy to a lot of Greenwood locals.

I've been told a few ideas about who may have hired Cork to do it and why.  I've also been given another idea about why would Cork himself would be motivated to commit murder and maybe he thought that getting thrown out (Booker hit him with the butt of his gun) would provide him with some sort of defense.

Last night I was presented with another idea.  A few days (either two or three) before Booker was shot, something terrible happened in a small town not too far from Greenwood.  Booker's half brother committed  a triple homicide.  He killed a prominent business owner, his daughter and his his sister.  Booker's half brother was on the run when Booker was shot.  Last night, someone who lived in Greenwood then and continues to live there now, someone who was very, very close to Booker - told me that they always thought that Cork was hired to murder Booker as revenge for the triple homicide committed by Booker's half-brother.

I guess I have one more question to ask Cork when I sit across from him in a week and a half.

Photographs

In the last year or so I’ve collected all the photos of Booker Wright that I could get my hands on.  I made numerous calls, visited people, and had relatives send pictures from their homes around the country.  All of that work produced a total of six photos of my late grandfather. 

Today I saw eight more.  They were all taken at the same time.  In them, my grandfather is lying on a table without a shirt on.  His stomach has eight lines in it that look like wounds that have been stapled shut.  Each one is about three inches wide and there is about an inch separating them.  They are all in a row from his chest down past his navel.  It’s hard to describe these stapled wounds because there is something in front of them, blocking my view.  It looks like an organ or maybe two. 

Someone who saw these photos briefly a few months ago said that it was intestines.  Seeing them for myself today, I know it’s not his intestines.  Someone else thought it may be his liver.  I can’t look at the photos long enough to make a guess.  I’ll show them to a doctor when I get back home. 

His side is riddled with pellets from the shotgun blast.  His eyes are closed.  I can’t tell whether or not he is dead or alive.

There is a tube and bottles of things around him.  It looks like he is in a closet or a makeshift morgue, but the Chief of Police insists that’s what hospital rooms looked like in the sixties here in Greenwood.  I need to take these photos to an expert.  

I broke down when I saw these photos.  Part of my mind is screaming.  Part of my mind is numb.  I needed to see these to get to the bottom of things, I think.  I don’t know.  Does uncovering every stone get me further to the truth or just more exposed to the horrific reality of loss?  I have tears and I don’t know why.  I can’t pinpoint the feeling.  It has no name. 

My mother can never see these photos. 

We're Going

I just got a call from the East Mississippi Correctional Facility.  Lloyd "Blackie" Cork has added my name to his visitor list.

This post is called "We're Going" because I was too afraid to go alone.  I have a good friend, Sherry Rankins-Robertson, who has actually spent a lot of time in prisons working with inmates on creative writing.  Sometime in October she and I will go to this prison for the mentally ill and we will sit across a table from the man who murdered my grandfather.

The visiting room is one in which physical touch is allowed.  I'll be able to shake his hand, if I want to.

Meeting a Murderer

I wrote this a few weeks ago:

Sometimes writing it like being lost.  Not turned around or momentarily confused.  It is like being seriously, frighteningly lost, uncertain of which is way is up, how to get out, how far or how deep or wide the thing is that I’m inside of.  Sentences don’t do this to me, although, a paragraph has been known to leave me stumped.  A chapter can definitely make me feel lost.  Sometimes, however, I am lost in an entire book.  What once seemed like the perfect layout now feels sophomoric.  The story itself can start to feel thin and pointless.

When I’m lost I’m usually also exhausted, physically and mentally.  I can’t remember why I started and I just want to stop.  For lots of reasons, I can’t.  

At some point, I’ll usually remember the last time that I was lost, and the time before that, and the time before that.  With relief, I’ll recall that each time I was lost before I didn’t find my way out, the way out found me.  Sometimes a person will make a comment in passing about the weather or life in general and I’ll realize that their statement is the answer to my writing challenge.  Sometimes someone will read my work and make a simple statement that changes everything.  Other times, I just wake up one morning and know what needs to be done.

Today, I am lost and tired.  1% of my brain knows that it won’t last.  Change is on the horizon and I will find a way out.  99% of my brain is convinced that there is no way out.  Like being locked in a coffin I am anxious, sweating, desperate, and unable to remain calm.  I want to move, act, talk, eat, change my clothes, anything, I just have to keep going because the weight of being lost is heaviest when I am still and silent. 

I am fried and late and lost. 

I wrote the above piece because the ending of my book was lame.  In the first half of my book I learn about my grandfather and all about Greenwood, and then the second half  of the book is about me trying to uncover the story of his murder.  Then the book switches gears and sort of ends.  In the final chapter I write my theory about the murder and talk about how I’ll continue to research it.  Blah, blah, blah.  

Last year I was supposed to go visit Cork, the man who murdered my grandfather (I think).  I chickened out.  Read this and this.  Recently though, out of the fog of confusion I've felt about the ending to my book I realized something.

My book is unfinished because the story is unfinished.

In an excel file I have a list of chapters and the other day I added a new one called “Meeting a Murderer,” then I put a certified letter in the mail to Cork, asking him if I can meet with him.

Part of me doesn’t want to meet him because Cork may say or do something that marks the end of the road.  It's like I've been racing down a freeway that doesn't have a speed limit and meeting Cork is a brick wall falling into my path.  My work to understand my grandfather’s life and the murky circumstances surrounding his death may stop on a dime with the words of a man who could be insane.  Was he hired?  Did he do it for no reason or the oldest reason?  All of my questions might get answered when I sit across from a murderer.

But pushing that meeting off into infinity is not fair to the readers who will follow my quest.  It’s also not fair to Booker Wright.

In October I'm traveling to Mississippi and, if Cork agrees to it, I am meeting with a murderer.  Typing that feels profound.  I’m setting my plans in stone and this time, I will not turn back.  

Stained.

I'm sitting at my laptop studying photos of Booker's Place.  They were taken by the Greenwood Police Department the morning after my grandfather was shot.  My eye kept going back to something on the floor.  It looks as though he had concrete flooring, but part of it looked strange.

I realized that it was wet.  There's a long, wide path of moisture as if someone had tossed buckets of water on the floor.  In the middle of the water stain is a thin, red circle. It looks like an outline from a blood puddle that someone tried to wash clean.

I feel like I might throw up.

Who Killed Booker Wright

There's been lots of talk about whether or not Booker was murdered because of his appearance in Frank's film, Mississippi: A Self-Portrait. This is one of the ideas that's explored in Booker's Place: A Mississippi Story.  To be clear, seven years passed between Booker's 1966 news appearance and his murder in 1973.  That's a long time for someone to wait for revenge.

Nevertheless, there are a whole host of strange details about the murder, and some Greenwood residents still believe today that Lloyd "Blackie" Cork was hired to kill my grandfather.  Who hired him?  I don't know.  One lifelong Greenwood resident told me that a white cop hired Blackie to commit the murder.  Interestingly, people who witnessed the murder are really uncomfortable talking about it.  Even though Booker's Place had lots of customers that night and McLaurin Street was hopping with activity, only one person testified to actually seeing Blackie fire a gun.  She's alive and she's avoiding me.  The cop who pistol-whipped Booker Wright still lives just a short 45 minute drive from Greenwood.

If I could drop this, I would.  I don't want to create a story where there isn't one, but I also don't want to be naive and believe a tale that's full of holes.  I have an indescribable, difficult to explain passion for my grandfather.  My love for him is fierce.  I am tormented by his murder, by the loss of a man who surely would've embraced me had he been given the chance.  I'm trying to think of the word to describe my feelings.  It's more than duty, it's more than feeling tasked, it's more than being compelled.  I know that I may never get to the bottom of his murder.  Or maybe I already have.  Maybe the odd, yet simple story is the truth.  What I know for certain, is that I won't have peace until I've done all that I can get to the truth.

I'm hoping to sit down with Cork where he lives in a Mississippi State prison in late September to ask finally, face-to-face, exactly what happened that night.  I hope to God that he tells me the truth.

The Myth of the Angry Black Person

This past Sunday night I attended the premiere of “Booker’s Place: A Mississippi Story” at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City.  As I sat there in the dark listening to people react to the film my heart swelled with pride for Booker Wright.  “You did it,” I thought to myself as I watched my grandfather on the screen.

As hard as I’ve worked on this for so many years it wasn’t until Sunday that I finally grasped the true magic of my grandfather’s words.  If we let them, they can reach into our current discussions on race and they can inform, soften, and change our often hard edged views. 

Forty-six years-ago my grandfather risked his life to explain what it felt like to be on the receiving end of racism.  He paid dearly for his words.  His statement aired once, around the country no less, but still only once.  And then it was over.  White residents of Greenwood credit him for bringing the civil rights movement home to them, but I’ll never know if my grandfather was aware of how much of a difference his words made in his town. 

Today, in 2012, we’re in trouble when it comes to talking about race.  Many times if a black person says, “Hey, I think that kid may have been murdered because he was black,” many will accuse the black person of playing the race card, of having some sort of chip on their shoulder, or of simply rushing to judgment too quickly. 

If a white person says about the same crime that they think it had nothing to do with race, very loud voices in the black community will come out and accuse that person of being insensitive to race issues or worse, being a racist themselves.  It’s amazing to me to think that after so many years of dealing with race-based issues in America that it’s still so hard for us to even have the dialogue without hitting below the belt.  We make it personal.  We attack a person’s character instead of their argument. 

Booker Wright went on camera and with detail and vulnerability described the heartache he experienced every time that he went to work in the white’s only restaurant where he was a waiter.  He explained how it made him want to cry on the inside.  He described how when whites got angry with him and hurled racial slurs at him that he simply wondered what else he could do to appease them. 

Sharing our shame can be hard.  It’s hard to describe the moments in life when we’re the butt of the joke.  It’s hard to tell people about how we’ve been abused, demeaned, or disregarded.  Exposing our wounds weakens us, so we don’t do it.  We especially don’t do it on national television.  Booker Wright went against the grain.  In doing so, he debunked the myth of the angry black person.  He is our evidence that before there was anger there was hurt.  Underneath the loud cries and the screaming voices are a people who simply want to be embraced.  

"But I Have Black Friends"

Greenwood was ground zero for the civil rights movement.  In school many of us were taught that sweet little Rosa Parks’ refusal to move to the back of the bus was what sparked the civil rights movement.  Most people are taught nothing about the brutal torture and murder of a 14 year-old black boy who MAY or may not have whistled at a white woman.  He was killed a few miles outside of Greenwood, four months before the Rosa Parks incident. 

Greenwood had demonstrations.  Greenwood had visitors like Martin Luther King, Jr.  Greenwood had blacks who were beaten; Greenwood had sit-ins, dog attacks on marchers, and on and on.  All the while the majority of the white middle class in Greenwood went on with their lives as if nothing unusual were taking place around them.  But they had a black friend named Booker Wright.

My grandfather worked at Lusco’s Restaurant for 25 years.  I know true, genuine affection must’ve passed between him and his white customers.  But at what cost?  Did they feel as though the issues of the day did not relate to them because they had a black friend?

Two Daughters Remember Booker Wright

This morning we sat down with my mom and Vera at Doe’s Eat Place.  I honestly think it was the best interview we’ve had so far.  They were both quite relaxed.  We talked all about Booker and what they remembered of him. 

Before the shoot Vera was recalling how excited I was when I called her to tell her that Booker had done something special and that people were interested in him.  She said that she didn’t want to make me feel bad because she could tell that I was so excited, but at the time, she thought that they had the wrong person because her dad was just a regular guy.  And now, here we are. 

It was amazing to hear their recollections of him.  Taking the time to really go back and remember their daddy was clearly cathartic and healing for them both. 

When I was growing up my mom never really talked about Booker.  Actually, she simply never talked about him….period.  It’s weird to hear her talk about him now with such love and affection. 

She loved him.  I think the reason she didn’t talk about him at all when I was a kid was because she was afraid of the pain.  It was devastating for her to lose him the way that she did.  I think it broke her heart. 

Maybe she wasn’t able to give her whole heart to me when I was young because she was still reeling from the pain of Booker’s death.  Maybe I can let her off the hook. 

Booker Wright Tells the Truth

David sent the film to me today.  I am definitely feeling a sense of goodwill with this guy.  He could’ve tried to convince me to wait to watch it until he could get my reaction on film, but he sent it to me without the slightest hesitation.  I asked him to send it because they're not coming out to meet with me this week, maybe sometime next week.  I started to feel nervous that somehow the opportunity to see this film would slip away.  I just couldn't wait anymore.

My grandfather starts talking about a minute into this video.  

I’m still trying to digest what I just watched.  Every element of this film amazed me.  Seeing the interior of Booker’s Place, seeing Booker Wright the man, hearing what he had to say, the very sound of his voice, and his smile.  Vera has talked about how amazing his smile was.  Now I get it.  It is both captivating and reassuring.  Somehow, across time and space, through this old, long lost film, Booker Wright manages to radiate warmth, joy, and heartache. 

I always thought that Booker was approached on the street and asked if he’d be interviewed.  That’s why I called him an accidental activist.  I thought he just blurted out his honest feelings without thinking about the consequences.  After watching this film, I get the impression that there’s a lot more to this story.  He isn't speaking on the fly.  He is measured and intentional.  He knows exactly what he’s doing.  This moment was no accident. 

I am swelling with pride for him.

I can’t really describe how I feel about what he said.  I am so very sad for him that he had to live through that.  It must’ve taken a great strength to quietly endure that kind of daily humiliation.  What amazes me about him is that he still had joy.  He doesn’t seem bitter.  There isn’t a hint of self-pity. 

I am facing the reality of history.  I wish that he’d been born in a different time.  I wish that he’d never had to deal with being called the "n" word.  I wish that he’d been allowed to go to school.  But we have what we have today because of the have not’s of yesterday. 

Four years ago I wrote a fictionalized account of Booker’s story as I knew it then.  I was really interested in trying to uncover the thoughts of a "sympathetic racist".  It seemed to me that we’ve spent so much time vilifying the people who worked against civil rights that we’ve failed to acknowledge that many of them were everyday people, people that we would’ve had dinner with, let our children visit with, etc.  

I have long thought that if we only focus on the extreme racists that people today with milder versions of race-based bias may never actually see their views as problematic.  In other words, if we as a society agree that the only people who have problems with race are those who burn down black churches and lynch people, then we’re giving a pass to all the other people who have issues with race but who aren’t prone to violence.

All this to say that the film my grandfather appears in is not just a gem because I finally get to see a moving, living image of him, it’s also amazing because it captures the "sympathetic racist". 

There is a man in this film who talks about why it was difficult for some Mississippians to accept that the heritage and legacy their forefathers left for them was built on the exploitation of blacks.  He says:

"To be told all of a sudden that what you've been doing, what you've been believing in, the way you've been living all your life and the way your parents lived before you and your forebears is not only wrong, but immoral, is quite a shock.  It's easy to understand why the attitude of the white people in Mississippi to this new order of the day, this new change, was one of inflexibility and one of defiance."

Certainly some people held onto a warped view of blacks because the truth would force them to rewrite their own family’s history.  I know how much family means to me.  

I am exhausted and elated all at the same time.  

What I've Learned Since

During my family history class, my instructor encouraged me to find secondary sources outside of my family who may be able to provide a different point of view. She actually searched on her own for information about Booker's Place to help me get started.

I received her email in the morning and began searching on my own to learn more about my grandfather, Booker Wright. By that afternoon I'd set up an appointment to speak with a Mississippi State Senator who believes that Booker was the catalyst of the civil rights movement in Greenwood. I also spoke with a writer and researcher who was not only familiar with Booker, but was amazed to learn that he had children and grandchildren.

This researcher told me that my grandfather appeared in a national news program in which he was asked to describe what life for blacks was like.  I got the impression that people were expecting Booker Wright to say that life for blacks in the South was fine.  Instead he said some strong words to indicate that life for blacks was not good and that things desperately needed to change.

That was a whirlwind day.

I hope, when all is said and done, to be able to share with others his whole story. I know that he never knew who his mother was and that he spent a lot of money trying to find her. Since he had become successful, many women were coming forth claiming to be his mother. He finally found a woman in Chicago who he believed to be the one. He sent of her and her whole family. There was a large picnic in Greenwood to honor and celebrate her. To this day, no one else in the family believes that was Booker's mother.

He never learned to read or write. Apparently, he was left on the doorstep of the Wright's, who would eventually raise him. They did not want him, so they did not invest in him. He was never taught to read.

What I Learned About Booker from Vera

This is what I learned from my aunt about Booker. This is from my wiki located at yvette.wiki.asu.edu

Following a Dream

I asked Vera to describe her father. It was clear that he is still very close to her heart.

Mac “Booker” Wright could not read or write. "He worked for many, many years at Lusco’s, a white’s only restaurant. Finally, in his 50’s he opened ‘Booker’s Place’" a restaurant or cafe as they were called. According to Vera, blacks were not eligible for small business loans during that time, so Mac saved whatever he could from his tips and his salary at Lusco’s in order to fund his dream.

“He was very proud, he had worked for whites his whole life and (when he opened the cafe) he felt like he was his own man,” at this point Vera paused. After several moments she said, “He had the most beautiful smile, Kat and I get our smiles from him.”


The Murder of Mac "Booker" Wright

During the time that Booker worked at Lusco’s he became friends with white doctors, lawyers, and dentists – people of prominence in Greenwood. Many of these people chose to frequent Booker’s Place even though it was on a street called McLauren which was not in the best part of town.

One day in 1973, Booker’s dentist, a caucasian man, and his wife were eating in the cafe. A black man named Blackie began taunting and teasing the couple. “Daddy said ‘Blackie, leave my cafe’”. Blackie went over the dentist and his wife and he pushed their plates off of the table. "Now, Daddy was a big man, he was 6’4, 220 or 250 pounds,” so he simply picked Blackie up and threw him out. Booker was standing at the register when Blackie came back with a sawed off shotgun and blew the door off. Some of the pellets hit Booker. “Daddy ran out the door behind this guy”, he reached the corner before collapsing. Booker lived three days in the hospital before he died.

Blackie was caught and arrested, he is still in prison to this very day. Vera went on to say that “Daddy believed in racial equality”, everybody had a right to eat in his cafe.

“When Daddy died I felt like I had lost a part of my world. We were very close. I was out of college and working. We had a more adult relationship. I could talk to him about anything and he could really make me laugh, he was a lot of fun. He always told me, 'Darling, if anything ever happens to me I just want you to know that I have lived my life'”. Vera pauses and repeats slowly in a lower voice, “I have lived my life.”