This is one of those stories that makes you shake your head. Palsy will also make you shake your head, even if you're illiterate.
In 1952 Roger Storme was a successful garage owner in Hopeful, Alabama, 36 years old, married 16 years to his high school sweetheart and the father of 14 year old fraternal twins, Roger, Jr. and Rebecca. He was also Wizard 2nd Class in the local Ku Klux Klan. He was always proud of how blindingly white his wife bleached his sheets.
On October 21, he was walking with two of his fellow Klansmen down Jefferson Davis St. He was sandwiched between Lucas Morgan and Paul Stuartz, both of whom had recently joined the KKK and were eager to be seen as worthy members. Had they not been present, there'd be no story.
They were walking up a hill, towards the courthouse. Suddenly a shrill cry was raised. Roger looked up the hill and saw a Negro woman (that's how people spoke back then...) crying out and pointing to a baby buggy that was rolling towards the three men and picking up speed.
As he would relate to his wife almost daily in the three months that followed, he acted without thinking. He positioned himself on the sidewalk to catch and stop the baby buggy. As the mother came rushing down the hill to him, Roger looked into the buggy and saw a Negro infant. Then he looked up at the Negro woman hastening towards him. Sweat began to bead his forehead. He looked over at Lucas and Paul, both of whom were backing away from him, horror writ plain on their faces.
By the time he got home that evening, the story had reached the ears of everyone in Hopeful, Alabama and was making it's way out along all the four compass directions.
Roger Storme, a lifelong racist, had become undone because of one act of thoughtless kindness. Roger took his own life the following Christmas Eve. In his suicide note he mentioned his love for God, country and the Klan, and apologized for having let the White Race down.
The Negro child whose life Roger possibly saved grew up to be Black. He is alive and well and living in Atlanta, GA, where he has a prosperous dental practice and has no recollection of that day in 1952, although his mother never tires of telling the story.
There is a moral to this story, but it's not always the same for everyone.
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3 comments:
I always assume your stories are lies - I mean, fiction - but I'm going to pretend this one's real, so I have a reason to be a jerk to everyone: it's all that keeps me alive.
I'm trying to achieve stainless irony. It probably can't be done, in the sense that iron can be turned into stainless steel, but I can't stop trying.
Don't stop believin'
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