On the Eve of Forty Eight
Today marks forty eight years since my father's murder. I've never really been able to remember the exact date until the past year or two -- June 28, 1967. It's not a date I like to remember, so I always just kind of knew it was in June sometime. Those of you who know me, know that I was only 5 years old when it happened, so remember little of my dad - a handful of memories, or cerebral snapshots of our times together. As the story goes, he was murdered in a seemingly random, racially motivated attack while minding his own business in Happy Harry's bar in a racially transitional part of town. I originally thought there were 4 men that beat him, but was corrected after my mother read a poem I'd written about that night. She said it was a band of 11 people. I guess the numbers don't matter, what matters is that he was outnumbered and singled out because of his skin color. They beat him, left the bar and returned and beat him again, fracturing his skull. As ...