Read Online Can I See Your I. D.? by Chris Barton - Free Book Online
Authors: Chris Barton
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sudden shuffling about of people and their belongings is disorienting. Itâs around midnight, maybe seventy miles shy of Philadelphia, and theyâre getting you and the rest of the first-class passengers off the train.
Where is William? Why isnât he here to help you this time?
Theyâre guiding you all toward a ferry to cross the Susquehanna River.
Where is William?
On the other side, they say, awaits the train that will take you to Philadelphia. But where is William?
Itâs cold. Itâs raining. Is it still Christmas Eve, or is it now Christmas Day?
Where is William?
You ask the conductor about your slave. But your disguise has worked too well. This Northerner clearly sides with the abolitionistsâhe has no sympathy for your human-owning kind.
âI havenât seen anything of him in some time,â he tells you. âI have no doubt he has run away and is in Philadelphia, free, long before now.â
You know this cannot be. You plead with the conductor to help you.
âI am no slave hunter,â the conductor replies.
Youâre on your own.
If you get off this train, thereâs no getting back on. You have no money.
Is he captured? Has he been killed? Where is William?
Where is your William?
Where is he?
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?
ELLEN CRAFTâS TERROR in Havre de Grace was real but short-lived. She was reunited with her husband on the other side of the Susquehanna that nightâhe had fallen asleep in the luggage car. They celebrated their first day of freedom in Philadelphia on Christmas Day. The circumstances of their escape made the Crafts celebrities among abolitionists in the Northeast but, threatened by slave hunters, they soon moved to England. There, they had five children, got formal educations, gave lectures about their experiences, and wrote their story as Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom. Proceeds from the book allowed William Craft to buy his mother and a sister out of slavery; later, Ellenâs mother moved across the Atlantic to join the Crafts. After the Civil War, Ellen and William returned to Georgia and opened a school for former slaves, whom they taught to read, write, and pursue trades such as carpentry and sewing. Ellen died in 1897, William in 1900.
BLACK MAN? WHITE MAN?
JOHN HOWARD GRIFFIN
1935, TOURS, FRANCE
You are a fifteen-year-old Texas boy in France for the first time. You have arrived weeks before the dorm opens at your boarding school, and you donât have enough money to rent a room. You do not speak French.
1943, SOLOMON ISLANDS
Your mission on this remote island is simple. Your job is to secure the nativesâ cooperation with the Allies in case fighting with the Japanese flares up again. Youâre learning the islandersâ language, and youâre learning their customs, but you rely on a five-year-old to guide you through the jungle.
1947
MANSFIELD, TEXAS
You are unpacking your bags here at your parentsâ new home, feeling around for where things go. It took years for that exploding shell in the South Pacific to finish doing its damage to you, but now itâs done. You have finally lost the last of your eyesight. You cannot see a thing.
LATE NOVEMBER 1959
MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA
You once were blind, but now you see. You were black, but now youâre white.
Your blindness miraculously ended after a decade of darkness. Your blackness began just this month, and it was no miracle. It was deliberate.
You set out on an assignment for Sepia magazineâa white man crisscrossing Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama with artificially darkened skin. Itâs not that thereâs a shortage of writers with God-given pigment and God-given talent. No, there are plenty of Negro writers capable of detailing the torments and indignities of daily life in a land where civil rights are still a revolutionary concept.
Thanks to your disguise, what you can seeâand nobody else canâis the contrast between life
Where is William? Why isnât he here to help you this time?
Theyâre guiding you all toward a ferry to cross the Susquehanna River.
Where is William?
On the other side, they say, awaits the train that will take you to Philadelphia. But where is William?
Itâs cold. Itâs raining. Is it still Christmas Eve, or is it now Christmas Day?
Where is William?
You ask the conductor about your slave. But your disguise has worked too well. This Northerner clearly sides with the abolitionistsâhe has no sympathy for your human-owning kind.
âI havenât seen anything of him in some time,â he tells you. âI have no doubt he has run away and is in Philadelphia, free, long before now.â
You know this cannot be. You plead with the conductor to help you.
âI am no slave hunter,â the conductor replies.
Youâre on your own.
If you get off this train, thereâs no getting back on. You have no money.
Is he captured? Has he been killed? Where is William?
Where is your William?
Where is he?
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?
ELLEN CRAFTâS TERROR in Havre de Grace was real but short-lived. She was reunited with her husband on the other side of the Susquehanna that nightâhe had fallen asleep in the luggage car. They celebrated their first day of freedom in Philadelphia on Christmas Day. The circumstances of their escape made the Crafts celebrities among abolitionists in the Northeast but, threatened by slave hunters, they soon moved to England. There, they had five children, got formal educations, gave lectures about their experiences, and wrote their story as Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom. Proceeds from the book allowed William Craft to buy his mother and a sister out of slavery; later, Ellenâs mother moved across the Atlantic to join the Crafts. After the Civil War, Ellen and William returned to Georgia and opened a school for former slaves, whom they taught to read, write, and pursue trades such as carpentry and sewing. Ellen died in 1897, William in 1900.
BLACK MAN? WHITE MAN?
JOHN HOWARD GRIFFIN
1935, TOURS, FRANCE
You are a fifteen-year-old Texas boy in France for the first time. You have arrived weeks before the dorm opens at your boarding school, and you donât have enough money to rent a room. You do not speak French.
1943, SOLOMON ISLANDS
Your mission on this remote island is simple. Your job is to secure the nativesâ cooperation with the Allies in case fighting with the Japanese flares up again. Youâre learning the islandersâ language, and youâre learning their customs, but you rely on a five-year-old to guide you through the jungle.
1947
MANSFIELD, TEXAS
You are unpacking your bags here at your parentsâ new home, feeling around for where things go. It took years for that exploding shell in the South Pacific to finish doing its damage to you, but now itâs done. You have finally lost the last of your eyesight. You cannot see a thing.
LATE NOVEMBER 1959
MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA
You once were blind, but now you see. You were black, but now youâre white.
Your blindness miraculously ended after a decade of darkness. Your blackness began just this month, and it was no miracle. It was deliberate.
You set out on an assignment for Sepia magazineâa white man crisscrossing Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama with artificially darkened skin. Itâs not that thereâs a shortage of writers with God-given pigment and God-given talent. No, there are plenty of Negro writers capable of detailing the torments and indignities of daily life in a land where civil rights are still a revolutionary concept.
Thanks to your disguise, what you can seeâand nobody else canâis the contrast between life
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