Low Road (3 page)

Living for the Baughs was, by comparison, uneventful, and they likely considered it a blessing. Myrtle enjoyed a relatively stable upbringing, in spite of the perils and hindrances of residing south of the Mason-Dixon. Few would have wondered what a railroad worker named Joseph Leonard Goines found appealing about Myrtle after she had matured into womanhood. Like the Baughs, Joe's family experienced marginalization in a white-dominated society. Their small hometown of Jellico in Tennessee, Arkansas's eastern neighbor state, bore no true resemblance to Little Rock's southern municipalism. Situated not far beneath the Kentucky border to its north and 66 miles outside of Knoxville, Jellico's population in 1900 was 1,283. It served as Campbell County's banking-post town. Joe, like Myrtle, was of mixed lineage, with ancestors who were African and Native American. But his rearing was not as comfortable as Myrtle's had been. Born in 1886, Joe lost his father Dudley in a coal-mining accident when he was still a boy. His mother, Julia, primarily raised him and his three brothers.

Joe matured and became rather industrious. With his red-brown skin and oily black hair, he determined that he would claim Spanish ancestry rather than endure the treatment blacks received at a time not long past the strained final years of Reconstruction. The federal government had attempted to help the nation recover from the Civil War, in the process providing new opportunities for the formerly enslaved population, often to the continued resistance of white southerners. At least seventy-four black lynchings, which commonly consisted of shooting, hanging, and burning victims, were recorded in the South the year of Joseph's birth. The Ku Klux Klan had been formed in Tennessee two decades earlier and made its terroristic presence felt there. But by 1892 when Joe turned six, black citizens of the state were responding to racial terror in more ways than one.

On March 9, 1892, three prominent businessmen were lynched in Memphis, far southwest of Jellico, after defending their store with guns when authorities colluded with a white competitor to close down the black-run establishment by force. “Tell my people to turn their faces West, for there is no justice for them here,” were the last recorded words of Tom Moss, one of the lynching victims. A mass exodus of an estimated 6,000 Memphis residents to Oklahoma, which was among the newly opened Native American territories, followed the incident. Supported by the fiery journalist Ida B. Wells, who had been a friend to Moss, the departure was a major blow to the Memphis economy. But north of Jellico, several weeks before the Memphis residents began walking and traveling the 400-mile distance toward the former Cheyenne and Arapahoe reservations by whatever means available to them, black folks in Kentucky had also started to flee. Similar white terrorism had propelled their emigration, along with the western emigration of scores in Mississippi, Arkansas, and Georgia.

Joe would later decide as an adult that he wanted no part of this sort of reactionary survival. He legally changed the spelling of his surname, Goins, adding the letter
e
to give the impression that he was of Spanish rather than African descent. There was a chance, he figured, that it would be read and pronounced as “Goy-nez.” If he were to catch hell as an English-speaking Spaniard, it would be a chance he was willing to take. Joe and his brothers left Tennessee when they reached their twenties, but they weren't headed farther south like many of the sojourners who evacuated the region in the years before them. Joe and Thomas traveled to Michigan, while their eldest siblings made it all the way to New York before settling. Joe had begun supporting himself by working as a Pullman porter. Now people of color were moving in droves for a different reason. Partly fueled by the start of World War I, industries in the North were experiencing a tremendous economic boost. Wages in the South at that time ranged from fifty cents to two dollars a day, while the northern states offered wages between two and five dollars daily. During the span of 1915–1920, between 500,000 and 1 million black men, women, and children made the trek to this Promised Land that stretched toward Canada.

By the time Joe met Myrtle in 1929, he had already married once. A son, Ralph Goines, was the product of his first union. Myrtle had not long rejoined her family after leaving school in Baltimore when she found herself in the same city with the man who would become her husband. Her father had added his southern clan to the hundreds of thousands who participated in the Great Migration—the Baughs were now residents of Detroit. Myrtle had fallen in love with a soldier, but somehow their engagement was dissolved. When the goal-oriented Joe, who was twenty-three years her senior, took notice of the debutante, she was still relatively new to courting and relationships. No doubt, he regarded her blonde tresses and beige complexion as physical attributes. She would make a good companion for him. By midyear, George's youngest daughter had become Myrtle Goines. Joe and Myrtle found a home in a north Detroit neighborhood near the suburb of Hamtramck.

With Detroit's burgeoning reputation as the automobile capital of the world, factories created a demand for labor. Henry Ford had begun offering a five-dollar-a-day work shift to all employees, regardless of their color. The career opportunity, particularly as an alternative to sharecropping or domestic service, was appealing to many who remained in the southern states: The city's black community expanded from 5,000 residents in 1910 to 120,000 by 1930. But it wasn't all prosperous for the industrial workers as the years of the Great Depression collided with the Great Migration era. In fact, while Detroit was in the early stages of developing a black middle class, others who'd left their farms behind to seek urban stability could secure only low-wage jobs that limited their living options to crowded, low-rent districts that became ghettos. The October 1929 stock market crash devastated the national economy. In 1932, roughly half of the black laborers in Detroit, Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia found themselves out of work, with one of every three families receiving public assistance.

Despite the state of the national economy, an enterprising local group of Jewish young men were literally making a way for themselves. Detroit's near northwest side was known as Purple Gang territory. The fifty or so thugs who composed this mob earned their keep through contract murders, kidnappings, bootlegging, and selling their protection to businesses that looked to secure commercial assets. During the '20s and early '30s, Purples became notoriously familiar throughout the country as the goons who preyed upon the gangsters. When broadcaster Jerry Buckley had nerve enough to start naming members on the radio he got popped at the LaSalle Hotel. Chicago cops suspected Purples had served as the hit squad that whacked seven members of Bugs Moran's cartel in the blood-drenched St. Valentine's Day Massacre of 1929 as a professional service to Alphonse “Scarface” Capone. But the charge was unproven. Still, few would have disassociated the gang from the dozens of bodies that kept turning up in the Detroit River. That same year, federal agents reported that 85 percent of all illegal alcohol had entered the country along the same water route. Joe, who'd been making plans to go into more legitimate business for himself, determined that he and Myrtle would relocate to Evanston. The city's proximity to Chicago would likely reflect an urban environment well suited to his plans for building a customer base in dry cleaning. There, Joe and Myrtle began their family. On July 20, 1934, at 2:00
A.M.
their first child Ceolia Marie Goines was born. She was named after an aunt on the Baugh side of her lineage. It had not been an easy birth for Myrtle. Clairette, who had joined her for the presentation of her granddaughter, complained to the hospital staff that they left Myrtle in labor for too long. But finally, Marie, as she would be called, was delivered following a cesarean procedure, as would be all of Myrtle's babies. Marie was a blessing to her mother, and Joe even treasured the little brown-skinned addition to their household, despite the fact that her appearance more closely resembled his than Myrtle's.

Within a year or so, the family moved again, this time to Chicago proper as Joe and Myrtle continued working to become successful in dry cleaning. Occasionally, Clairette would take the train from Detroit and fetch her grandbaby for visits while Joe and Myrtle operated the store, which was located in Chicago's South Side section. In 1936, Myrtle became pregnant again. This time, however, Clairette wasn't taking any chances with the hospitals or doctors who hadn't seemed to know what they were doing in Cook County. She apparently convinced her daughter to return to Detroit before having her second child. There, Clairette and George could see after her and help care for the newest Goines. That year, at 1:49
P.M.
on December 15, Donald Joseph was born. Myrtle was twenty-seven. Joseph was fifty. Myrtle was thrilled to have a son. On the other hand, while he was much more fair in complexion than Marie, a middle name would prove to be nearly all he held in common with his father.

*   *   *

The Goines children would enjoy the same relative privilege that Myrtle and her siblings experienced in Little Rock. Marie was glad to have the company of a baby brother. The boy, who was given the nickname Donnie, would refer to her as “Wee Wee” when he was old enough to speak. In the earliest stages of their relationship Marie eased into her new big-sister role. One particular day, she was outside the house pushing Donnie in his carriage. In the span of a moment without supervision, her attention was distracted and the baby went rolling toward the street as a Chicago fire engine roared ahead. She never knew why, but though Marie was herself just a toddler, she suddenly had the presence of mind to turn around and quickly retrieve her brother. She gradually became a tiny yet reliable helper for Myrtle whenever Donnie needed watching. Meanwhile, the Goines family wasn't the only one expanding. Myrtle's sister Elsie D and brother George began bringing their children to Chicago from Detroit for regular visits with their cousins. Doris and Catherine were among the younger relatives who kept Marie company, though Doris thought Marie to be a “selfish little bitch” where their conflicting play habits were concerned.

While her socialization continued at home, eventually it was time for Marie to enter kindergarten. One incident in school gave the child what was perhaps her first lesson about race and the strange dynamics of color within her family. After all, she had a father who tried to avoid being identified with black folks—who thanked God every day for Marie's thin lips and small nose—and a mother who was willing to throttle white folks who might perceive Myrtle as being like them. How, then, was she to associate herself? The answer became either stunningly clear or all the more confusing the day Myrtle showed up to retrieve her from class. Finding herself at a loss to locate Mrs. Goines's daughter, the teacher informed Myrtle of her quandary. Only then did the mother realize the teacher had gone looking for a little white child before finally releasing Marie to her custody. Marie would never forget the day she and her doting mother were treated as complete strangers to one another.

Just two years behind her, Donnie appeared to be growing into a rather typical boy. It was only fitting that he would lop off his sister's long, beautiful braids one day when they were outside “playing Indians.” It was also only fitting that Joe and Myrtle would go out and raise a hearty fuss about it. They preferred that the children recognize their Native American ancestry in other ways. About 1940, wanderlust kicked in once more. Joe and Myrtle shut down the cleaning store, packed up the children, and returned to Detroit, this time to stay. They briefly lived with George and Clairette before settling into a house at 13953 St. Aubin on the city's northeast side. There, they were surrounded by relatives from both Joe's and Myrtle's families. Joe set up shop nearby on Victor Street. He called the new business Northside Cleaners. Meanwhile, Thomas Goines had also ventured into dry cleaning with his own establishment in the area of historic Fort Wayne. But he just barely got out alive when the boiler in his building exploded. Tom lost fingers and his ears burned off, leaving him permanently deformed after a stay in the hospital.

Various primarily European ethnic groups had inhabited the city since Frenchman Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac founded Detroit nearly 250 years before the Goines clan decided to backtrack. German immigrants established the Sacred Heart Catholic School sometime after Sacred Heart parish opened in 1875. Located at 970 Eliot, the school was for students in kindergarten through eighth grade. In 1938 Edward Mooney, who was an archbishop at the time, designated Sacred Heart the facility where black parishioners could send their sons and daughters to be educated. The Catholic Church didn't formally support racial segregation, yet students were expected to attend classes at their assigned locations, which would not have qualified as ethnically diverse. In 1939 Holy Ghost was constructed from the ground as a second school to which the archbishop assigned students of color.

Donnie was admitted to Sacred Heart kindergarten on September 2, 1941. His birthday still months away, he was a four-year-old student among his school peers. He started in Room 101 and remained there until the end of first grade. By then World War II had begun, ushering in a renewal of the mass migration to Detroit as the city became known as the “Arsenal of Democracy.” Production of war supplies led to $14 billion in contracts—approximately 10 percent of the nation's battle spending—which resulted in an increase of available factory positions. The region's population increased by about 300,000 within only four years. As the constituency of southeastern Michigan's broader territory grew, within a decade Detroit's black population had doubled to 200,000 by 1943. Caucasian resentment about the location of a city housing project in a white neighborhood, expressed in cross burning and other hateful acts, provided a disturbing resemblance to the South for many transplanted opportunity-seekers who thought they'd left behind the days of being unable to live comfortably in their God-given skin. In an act of defiance toward whites and as a statement of retaliation against unfair conditions, some initiated a “bumping campaign,” through which they would deliberately walk into white folks on the street, knocking them off sidewalks or nudging them in elevators. Nationally distributed
Life
magazine likened the situation in Detroit to dynamite. Shortly thereafter, the city exploded in a way that proved the accuracy of
Life
's reporting.