The End: The Last Black Man in Georgia, Part 1
Everything ends sometime. Somewhere. For me, it is here and now.
If anyone asks you, tell them I don’t like Black people. It’s nothing personal, you can add if you like. And sure, say I think Black people are fine in certain contexts and environments. Only, you know, not at the table or in the family. Or in the neighborhood.
Even today that is an attitude abhorrent enough to make people avoid me. Not that other people don’t think the same thing, mind you. They are merely less willing to have it publicly attributed to themselves. So, when I say that, I see people unconsciously withdraw. And after that I find them much less likely to approach me about anything at all, let alone my attitudes about race. They are glad to keep their distance and wave from across the street. Or ignore me completely.
Either way, it’s the outcome I seek.
I’m sorry to offend people before I even know if they’re worth offending. And when I see them flinch at my statements, I admit it sometimes gives me pause. I can’t afford to care what people think about me, though. They can’t come to believe they know me, or think there is good hidden below my antagonism. They might think it appropriate to stop by and see how I am. That would be a mistake. I can’t have anyone casually coming to visit me. It is necessary for me to be a pariah because there is more at stake than belonging.
It didn’t use to be this way. I was always a little odd, not really one of those who fit in well. But I didn’t have to go out of my way to drive people away, and my parents were part of an easy social circle. They entertained friends and those friends entertained them back. I went to a public school, and even occasionally got an invitation to a birthday party. Even less occasionally I went to a birthday party. I know, kids need to be with other kids. But I had less of that need than most. I have no need of that now and isolation is a blessing.
It kind of started with a bang and went downhill really quickly. The End, that is. That’s what we call it, “The End,” like the last page on a book. It was the last page on the history book of the United States, because it was the end of the union. The End. The year 2020 started with a terrible pandemic sweeping the world, infecting over 25 million people, and killing almost a million in five short months. With everyone locked inside and avoiding crowds, working from home, home-schooling, “staycations,” every one paid attention to the news. That’s when they noticed that police in the United States were killing Black people, mostly men. Not entirely, but mostly. Black men and boys.
Now, that was not really news. Let’s face it, having a black skin in America was always deadly dangerous. Those silent columns in Montgomery, Alabama are heavy with the names engraved on them; one for each county in which a lynching occurred between 1877 and 1950. The memorial is a full weight of grief and loss, name by sacred name, a dreadful toll. But that weight was one carried anew by mothers, fathers, children — new losses, new empty places in the world, new holes for sorrow and anger to fill. The biggest difference was that in 2020, everyone had a cell phone. Seems strange now, doesn’t it? Most people can no longer afford one and many people won’t carry them since the tech giants became able to track the very damn phone itself whether on or off.
Ordinary citizens, though, white and black alike, could record the public killings of Black people by police officers back then. So they did. And then they used the World Wide Web to post them everywhere. The death of one man, Mr. George Floyd, touched off a powder keg of demonstrations across the world. I know, in the middle of a pandemic! But the outrage was too great, the pain too deep, the images too searing in their pitiful clarity: the sight of Mr. Floyd, an ordinary guy, pinned to the street by police kneeling on his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. Long enough to kill him. While he called for his mother, dead those long years, who could not come to help him. And neither did anyone else.
After that, it seemed like a flood of death rolling across the streets of America — from Minnesota to Kentucky to Georgia to Wisconsin — following a map drawn in blood across the country and one that was decades in the making, with stops in Maryland, Florida, Texas, Utah, California. Wait, you say. Weren’t they breaking the law? Weren’t they armed and dangerous? Sure, some were breaking the law. Others were simply driving cars or walking on streets — when they added up the numbers, everyone realized the difference between Black people and white people dying was a factor of 250%. Things got crazy.
But where were America’s leaders, you ask? It is just now, fifteen years later, that we can admit the truth, because almost everyone at the top is dead. The truth is, the leaders were behind it. From the President down, the ruling party was in it up to their necks. No one really noticed that these killings occurred in only cities with opposition mayors. With the long-standing coziness between police and white supremacist militias, it was a simple thing to orchestrate killings, wait for the protests, and then ratchet up the violence with a few well-placed militia members. Hell, they lined up for a chance to take some shots at a bunch of anti-fascists marching along with posters. Egged on by a President who promised violence in every neighborhood if his opponent won, the unfolding of The End was predictable. But no one saw it coming.
Even then, most Americans still thought of their country as the “United” States. Even then, when people found out that Russia was fixing elections, most people believed their vote mattered. Even then, most Americans thought the country could heal if they defeated the would-be dictators in office.
They were right.
They were wrong.
They could defeat the authoritarians. They could not heal the country. Within weeks of the national election, which the incumbent lost by a landslide, wholesale terror broke out in states that voted against him. Some Police officers and the National Guard members broke ranks with their governments and attacked citizens on the streets and roads. Patriot Militias formed on both sides until no one could tell which side anyone was on. Having a gun became more important than having a house — because you needed one to defend your house if you wanted to keep it.
Still, it appeared that the new President might be able to hold it together. And then two things happened. The New York Times broke the story that the pandemic virus was not a deadly, but accidental, mutation. It was a manufactured disease. And it was the Russians who engineered it; with a vaccine developed at the same time. The ability of the virus to attack multiple, wildly different body systems; its long-term physical and mental health effects; the emergence of people with new, deadly reinfections — all these issues suddenly made sense. People wondered why the President and Vice President seemed immune, even when staffers around them got sick. The Russians surreptitiously administered the vaccine to them before releasing the virus in China, Europe, and America, and American doctors administered it again and again as the pandemic ground on with no end in sight. It was the nation itself that released the virus. Some blamed the Party, some the Russians, some the Chinese. No one believed the doctors and nurses. No one wanted to protect themselves. They wanted to be invincible. They flaunted their susceptibility. Then they got sick. And they died in droves, angry, defiant, never believing they had the virus. It spread like wildfire, even where people tried to do the right thing. It replicated so quickly and spread so incredibly fast that before anyone could say “mask” variants emerged.
And that was the second thing. The virus could mutate almost at will when it encountered antibodies to itself — so, no herd immunity, no permanent vaccine. A never-ending evolution of weaponized transmission and evaporating protections. When those stories broke, the ousted President barricaded himself in the White House with his Cabinet and staff. He declared ownership of the District of Columbia and called on the Army to defend him. The Mayor was under arrest; the opposition members of Congress secretly fled the city. Canada and Mexico closed and armed their borders with America, protecting wilderness areas with drones and helicopters. Americans trying to leave the country were either detained before leaving, or arrested and returned when they landed.
And then it happened. Everyone thought, if it did happen, it would be California seceding from the Union. God knows it is as big as many European countries. Or Texas, which could raise again the historic flag of nationhood it once flew. But no, of all places, it was Delaware. Home of the newly elected President, first state to join the nation. Delaware abruptly decided to be the first state to leave the nation.
The secession announcement was followed quickly by a statement of unity — a new commonwealth of states. Formed by the coalition of Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, DelMarVa announced the annexation of the former District of Columbia. Backed by the massive military forces stationed in Maryland and Virginia, which DelMarVa immediately nationalized, the new nation had the District surrounded and cut off. From the capital of Wilmington, Delaware, the President of DelMarVa declared the White House resident a traitor and instituted a life sentence. With a fence already surrounding the White House, DelMarVa designated it as the permanent prison for the cohort of criminals in residence. He elevated the Park Police to Commonwealth Status, freed the Mayor, and gave her a new title, “Defender of Democracy.” And a new job — with the expanded Park and Capitol Police forces, to ensure that no remnants of the administration escaped from Columbia, which became the fourth nation state in the Federated District of DelMarVa.
I guess we should have foreseen what happened next. Northern Florida, Tennessee, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana banded together. Declaring their country “The Risen South” they cut ties with the rest of disintegrating America, and named Atlanta as their capital. On the border of this new country, Kentucky temporarily aligned with states formerly in the Northwest Territory — Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin, to form The Northwest Alliance. A loosely affiliated commonwealth of nations with enough heft to ward off takeovers, the Alliance stood to benefit enormously when Kentucky nationalized Fort Knox. And its adjacent bullion repository. That made the Old Kentucky Home an attractive target, together with its tobacco, bourbon, and horse-racing wealth. Pennsylvania did its best to put together a different alliance with Kentucky and West Virginia, and succeeded when it agreed to place the capitol of the nation in Lexington, Kentucky. A feeble effort to name the country “West Pennsyltucky” was laughed out of contention. Known as the “blue and gold” nation, the Appalachian Treaty states adopted the slogan “Unbridled Freedom” and became Appalachiana.
That would become very important in the days after The End.
With the Ohio River as its western boundary, and the Appalachian Mountains a formidable barrier to invaders, Appalachiana had friendly DelMarVa to its east, along with the Atlantic Union — New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts to the northeast. The Northwest Alliance was free in name, at least, but harbored sympathizers in Ohio and Indiana. So there was a tricky, but possible, route to the free western countries. Only the south border faced an increasingly hostile nation. The South was consolidating its rising autonomy, taking the right to vote away from Blacks and women, changing land ownership laws, and creating White Only schools, restaurants, stores — and companies.
Black people began slowly and quietly leaving. A hidden benefit of segregation, once out of sight, Black people developed and executed plans to abandon The South. Those who were able transferred resources north into Kentucky, including Black millionaires there and everywhere else. On announcement of The Rising, as they call it, the wealthiest moved to swiftly consolidate and relocate their enormous wealth. Those without the means to follow crept out of their homes at night, and disappeared into another nation — the Carolinas, DelMarVa, Appalachiana. From there, they filtered north and west. The Risen South emerged as a nation once again but demonstrably poorer and more vicious than its individual states had been. Already struggling with the historic poverty of the South, some of the states and cities were left destitute. That’s when the Risen South struck its deadliest blow. They reinstituted slavery.
Within hours of passing the first of a set of bills that would put slavery in place across the country, Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey organized a bold and dangerous exodus. Spreading the word in secret, the Moses Coalition quickly named locations, days, and times for the evacuation of the South. The code word, Wypipo, was thought by Whites to be an Indian reference, and they laughed at the foolish hope that Native Americans would somehow help Blacks. It was instead a derisive term based on pronunciation of “white people.” In a coordinated strike, the Coalition landed planes and helicopters at pre-selected locations and rescued Black Americans who waited in hiding. Near borders, cars and buses appeared, acquired their precious cargo, and fled to the next country. In 2010, 55% of the Black people in America lived in the south — or over 19 million people. In less than 72 hours in 2020, The Risen South became 90% white.
And it’s that last 10% that breaks your heart — over a million men, women, and children. Those left behind by accident or oversight were at the mercy of angry Southerners, who had expected to appropriate the wealth of millions. And appropriate it they did, only not as much as they expected or craved. No longer free, Black residents were disenfranchised, taken into custody, and their belongings and bodies sold by impoverished towns, cities, and states to raise money.
But with the rising of the South also came resistance. The Moses Coalition recruited members for a new Underground Railroad — the Underground Interstate. The town of Berea became its unofficial headquarters. Long known as a defender of Appalachian culture and its unique college, free to selected students who learned a craft along with history and science, Berea was the perfect choice as the new crossroads of freedom. From there, Freedom Drivers had a straight shot up the old 75 to Lexington, the capital, and from there, direct routes from free Kentucky to the north, east, and west.
Well, the Risen South should have expected its northern neighbors to oppose it whether they were willing to admit it or not. Some things do not change. It was a fundamental principle of the old America that freedom was worth its price.
Danger, sacrifice, death. The Freedom Drivers believed it and acted on it.
It was a miracle that it worked as long as it did. Cozy in its new return to the Days of Dixie, Risen Southerners took for granted that violence would intimidate their neighbors into acquiescing to their cruelty. But too many years had passed and too much truth was public. And of course, it had been more than a century since the South lost the power of cotton. With little manufacturing, farming that had to compete with the Greater Midwest Nation, and a wet bulb climate that drove citizens indoors much of the year, the Risen South no longer had economic value to make it worthwhile to ignore their savagery. Trade with border nations and beyond, lip service to human rights, and careful management of public relations all contributed to the false narrative of happy slaves. Not many bought it this time, either, but it served to keep borders open and only major cities with much in the way of security.
Of course, the politicians couldn’t admit that their nation was bleeding people — literally and figuratively. The state of Mississippi instituted outright payment for breeding slaves, which failed absolutely. Incentives to move to The Risen South also largely failed, except among individuals unable to contribute much except an evil mindset that embraced slavery. And with the failure of individual states like Alabama and Mississippi, the ”Crown” capital state of Georgia grew more and more authoritarian. But they couldn’t lock everything up or down, and many routes stayed open to the north and east.
And so enslaved black people continued to elude the Slavers and make their escapes along the Underground Interstate. Drenched in bleach to throw off dogs. Hiding in boxes, barrels, and sacks; tucked into secret compartments in cars, trucks, and buses; clinging underwater to the sides of boats with breathing gear to stay submerged, people fled the Risen South a few at a time. There were hundreds of trips every month. Almost impossible to stop because the Risen South was so rural.
My family came from Kentucky, a couple of hours northwest of Berea. Nice, middle-class folks, we were. Bob and Lil Henderson and their great kids, Bob, Jr. and Joanie. Bob was an accountant, doing books and taxes for local businesses and families. Lil helped out in the office, answering the phone, scheduling appointments, and sending reminders at tax time. Also as famous for her love of knitting as she was famous for doing it so badly, she was a loving mother and wife. Everyone liked her, and tried to be as tactful as possible when she gifted them with one of her creations. “God knows,” everyone said, “how can someone even make an ugly hot pad?”
Bobbie was an average guy, pretty good at sports, bad at English. Joanie — that’s me — was also a run-of-the-mill kid. I was pretty good at sports, great at English, hated math. Everyone said we were salt of the earth, the kind of people you could count on in a pinch. We helped out families in need, sold cookies for school projects, paid our bills, mowed our grass. Had a little place out in the country, grew our own tomatoes. Just loved camping out on the weekend, or getting away for a few days at one of Kentucky’s famous state parks. Always had a kind word, and a helping hand.
We were the kind of folks that make a town a community, they said.
We were also the kind of folks who ran the Interstate Underground.
No one thought that managing money and doing taxes were essentials for smuggling people out of slavery. No one thought that an ability to organize and run an office was essential to setting up the complex and interconnected logistics needed to evade the Slave Police and freelance Slavers. No one thought that a couple of wholesome kids were just the right kind of camouflage to explain away lots of bags, a big truck, and a travel trailer.
A cute kid with blond hair and freckles like my Dad, I specialized in being precious and adorable. Also, I admit, once I hit 16 years old I was always a little flirtatious with the border guards or police when they stopped us. Bobbie would always roll his eyes at the cops, bringing them into the game of having a little sister who was a pain in his ass. They loved it. Once we started, most often they’d share a laugh with Bobbie, look down my shirt, and wave us on.
They didn’t often stop us, though. We just looked so damn innocent.
We ran almost 100 missions. The best one? We hijacked a whole busload of little kids. My Dad, dressed as a guard, sidled up to the driver to share a little sip of good Kentucky bourbon. And it was good Kentucky bourbon, only it also had a little sip of knock out drops in it along with the ice. We called it a “Kentucky Horizon,” because once you had a good drink, you were as flat as the horizon. People loved it, woke up with good memories along the side of the road, and were too humiliated to admit they got doped.
But that bus, man, that was a thing. Dad put a pillow under his shirt so his buttons strained over it, left his hair lank and dirty, and let his admittedly skimpy beard grow. He was one half-ass sight. Bobbie wasn’t any better. He had on some kind of faded red hat, an old American flag sewn on the ass of his jeans, and as mean a look on his face as he could muster.
The group of children on the bus were taken from their parents and were on the way to Montgomery for auction. Mom and I rode along, hidden in the back, to take care of the children once we had them out of the South. We had food, new clothes, identity documents, the whole nine yards.
The Slavers kept them quiet by promising they were on their way to their Mommas. We couldn’t tell them any different, even though we knew their mothers were dispersed over the south like so many leaves blown along the ground in winter. They might never see their mothers again. But there people waiting to take them, hide them, and help them find new families. It was even possible some of their parents were already freed, since the number of black people left in the South dwindled every day.
And off we drove. We had fake papers directing us to drive the children from Chattanooga to Knoxville, supposedly to pick up additional children, before we retraced our steps and went down to Montgomery. No one questioned that kind of organization — driving all over the state of Tennessee with a bus full of little kids. That was just how stupid the South could be. It didn’t make any sense, but we were counting on it not needing to.
Dad had real papers from Tennessee identifying him as a Highway Patrol officer. Bobbie had papers from the Montgomery Crossroads Auction House, stating he was in charge of the children on the bus. I know, it was horrible. But that’s how they did things.
Mom and I didn’t have any papers. We were going along as the illicit love interests of the driver and his Slaver companion. That part was pretty gross, too. We had on tight shirts, lots of makeup, and very short skirts in an effort to be convincing. The fact that we didn’t have papers? That actually made it more convincing. I looked like some sort of cartoon character; pink and blue Kool-Aid in my hair, eye make up so black I looked like a raccoon, and way too much rouge. I kind of liked it. Mom, on the other hand, was embarrassed as hell. She looked like an aging Madam, rode too hard and put away wet, as we like to say.
If things got out of hand, we were there for the distraction. And to serve the Kentucky Horizons to anyone who tried to stop us. Afterwards, we would laugh like idiots every time we talked about it with each other, but at the time, it was terrifying. The children were trying to be brave so they could see their mothers, but they were in terrible shape. Malnourished and beaten down, they just sat in their seats and kept their heads down.
We were routed from Chattanooga to Knoxville on Route 75. There was no need to stop and so we didn’t. The bus coughed its way up 75, burning gas as much as using it, at a speed fast enough and slow enough at the same to avoid suspicion. And since we were driving on a Sunday, there weren’t too many people on the road anyway. In the Risen South, amen, amen, amen, you better go to Church on Sunday. Head on over to the New Christian Evangelical Risen Lord Church. Just get there early because it fills up fast. And between the morning service, Bible study, Men’s Leadership Group, Women’s Service Group, and Afternoon Bible School, you could expect to spend most of the day. And a good bit of your annual income, on top of it. But, it made them happy and made our job easier. It was a little surprising that they didn’t figure it out, but no harm no foul. Right?
We arrived in Knoxville safely, changed Dad’s and Bobbie’s papers over to Georgia State Police, and took out our new license plates, registration, and routing — Knoxville to Atlanta. In the old days, Mom and I would have been police, too. But now nobody allowed women be in charge of anything — and especially not something that involved carrying a gun. Not every woman was okay with being a Belle of the South and minding her own business all day. So, yeah, it would be totally unbelievable for us to wear any uniform that didn’t involve an apron or an elaborate floor-length dress.
We stopped long enough to let the kids use the toilet in the back of the bus, and get a little bottle of water out of a decrepit cooler. I’m sure the kids wondered what the hell was going on, but Bobbie just told them to sit still and keep quiet. Afraid to do anything but follow orders, the children lowered their heads again and stared at their feet.
This part of the trip was the most dangerous. Although our papers would be accepted as genuine, it would be tricky to convince authorities that we were heading north on Tennessee Rt. 33 on the way to Atlanta. We could say we got lost going around Knoxville. Not hard, especially without access to any of kind of GPS (or any we could admit to having), in an old and decrepit bus, without trained drivers.
Worst case scenario? Mom and I would get off the bus, bat our eyelashes, and offer a drink while we worked out how to get ourselves back on the right track. Works every time.
Things went okay until we got to Tazewell. By that time it was getting dark. It was only about an hour and half between Knoxville and our destination, Middlesboro, Kentucky but we were still careful. Just outside of Tazewell, we picked up what seemed to be a tail. An ordinary-looking white pickup truck, but even so, it seemed suspicious that it kept pace with us on the highway, and followed us at a distance through Tazewell to where we turned onto 25 East, which would take us right across the state line and into Kentucky on an even smaller highway. Dad and Bobbie knew it wasn’t the police — more likely vigilantes figuring they would steal the cargo and sell it themselves.
That made it even less likely we could divert them with our feminine attractions and probably at a risk of getting us all killed and the children taken. Trying to lose the truck, they turned onto Anders Road and plugged along until they were well into the country. The truck followed along, getting closer and closer. Finally, they started flashing their lights, and tried to get the bus off the road. Dad pulled over, and Bobbie stood at the door so they would see him when the door opened.
The men walked confidently up to the bus, and Bobbie could see they were holding guns. Two white guys, baseball caps with the red fist of the Risen South on them, and what looked like hand guns. On that isolated road in the middle of nowhere, the vigilantes were probably pretty sure they’d just have a couple of good ol’ boys to get out of the way before they took the “cargo.”
They stopped by the door, and gestured at Bobbie to make it open. He did, then quickly stepped backwards into the aisle, leaving my father exposed. That would be leaving my father and his massive shotgun exposed, that is. He fired both barrels without hesitation, and the men went down in a heap on the side of the road. Without a word, he closed the door, put the bus in gear, and pulled back out to hurry down the road.
Turning onto Old Mulberry Road, he kept up the pace until he could cut back over to 25E and hightail it into Kentucky. In the back, the children were crying and holding each other. Behind them, my mother and I were crying and holding each other. It was a close call, but we made it over the Kentucky line with the bus weaving and wheezing.
When we finally stopped in Middlesboro, organized transportation waited for us. Black men and women stood vigil by their cars waiting to accept the children and move them on to safety and a new life. Inside the bus, the children waited quietly. Then my father began to talk and they began to cry when they realized their mothers were not there.
Another heart-rending scene of disappointment and disbelief. More black hearts to heal and renew. Maybe. Some rescued people never really recovered from their experiences in the Risen South. Some got out of the rescue vehicle, looked around them, smiled, and walked away into freedom. But most found themselves somewhere in between. The horror of their experience was hard to escape, even though they were physically safe.
From those experiences came a new kind of segregation. A separation of black and white imposed on society by freed Black citizens who created safe spaces for themselves and limited their exposure to white society for the rest of their lives. Who could blame them?
For us, every trip was a nightmare of hope and fear, achievement and despair. My father, a quiet businessman, was a murderer. He did not regret his acts, and neither did we blame him for them. We all knew what would have happened to those children in the hands of the Risen South because there was evidence of what happened in the Old South — and across half the damn United States.
So we went home. Destroyed our costumes, burned the documents, had the bus completely dismantled, leaving no evidence of our actions. It was the only way to be safe. It was the only way to keep doing what we were doing.
And we all succeeded. We drove and drove until the Risen South was bereft of black bodies. Or nearly. There were still a few hundred people who were either hidden or who didn’t want to be found. You can’t judge them. If they were making it work, we owed it to them to leave them alone and not put them in danger.
And I guess it had to happen sooner or later. You know, there’s that short notice drive, someone in danger. We had to get them out and fast. We had plans for that kind of thing, and only used an emergency route once. It worked up to then, why wouldn’t it work again? Because it wasn’t an emergency. It was a trap.
I couldn’t go because I was sick. The virus had stopped being so deadly years ago, but it still made you sick and you still had to have a negative test to cross state lines. Stopped without one in the Risen South, you would be arrested and executed without trial. Police and even citizens could shoot you and get away with it. Not that it kept the South virus-free, mind you, but it made those open carry Southerners happy little gun wavers.
So, they left. They said they’d call when they picked up the rescue and again when they crossed state lines. But they never called. And they never came back. And I never found out what happened to them. So at 18, I was alone. Old enough to keep the house; old enough to carry on my Dad’s business.
And old enough to rescue people who needed me.
And now, there is one Black man left in Georgia. They’re going to execute him. But I’m going to go get him first.
This is a work of fiction. With apologies to Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey, who I thank for being inspiring figures who would, no doubt, risk themselves to save people in need.
