~Miguel de Unamuno
Supposedly travelers on the trains of the Southern Railroad Line taunted departing passengers by parodying Patrick Henry's patriotic words, Give me Liberty or give me Death. . .I'll take Death! as the train started slowing to stop at the small town of Liberty, North Carolina.
To paraphrase Tennesse Williams, the "Milk Train" does not pass through Liberty anymore. It was before my time anyway, the era of the steam locomotive pulling into the old "Depot" that still stands on the tracks in the center of town as far as I know.
The taunt (a bit unfair perhaps) doubtless derived from the perceived dullness of the town, a place whose greatest claim to fame was the tying of the mayor's race in the early '60s. While the name, Liberty, fairly rolls off the tongue, recalling visions of Lexington and Concord, I cannot help but wonder if I could have pronounced that name without dripping sarcasm if I had been a person of African descent living there prior to the '70s.
There were perhaps five stoplights, a rather large water tower visible for several miles, a town cop who drove around in a converted Buick most always chomping on a cigar; he was called "Lop." He mostly chased teenagers driving hot rod Chevies or Fords; sometimes he caught one too, hair slicked back in a "ducktail" with large, plastic dice hanging from the rear-view mirror.
I am not sure how many black folks lived in the town where I grew up in the fifties and sixties. Actually, my family and I did not live in the town of some 1400 souls, but resided instead on a small farm about four miles down Highway 421, the real Tobacco Road, that if followed another 15 miles leads to Randleman, home of NASCAR legend, Richard Petty. Keep on going another few miles or so and you wind up in Greensboro where a number of black students from North Carolina A&T initiated sit-ins at the Woolworth Cafeteria in 1954.
In those Jim Crow days in which I grew up, I seldom saw black people shopping in the small downtown. Of course, there were never a lot of people shopping in downtown Liberty anyway, though the funeral home did a good business, having a monopoly on the business of death for a radius of several miles. Every member of the owner's family drove a Cadillac; still do.
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