Surrounded by angry rednecks irked at the fact that I danced with a white woman in a saloon, it occurred to me that Galveston, Texas, is definitely no place for a Black man. Lesson learned, folks. Stay away from blonde-haired white chicks with British accents while in the Midwest unless I'm armed. Cool. I'll remember for next time. Now the question is, will I live long enough to pass that wisdom to some others? I should have known Rose Leicester was up to no good.
The way that curvy, blonde-haired and green-eyed British lady walked up to me the moment I walked in the bar, I should have suspected that we were both in trouble. Sadly, I was thinking with my little head instead of the big one, and now I was about to pay the price. I don't suppose you fellas want to let me buy you a drink and forget about this? I said, smiling all the way. This only pissed them off more. You're going to swing for this nigger, one of them cigarette-chomping, fedora-wearing rednecks spat, and stepped toward me. Damn, I thought, and braced myself for the worst.
The Midwest has its ways and will cling to them, and one of their old traditions is that they treat Black folks badly, just because they can. That much should have been clear to me when I moved there from my hometown of Cap-Haitien, Republic of Haiti, in 1969, but I've always been the stubborn type. My grandfather, Grandpa Francois used to say my head is harder than a rock.
No argument there, given how my life has turned out. The name is Emile Guillaume and I'm a fella with a story to share. It's about my adventures in the heartland of America, after leaving the Caribbean for good, at a particularly turbulent time in U.S. history, right after the Civil Rights Movement. People tend to cling to their ways, and agents of change tend to get caught in the crossfire. It happened to me, and I barely survived it.
I was born on the island of Haiti in 1949, and the life of a farmer in the environs of Quartier Morin didn't suit me. I used to dream of running away, of living in a faraway lands and having amazing adventures. Not for me the life of a goat herder, or cattle minder. My grandfather owns several kilometers of fertile farmland around these parts, and he's considered one of the wealthiest men in the area. He sent my older brother Etienne to study at the prestigious Notre Dame University in Port-Au-Prince, and decided that I would be a farm hand until the end of my days.
When I asked my grandfather why, the old man told me that I was different, and needed to be looked after. You've got the same curse that took your parents, he said. I would always scratch my head at that, but I knew better than to press him for details. A long time ago, something happened to my parents, Joanne and Jean-Luc Guillaume. Something that nobody in the town of Quartier Morin will discuss. Behind my back, people would whisper that I am cursed, yet they never told me why.
I didn't want to spend the rest of my life in a place where I felt unwanted, living as a goat herder. The day I turned nineteen, I realized that such a life simply wasn't for me. I left North Haiti, the region in which I'd spent my whole life, and wandered across the island. I thought about going to the Dominican Republic, but after the way they treated my people in the Parsley Massacre, that whole side of the island could kiss my behind. Instead, I turned my gaze to the United States of America, the fabled land of opportunity. I wanted to visit the U.S. and sought a way to get there.
Like the rest of the world, I heard about the Civil Rights Movement. Black folks in the States were finally rising up against racial discrimination and segregation and marched for their rights. Some progressive whites even joined them. I must say I found the whole thing exciting, especially as a man of color. Living in the Republic of Haiti, I had a fairly unique perspective of such things. You see, my homeland is the first independent Black republic. And we Haitians won't let the world forget it.
You probably don't know about us, so I'll enlighten you. In 1804, Haitian men and women defeated the French armies and established the first free Black nation in the world. For this, Europeans have hated us for a long time. We're a constant reminder that they're not invincible. To hear that my sisters and brothers in the U.S. were finally rising up against colonial oppression, well, that pleased me greatly. I felt the pull of America in ways I couldn't explain. I realized that I had a chance to be part of history. That's why I took a boat bound for the lovely shores of Miami, Florida.
Florida is a beautiful place, and in the late 1960s, it was already a hotbed of immigration. Scores of Haitians, Jamaicans, Cubans and other Latinos were flooding Miami and Orlando, forever changing the demographics of these very Southern locales once ruled by Florida rednecks. White men and white women living in Florida had to reckon with the Black and brown peoples now surrounding them. I settled in Miami, and worked as a security guard, cook, and tailor while adjusting to life in American society.
I'd been in town for about eight months before I got caught by wanderlust, and began traveling again. I went to Chicago, Illinois, and Boston, Massachusetts, and Birmingham, Alabama. I wanted to see those places which I'd only read about in books. I visited the places where Malcolm X and Martin Luther King walked, and preached, and fought. I spoke to the Nation of Islam peoples in Chicago and they were quite happy to meet a brother from the Caribbean. I was fascinated by Black culture in the United States, for it was so unlike my own back in Haiti.