In 1920, buses cost less to buy but more to operate per seat‐mile than streetcars or passenger trains. But in 1927, a company called Twin Coach introduced the first bus that was less expensive to operate as well as less expensive to buy than railcars. We fast forward to the year of 1936.
Mary is sitting on a bus waiting for the ride to end, her little brother, Robert, is 5 & holding the hand of his 16-year-old half-black, half-white sister, Mary.
To Mary, pretending to be fully white is the difference between living in hell or living in safety.
Mary has white facial features, pale skin, brown & permed hair, her little brother has naturally straight hair, pale skin, a wide nose & wide lips with a chubby face.
Mary whispers "If they ask what race you are, say white. They'll kill you if you say you're black, understand? The KKK will burn our home down."
Their white mother, Karen, got illegally married to her black father, Darren, in Canada.
Mary is 16 with dead parents, they were killed by the KKK once the children were 4 & 15.
Our years of The 1930s was a period marked, unfortunately, by chaos and dismay. This was due to the Great Depression.
Mary is stealing to survive, living in their house left behind.
Only after 1920 was legislation passed to provide working women with employment opportunities and pay equal to men.
However, she was legally too young to get a job.
The common legal opinion on federal child labor regulation reversed in the 1930s. Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938 regulating the employment of those under 16 or 18 years of age, and the Supreme Court upheld the law.
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This is the year 1936.
Mary goes home on the bus & takes her baby brother that she's been raising back into the house at 16.
Mary lives in Washington, & plans to move to Detroit, Mexico or Canada.
After the Civil War, African Americans in Detroit continued to face discrimination in housing, employment, and education.
They were also the targets of violence, including attacks by the Ku Klux Klan. In the early 1900s, many African Americans migrated north to work in Detroit's booming industries.
This is why she wanted to live in Detroit. The jobs.
Mary was now just trying to hatch a plan on how to use White people's love for white people to benefit her, a biracial black woman.
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Mary planned out her approach:
If need-be, complain about how her parents were murdered.
Admit her mother was white.
Lie about her dad being black.
Lie about how they died & say they died in a robbery gone wrong.
Let tears flow, she always cry when thinking of how she parents actually died:
The KKK shot up her house while she hid in the basement all because they saw her mom as a traitor for marrying a black man.
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Flashback:
You were feeding your 4-year-old brother in the kitchen while your mom & dad were making out in their bedroom. Then a gunshot flew through the window the window into the living room couch.
Mary was in the kitchen, but due to how the house was built, she could visibly see the bullet fly just over baby Robert's little head into the couch since she fed him while he was playing on the floor.
Mary has a full set of braids leading down to a free afro.
Mary quickly got that little baby & yelled "Momma, they're shooting up our house!"
Mary quickly got to the basement door & smuggled that little sucker in there.
She scuffed to into the basement with him.
Meanwhile, The KKK were loading up there guns while Karen & Darren, their parents were hiding in closets & Karen went out to search for her children after checking on her hubby then kissing him quickly.
The KKK Leader at that time shot through the bedroom window & accidentally hit Karen in the left eye. Karen fell tot he floor, this was when Darren came out & shrieked. Karen wasn't shot in any vital parts of the brain, but it surely hit her hard.
Darren yelled out "Kids, you alright?!" Karen got back up to search for the kids. Karen held her left eye to prevent the bleeding & looked around for the children.
Karen yells "Babies?! Where are you?!" Mary had a slight country accent of the southern folk, Mary yells "Momma, I'm in the basement with Robert?!"
Karen shouted "Keep him in the basement with you!"
Karen got shot in the head & her body fell dead after the bullet darted around her body, hitting vital organs.
Some bullets that can't pierce the skull will ride around it until it finds an opening.
Darren ran around trying to whisk the kids to safety & died after being shot in the heart.
Darren crawled trying to reach his kids & yelled "Stay down there! Play dead! Play dead! I love you, please, pretend..." Then died before he could say "To be dead!"
His last breath was spent trying to save his kid's lives like her last breath was.
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Present Day.
The baby is now living in the hole ridden home. There is dried blood of their parents on the floor & their parent's graves in the backyard.
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Flashback:
Mary had to bury her mother & father in the yard after the event.
Mary cried during taking a shower in the house.
She was washing off her parent's blood that runs through her veins & the dirt from burying their body.
The first police department in the United States was established in New York City in 1844.
It was officially organized in 1845.
Mary called the police, but they never cared to show up.
Mary kept dialing, but no one came.
Mary took a gun from her father's closet & left her brother with Mrs. Pines, a black woman from next door saying "I'm gonna shoot the guys that killed my parents."
Mary asked around "Did the KKK have plans to shoot up my house."
Many blacks & whites agreed that there were plans, no one knew until they showed up with big guns that day. Before they knew what was going on, the KKK started shootin'.
Mary didn't ask others to help her since they had families & she knew she'd be arrested, so a black man, Darrius, knowing she'd go to prison, chose to talk her out it.
Darrius told her "You're 15, I know you're hurtin', but don't kill nobody or they'll lock you up for life."
Mary told him that "I have to get revenge, they just did it! They didn't even care she was white, too! They just shot!"
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Darrius says that:
"Those white folk see white women marryin' black men as a form of, uh, bein' a traitor.
When those white men rape a black woman, it's all fine to the KKK, but let a white person & black person fall in love!
No matter the gender 'cuz they don't care!
Just let one actually love a black person!
Suddenly, they wanna fight!"
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Darrius led her back home & helped her clean up the blood stains that weren't soaked into the floorboards.
Mary didn't kill anyone because she didn't want to go to jail, but awoke a newfound fear of being black in America.
Darrius covered up the remaining blood stains with rugs from his shop, they were all free.
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To be continued...