“Whoo,” Frank said making a low brushing motion with his right hand, “whoo.” His eyes moved back and forth between the listeners. “I slipped along the alleys and made my way into Greenwood where they was already shooting going on over on the north side. Fires had been started up all over. They had burned the Holy Mount church and Stanton’s grocery and all the windows had been shot out of Shorty’s African Cafe. There were dead people lying in the street. A couple of em had been runned over. Houses was burning and a few people was standing over near em. I don’t know what they was doing — taking a goodbye look I reckon. Just then there was the sound of a bugle blowing. A tall woman wearing a man’s shirt over her dress shouted, ‘Oh Lord it’s the vengeance,’ and started running down the street. Cries started up and out of the houses came whole families of people. There was shouts everywhere. All the peoples was running. There was the sound of shooting and it was coming closer. There was cars overturned in the street and a couple of em had dead white men spilling out of em. We was fighting in a war and the war was taking place right where we lived. I couldn’t hardly believe it. I felt so bad I wanted to sit down somewhere by myself and cry, but I couldn’t take the time to. Nobody had no time.
“Well, just then I ran up on Ralph Tompkins — I don’t know where Hoster had got off to — and we rushed down the street together. Some of the trees done been burnt. And front porches too and there was burn marks running up the house faces. One house was still burning. It smelled like a woods fire. Ralph had a double-barrel shotgun tied together with wire. The butt of the gun had blood on it. Ralph was sucking air through his mouth as he ran. I probably was too. Everybody was headed over to the westside away from downtown. We could hear the shooting coming closer and sometimes it sounded like they was firing off cannons. Then we saw these white men in they cars. The cars was coming slow down the street. White mens was walking beside the cars and they was shooting into the houses. Some of them went
“Everywhere we looked there were these gunfights going on. People was up on rooftops firing and they was collected in little gangs behind cars or piled-up furniture, couches and such, that had been dragged out into the streets. There was too many white men. Some of em was wearing army uniforms. We heard later it was the whole National Guard fighting alongside those crazy white men. Over where I was they had us backed up against this old brick fire station where a bunch of men had ducked in behind a fire engine and some wagons they’d turned over in the street. Behind the station everything was on fire. It didn’t look like there was any way to get out through there and so we was making the best of it by shooting at the boys that was coming at us. We must’ve killed a dozen right in the street. There was some whooping and hollering, but that was mostly on the white side. Them crackers thought they was back at Bull Run or someplace still trying to win that old war. We wadn’t hollering much. Everybody was sad and scared and some looked like they didn’t care who it was won they was just shooting because there wadn’t no way around it. We had dust on us from the street, this powdery light gray dust that made us look like ghosts. But we was fighting hard.
