Reluctant Coalburner

Cartoon of different Black female hair types
The Sista Sistahood

I dated a Black usher in the supermarket-basement theater. Or, she dated me. I’d never chased Black women. Tell the truth, they’d always been well-nigh invisible to me. Even as a small child, my only thought was that they all had very skinny legs and big feet. I never even looked up into their faces. I had crossed swords with a few militant Black chicks in college but they’d made little impression. Black girls just weren’t on my radar. I think Sandra sensed this, sensed that I wasn’t a phony White liberal pretending to be color-blind while actually obsessed with adding a Black notch to his bedstead. Hell, I didn’t even own a bed. 

Angela Davis African-American revolutionary
Angela Davis – every White man’s wet dream but mine.

It was undeniable that with our matching Afros, Sandra and I made a cute counter-culture couple. She enjoyed showing off her hippie boyfriend to her Black girlfriends and I enjoyed the envious stares I caught from White dudes who assumed I must be one whole heckuva lotta man to have an Angela Davis look-a-like on my arm. I tried not to notice the hate-filled stares I got from Black dudes. 

Boy Outa Brooklyn a murder memoir by Jack Antonio 
Image: the smiling face of Steeplechase Park in Coney Island, Brooklyn
Available as a paperback and eBook amazon.com
amazon.co.uk
And as an eBook here

Betrayal in Brooklyn

Brooklyn Dodgers - Gil Hodges, Johny Podres and Carl Furillo in 1955
We loved ’em and they left us

The history of Brooklyn repeated itself. In 1957, ten years after integrating baseball with Jackie Robinson, the owner of the Dodgers abandoned Brooklyn for L.A. It was a devastating blow to the fans and it took Brooklyn decades to recover. The final straw for the owner was watching a Puerto Rican piss into a Coke bottle and throw it at a player on the field. He suddenly understood why the Whites who had fled Brooklyn for the suburbs no longer wanted to sit in the stands at his ballpark. The cover story for the Dodger’s move to L.A. was a dispute with New York about the location of a new stadium. The real reason was White flight. 

Proposed domed stadium for the Brooklyn Dodgers.
There was talk of a domed stadium in downtown Brooklyn years before the Houston Astrodome.
Brooklyn’s vibrant, “new demographic” pissed all over the idea of a domed stadium.
Newspaper front page abut Brooklyn Dodgers move to Los Angeles
It took Brooklyn decades to regain its confidence and swagger.

Boy Outa Brooklyn a murder memoir by Jack Antonio 
Image: the smiling face of Steeplechase Park in Coney Island, Brooklyn
Available as a paperback and eBook
amazon.com
amazon.co.uk
And as an eBook here https://books2read.com/The-Boy-Outa-Brooklyn