English 11CapozziWriting Sample
Troy in 1918
In 1918, when you were 14 years old, you left your home in Mobile, Alabama, never to return. Wiping away tears with your bare forearm, you ran away from home after your father beat you and raped your girlfriend. Your instincts told you to go north, joining many other African Americans in the Great Migration (1). Having no money, you walked more than one thousand miles to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and once there you contributed to the urban growth (2) of all northern cities. Along the way, you heard the news from the people you were traveling with that the fighting in Europe had intensified (3), but since you lacked an education you couldn’t read the papers for yourself. Only fourteen years old at the time, you were too young to be drafted, so you were protected from the worst horrors of war, but you hated depending on others and being illiterate stung you like a wasp. To hide it, you didn’t talk much or listen to anyone. When you reached Pittsburgh it was still winter, and without warm clothes you risked dying of influenza (4): you heard the stories that millions of people were dying all over the world. At the height of the pandemic, public gatherings were limited or banned altogether in many cities (5). You didn’t want to die; you wanted a shot at the American Dream. You even dreamed of driving a Model-T touring car, which cost about $360 (6). The price had come down since a few years earlier, but standing on the corner watching the few cars on the street whiz by, you felt you didn’t stand a chance. You retreated within yourself and the more you lived in your dreams, the more your waking hours seemed like a waking nightmare. A mere teen, you were stabbed with envy as you watched the rich white folk drive past in “your” car.
Frequently, while scuffing your way past the night clubs you heard the new music sounds of King Oliver, The Original Dixieland Jazz Band, and Louis Armstrong (7, 8, 9). You didn’t really like the music, but the sounds and the presence of others comforted you. You didn’t have money to pay the cover—besides, your clothes stank—so you often sat down on the curb in front of the clubs and listened: it helped pass the time, until invariably a cop walked by, nudged you firmly in the back with his nightstick, and said, “No niggers here; move along.”
Finally, the weather got warmer, and baseball season began. You loved baseball, and the day you learned about Babe Ruth (10) you became an instant Boston Red Sox fan—although you really should have cheered for Pittsburgh. You managed to find work sweeping up in the local saloons where you overheard white men talking about the games, and as long as you kept sweeping with your head down the saloonkeeper left you alone. You couldn’t wait to get to work on May 7th to find out what Ruth had done that day. The white customers in the saloon talked about how Ruth tied a major league record with a home run in three consecutive games (11). Then, on June 30th, Babe Ruth hit his 11th HR to beat Walter Johnson 3-1 and boost the Red Sox back into first place (12). And finally, in late summer, on September 11, the Red Sox won the World Series in game six (13). You were ecstatic but saddened at the same time because there was talk that a few players on the Chicago Cubs took $10,000 each to throw the game: they lost 4-2 (14). So maybe your hero was not as great as you had thought; this doubt nagged at you for the rest of your life. The other sad thing was that the United States had curtailed professional baseball on September 2 (15) in order to accelerate mobilization for war, even though the war had already dragged on for four long years (16). Although you loved baseball, you didn’t consider the Negro teams to be in the same league, and that was literally true since by 1918 Major League baseball, like everything else in this country, had become segregated (17).
That November, the war ended (18) and you were again out of work. Sometimes you begged; at other times, stole. You were always dirty and itched something fierce. You had body lice (19) and found yourself sick with Trench Fever (20), alone and with insufficient medical care (21) in a strange northern city surrounded by large numbers of soldiers returning from the Great War in Europe (22). You probably got the lice from them (23). You lived on coffee and doughnuts—all for $0.10—(24) the new fashion food—made popular by thousands of returning “doughboys” who had been fed doughnuts by the Salvation Army in August 1917 during a very bleak time in France (25). Somehow, you survived.
Word Count: 826