Day 859: 5 Minute Freewrite: Wednesday - Prompt: insider

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Sometimes, James Varick IV had to laugh.

The enemies of him and the Lofton County Free Voice and the Black community it served were so predictable.

They so wanted to go back to the antebellum South, where Black people lived and slaved for their whims, and, true to form since the Civil War, when other White men in power wouldn't go with their program and beat them down, they always tried to withdraw to a place in space and time that had only the men of their choosing and the “appropriate” kinds of Black people, quietly and meekly serving.

In Lofton County, they hadn't caught up with the intellect of Conf. Gen. Robert E. Lee yet, who realized that the Union Army was getting almost all its information to hand the Confederate Army its ultimate defeat from those quiet, meek Negro servants in the Confederate camp.

The Lofton County Free Voice had a 'tip page' of sorts … folks dropped "insider" information on what the high-class citizens of Lofton County who were still stuck on slavery-stupid were doing every day.

Mr. Varick had known to look for something on Perseus Slocum after he had gotten his head handed to him by both the mayor and commissioner of police in Big Loft, VA, Lofton County's beleaguered county seat. Mr. Slocum had been angry about the idea of allowing the relatives of Black and Latino servants who had perished access to go to the sites of where there 12,020 relatives had perished, but the commissioner and the mayor had rejected his viewpoint in no uncertain terms.

Sure enough, Mr. Slocum had gone to one of the county's most exclusive little clubs to lick his wounds and plan a counter-move … since Commissioner Scott refused to provide officers in uniform to harass the 60,000 relatives of the servants who had perished in the Ridgeline Fire, he and some others planned to hire “private security.” Ostensibly, this was to protect the 4,000 burned-down lots from “looting and theft,” but of course there was nothing left to steal but well-weathered ashes.

The real purpose: intimidation and violence, the same old terrorist campaign since 1865 and the founding of the Ku Klux Klan.

“Put a little money into the hands of local and even non-local white supremacists for them to have a little fun – we ought to be able to turn out 10,000 or so by Monday, and of course there aren't cameras up in those neighborhoods to cause trouble for them!”

“Oh, that's what y'all think,” Mr. Varick said, and rallied his reporters after sending a copy of the audio to Mayor Garner and Commissioner Scott.

To be continued … here!

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash