At every stop in every city, we learn how this project touches people in ways we hadn't expected. Today at the Afro-American Cultural Center in Charlotte, North Carolina, I interviewed people for more than two hours, with the only breaks being long enough to take a sip of water before another person sat down next to me. After the last person left, I breathed deeply and actually finished my bottle of water, while waiting a little while in case someone else showed up at the last minute. And someone did.
Jimmy Reid of Charlotte recounted how as a teenager he was shot, almost fatally, by a white security guard in 1960 at his high school. "It missed my heart by this much," he said, forming his fingers into a near-pinch. After two weeks in the hospital, Reid's family had to fight charges of breaking and entering as well as trespassing. The charges were eventually dropped. He sued the school board for $63,000 and settled on $7,000.
At trial, the attorney for the school board reasoned that denying Reid any compensation was a brutal rationalization of the times: "If you give this colored boy a lot of money, you'll get a lot of colored boys trying to get shot to get a lot of money."
Reid's own lawyer's lament wasn't much better. Had Reid been white, the lawyer said, an award of $500,000 would have been easily his. "Would a white boy have bled any more?" Reid asked the lawyer, knowing the answer all too well.
After he finished telling me his story, Reid mentioned that his wife has been encouraging him to write it down. But he hadn't felt ready to tell it. Until today.
