VOX Press‘ book, Prison Narratives, features personal stories written by prisoners at Parchman Farm. The book can be bought here.
Vincent Young was raised on a farm in New Albany, Mississippi. His father was an airplane mechanic and sometimes bare knuckles fighter. He is serving a life sentence for armed robbery and aggravated assault.
IX: Changes
Months later, things are changing fast, with everything and everyone. I feel my heart filling with anger every day, because I don’t like the way I’m being treated and looked at constantly. On Tuesday morning, it’s me and Legs again, waiting at the end of the road for the bus. When the bus pulled up, I saw that someone had painted this on the side: NIGGERS ONLY. Some of the windows are knocked out, too. The last six seats in the rear are empty, three on each side, and the back windows are gone. For the first time, I can’t sit with my girlfriend, Judy. I looked out from the bus as we pulled away, and I saw Legs heading back to the house.
People are staring at our bus as we go through town, and the same thing happened when we got to school, but these people were pointing their fingers and laughing at us.
Daddy had told me, “Son, people will hate you because of the color of your skin. Not only white people, but some black people will hate you too.”
I ignored them, got off the bus, and went to my class, which was no longer in the Special Ed room. Now I’m in the class with Judy. We were holding hands and walking to class when she said, “Why did they do that to our bus?” I shrugged my shoulders to indicate, “I don’t know.”
I only spoke about 1100 words in school from the fourth to the ninth grade, because I didn’t want to be laughed at. When I was with Judy, or anyone else I knew, they always did all the talking. I just listened. Judy knew some, but not all, of the sign language I used with my sister. That’s probably why I felt so angry inside, because I couldn’t express myself in words. Remember that I’m a black kid born in 1962, and I’m going to an integrated Mississippi school in 1971. It seemed that every white person hated every black person. That helped me stay angry.
A fight broke out on the playground, with this much bigger white kid jumping on a much smaller black kid. I didn’t know the black kid, because he wasn’t from where I lived.
The next thing I knew, the teacher was pulling me off the white kid. They took me to the office where the principal started fussing at me. But then a black man walked in and said, “Let me talk to him.” He came over to me. “My name is Kennedy. I’m the superintendent of this school. Tell me what happened.” I felt I could trust this man, so I told him what I’d seen. I said, “The teachers ignored the fight until I jumped on the white kid.”
Mr. Kennedy listened, and then said, “Tell your daddy that I said hello. You’re going to be just like him.” What surprised me about him was that he was so nice to me. And he didn’t laugh at me when I began to stutter badly. Even so, I told him what happened.
Judy was mad at me when I got back to class. She was angry because I was fighting. I looked down, and my shoe was untied. She saw it too. “Put your foot in my lap,” she said, and she tied it for me, which always made me feel good, because it’s her way to show how she cared about me. I liked that. A lot.
By age eleven, I was known by my friends as “The Fighter.” That became my nickname, because from my first day in school, my life took a path where I didn’t want it to go.
My mommy and daddy heard me plead for them to take me out of school. They waited too late. The damage was already done. One word, one wrong word in school would make me fight. That word was “nigger”. I can still hear my daddy say, “Never let anyone get away with calling you a nigger.”
I’m doing well in school, and my grades are good. Every report card earns me five dollars from my mommy. The main problem that I had was in English where I had to read out loud. My teacher made me read out a whole paragraph, and that would take me between ten and fifteen minutes. But out teacher, Ms. Lancaster, always made me read each and every word. I’d stutter and hear snickers. When I’d finish, I’d look at Judy and see her crying. I’d told her, after my first time reading, that it hurt me so badly that I was crying on the inside. And I was very angry.
I felt that I could only count on Judy and my family. And Legs. My pet pig would be there waiting for me every single school day, morning and afternoon. I knew she’d be there at the end of the road. Mommy told me, “I can tell the time by watching Legs.”
School had become for me the most hated place to be. I told my sister all about how bad it was, because next year she’d be riding with me to school.
I won a lot of fights from the fourth grade up to my ninth grade, mostly because those kids fought differently from us country kids. All they wanted to do was play “Dare Fights”, which goes like this. They’d draw a line in the dirt and dare the other kid to cross it. Or, they’d put a stick on their shoulder and dare the other to knock it off.
I took advantage of that kind of dare-fighting by drawing the line and daring the kid to cross it. My trick was to stand a foot behind the line. I’d give him one “Dare you!” with just enough room for him to step across, and I’d make sure that the line was no longer than a foot. When he raised his step over I’d pop him a good one. Every time they’d fall down from the lick, because it’s hard to stand on only one leg after taking an upper-cut punch.
The “stick-on-the-shoulder” thing was even easier. The kid placed the stick on his shoulder and dared me to knock it off. I’d punch him, the stick would fall, and it’s over with. I won many more fights than I lost, but all this fighting changed me into a person that I didn’t want to be. I was so full of anger that something inside me had changed.
My sister’s first day did not go well. She told me at recess, “Some white kid pulled my hair.” She pointed him out to me. I walked up to him, and without a word, I hit him hard and knocked him down. “You leave my sister alone!” Everyone else stood around looking. They took me and my sister to the office, where she told the principal what had happened to her, and what she’d told me about it. The principal told me that he was going to call my mother and tell her what I’d done.
About the sixth grade, I was weary of my anger and tired of hurting others, and unhappy that my fourth period class was in a downtown Psych doctor’s office. I could not talk cause of my stuttering, so I just sat there for fifty minutes and listened to this woman tell me what was wrong with me, which she didn’t know. They always called my mother every time I got in trouble. They’d call my sister to translate my sign language, and they’d call my mommy with the hope that she’d whip me. What they failed to realize was that my Mommy and Daddy didn’t care about my fighting, as long as it was white kids and not black kids. With that encouragement, I upped my fighting skills, knocking them down like bowling pins.
I got expelled, for three days. I was happy with that, because instead of school, I was out hunting with Legs in tow. It’s hard to hunt with a pig. Legs wasn’t fast enough to run down a rabbit. But she understood my hand signals well. Stop, go, and lay down. She was smart. Smarter than those white kids, I thought. She could always find a rabbit hole, and I’d become a pretty good shot with my .22 pump. Way better than school!
Me and Legs spent a lot of time together for those three days. We even went swimming in a pond not far from the house. That was the day mommy took us fishing with her. My sister, Legs, and me could not get in the water until mommy was through fishing. My sister would get on Leg’s back, and Legs would swim all the way across the pond with my sister on her back. We truly had a fun day. Even mommy got in the water. She raced me and Legs across the pond. I think she let us win just to see the smile on my face. Mommy was soaking wet from head to toe. She seemed not to care about it, or her dress being wet. My sister and mommy was in front of me and Legs. She and Mommy skipped together all the way home. Mommy caught six fishes that day, and that’s what we had for lunch. Even Legs got a fish sandwich with ketchup on it.
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