R.L.'s Story

I had two uncles, two brothers, and my father killed in Chicago

That's why I don't like living there

It's too rough a place

People going up and down the streets shooting, killing people

Which they're doing it everywhere, but they've

Been doing it there a long time, you know

And that's a sad thing

Well, my brother, he was a doctor

I think he'd been, I'm not for sure, but I

Think he'd been selling some dope to them

And he quit, and they killed him

And my uncles, one of them, they killed

Him, another guy killed him by his wife

And he's with his wife, and about two years after, he killed him

He stayed with, lived with his wife

And my other uncle, I don't know what reason he got killed

But I know he got killed

And my dad, they killed him and robbed him

He got his check, you know, and somebody ganged

Up on him and stabbed him, oh, man, 25, 30 times

And nobody never went to jail for it

Because they never found out who it was

Then I was, that was in the '50s

Yeah, because I lived there in the '40s

And as soon as I left there, about 11 months after I left there

My father got killed, then about a week later

Both of my brothers got killed the same day

And then one of my uncles got killed about three months later

And it was about six or eight months before my other uncle got killed

But they all got killed in a year's time

Yeah, I'm glad I made it out, man

Yeah, both of my brothers got killed the same day

But my uncles, my daddy got killed when

He drawed some money back, you know

It was time, and somebody, he went out to get him a drink, I imagine

The whiskey store not too far from his house, about a block and a half

And somebody killed him between there and there, before he got there

He was just at the other side of the next house from where he lived

But somebody killed him there and took his money

And one of my uncles, the guy killed him by his wife

He caught him there with his wife, and he killed him

And I don't know what happened to my

Other uncle, but he got killed, you know

I don't know just what happened

No, nobody went to jail because they don't know who did nothing

Well, yeah, I sharecropped down at Senatobia

And then I moved down to Tunica

I stayed down there a couple years at Hollywood

And I came from there back to Coldwater

And stayed there two years and went back to Memphis

We stayed two or three years, and we came back

Stayed here a year and went back to

Memphis and stayed a couple of years

And then we come back, and we ain't been back since