! D a y s l a t e r, P a p a h a d r e t u r n e d f r o m t h e railroad. My brothers and I all rushed over to greet him, but he surely didn’ t look too excited. He was tense and and stiff. That night at dinner, he needed to have a serious talk with the whole family and Mr. Morison. He began by telling us all about the Ku Klux Klan again. I wasn’ t allowed to tell my brothers, so all of this was new news to them. As Papa continued informing us on the dangers and such, I smelled something. In the air, it smelled like gasoline.! Interrupting my pa I asked,“ Does anyone smell that?”! E v e r y o n e s u c k e d i n t h e n i g h t’ s a i r, a n d immediately, Mr. Morrison stood up and ran out the back door into the fields. Seconds later, there was an explosion outside.! The whole city, as they had months earlier, had ran to the fire and tried their best to put it out. This one was much larger than the one before, and this time, there were fatalities.
Mr. Morrison died that night. He had caught a glimpse of one of the KKK’ s white gowns and had ran outside knowing that we were in trouble. Sadly he died, trying to save our family.! About a week later, the fire was long gone, but all of our fields had been burnt, leaving acres of black ash in our backyard. We had never thought we would sell our land, it was just a fear. Papa, out of all people, would have never imagined selling our families land, but the time had come. We were in danger, and Papa always put us first.! Once we disowned our land, we began heading North for Chicago to stay with Uncle Hammer. We never wanted to leave our land but as Papa had always taught us, safety comes before pride.
“ I’ m Never Gone” by Anonymous
That night, rain had pounded down hard against the roof, and the thunder had shook the window panes. But all this had been lost in the