Act Two of A Complex Apology:  Joy Before We Knew Her

SCENE ONE:    Joy had grown-up in the suburbs of Chicago, a child of the 60s.  Her dad was the local Methodist minister; her mom a school teacher.  Her parents were members of FOR (Freedom of Residence) and genuinely in favor of integration  – even taking Joy with them to join Martin Luther King, Jr., on his civil rights march into lily-white Cicero.  While in college Joy became of the opinion that they had joined FOR as a salve for their own part in the white flight to the suburbs when Joy became school-age.  When the family took the Expressway downtown to go to the Art Museum, or go boating on Lake Michigan, or some such thing, both her parents would explain it was not safe to take the side streets because Black Folks were justifiably angry with White Folks.

In college Joy had taken-up acting and even won a starring role in a local theatre production, but mostly she made money waitressing after college.  She liked the Second City scene.

Also in college she fell in love with a black man.

It was the summer after her sophomore year that the Mayor of Chicago took advantage of a transit strike, paralyzed the city by barricading the expressways, called in the National Guard, and laid siege to Chicago before ordering police attacks on innocent citizens – protestors lawfully gathered to exercise their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and assembly.  He even was heard yelling “F*** You!” on national television on the floor of the Democratic National Convention facing down a McCarthy delegate objecting to the police riot outside.

Joy was part of Rev. Ralph Abernathy’s Mule Train parading down State Street from the Convention Center (with a permit) to protest the abject poverty on much of Chicago’s South Side.  So was Fred (her first Fred).  Together they met police resistance and violence.

Tomorrow:  Act Two, Scene Two