... I was a senior at Millsaps College. I borrowed a car from a friend at church to drive to Bolton to retrieve some camping gear I had left in the woods there. When I returned from the woods with the camping gear, the car wouldn't start. The town marshal, Jake Brewer, had removed the distributor cap. He and the mayor, Alex Payne, a red-faced growling man, threatened me with arrest unless I told them why I was in Bolton. They were afraid that outsiders were coming into Bolton to register blacks to vote.
I produced a wallet-sized copy of my Hinds Junior College diploma, and they released me and replaced the distributor cap in the car. A few years later, the Republic of New Afrika came to Bolton, and their members had guns. Many guns. The RNA was not impressed by Alex's threats or Jake's shiny badge. After the next election, Jake and Alex found themselves unemployed. Now they would have to find honest work in the real world. They died in Bolton, the kind of relics of a pathetic past people talk about behind their hands.
Joe Roberts
Jackson
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