A black military policeman riding a bus in Beaumont was forcibly dragged out, beaten, and shot four times by the local constables because his knee was too close to the whites-only section. The lack of city foresight, planning, resources, and housing across the country resulted in tensions inflamed by racism and fed by war lust. The war years had created jobs, but it threw together whites, African-Americans and Latinos who flocked to the cities for defense work. The year before Johnny D was born Beaumont experienced race riots that got national attention in a summer where there were riots across the country in cities like Detroit, Mobile, LA and Harlem. John Dawson Winter was born in 1944 and grew up in a town of wildcatters and dock workers.
Riding in the back of the old man’s dusty jalopy he wouldn’t show his mother, you turn to your younger brother sitting next to you in the back. Shaky skinny, with the beak of a hawk, a little cross eyed, face and body all sharp angles.
JOHNNY B GOODE JOHNNY WINTER WINDOWS
All the windows are open and the view out your window is a shimmered mirror. The heat is so cruel the scratchy sounds of Hank Williams coming from the radio seem stifled, wavy almost. You’re also a cane-switch skinny albino, a rare thing anywhere, that gets the crap kicked out of him a couple times a month just cause, I don’t know, yer too white.
You’re a ten year old kid in Beaumont Texas riding in the back. Life in the 1950’s, just waiting for something to happen. There was something wrong with the wiring in your dad’s ’28 Studebaker, it didn’t like East Texas roads so the radio was spiteful, holding back then rolling out at usually unfortunate moments. The car went over a heave in the road and the radio came on.
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