"...gone"

 

A Jim Crow Memory

I was reading an essay on 'White Flight'. Google it. One day white folks vanished from our hoods. I imagine the place above is where most of them went to.  My childhood white friends and their folks were part of the other great migration. The first being the Black Great Migration to the North at the start of the 20th century. The latter the flight away from us.

I speak from the position of a kid that suddenly lost a third of his friends near overnight. I still remember some of their names. I wonder if the remember any of ours. I've since read that our friends parents told them to tell none of their colored playmates the were leaving...they didn't. I wonder what my friends thought of all this if anything. To me it was a mystery...still is. 

At the time my folks wouldn't speak to us about it.

...for us our friends were just gone