Excerpt from We Were Brothers by Barry Moser, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The quiet laziness of the card game conversation was suddenly interrupted by noise from the street. The Ku Klux Klan was parading up Shallowford Road in a "klavalcade," the term Klansmen use for a convoy of their cars and trucks, fond as they are of alliteration. It was a show of presence and power that typically preceded a cross burning somewhere. Everybody put down their cards and went out on the front porch to watch and wonder aloud where them good ol' boys there were goin' to go burn their cross that night. Somebody said,

"Be damned if I know, but I sure hope it's in some Jew's front yard."

I had come from my room at the back of the house to watch the show myself. We watched scores of beat-up cars and sorry-looking pick-up trucks pass by, punctuated now and again by a shiny Cadillac or a new Lincoln. They were all in a slow procession up the street heading towards Missionary Ridge where several Jewish families and that well-to-do black dentist had fine homes overlooking the city.

The interior lights in the cars and trucks were on, or at least they were on in those that had interior lights that worked. Each car was full of Klansmen and Klanswomen in their hoods and sheets. There were children too—Klanskids, I suppose they'd be called—dressed in miniature Klan regalia. One was riding on the hood of a car, leaning back against the wraparound windshield. Everything was moving so slowly the child wasn't likely to fall off, and even if he had he probably wouldn't have been seriously hurt. One of the lead trucks had a loudspeaker mounted on top of the cab. It amplified a man's gravelly, nasal voice that chanted, over and over—a harping drumbeat of rampant hatred, disguised fear, and ignorance.

"Nigga! Don't you never fergit yore place."

"Don't you never fergit yore place."

"Nigga, never fergit yore place."

"Never fergit yore place."

"Never fergit…."


If there was more to the chant than that, I don't remember what it was. It eventually died out altogether. Diminuendo.

Everybody settled back into the card game. I was headed back to my room and stopped in the kitchen to browse in the refrigerator for something more to eat when I heard the front screen door slapping frantically against its latch. I heard someone crying, wailing, and trying desperately to get in.

It was Verneta. But before Mother could unlatch the screen door, Verneta pulled it apart from its hook and eye and burst into the brightly lit living room, blind with fear, and sobbing a litany of terror:

"Oh, Sweet Jesus, Billie, what'm I gonna do? What'm I gonna do? What'm I gonna do? What'm I gonna do?" Mother took her in her arms.

Verneta's sable skin was ashen, drawn, and streaked with tears.

Mother held Verneta tight and soothed her with gentle whispers and consoling pats and caresses on her back and shoulders.

"They're not after you V'nita." Mother whispered, "They're not after you. You're all right. It's gonna be OK. Gonna be OK."

Floyd laughed condescendingly. Never looking up from his hand of cards, he said, "Billie's right, V'nita, they ain't after you. Them ol' boys there ain't got no problem with good niggers like you an' your mammy. Now, that brother of yours, Leonard…..he gets a mite uppity sometimes. You might wanna talk to that boy."

Everybody at the table grunted and nodded in agreement.

Then Floyd told Verneta to "Go on back home, now.… You heard me. Go on."

She did as Floyd told her to do, and Mother went with her, across the street and up that long, steep hill in the dark.

Everybody else played Canasta.


I went back to my room and lay down on the bed and stared at the model airplanes that hung from the ceiling. Whatever I had been looking for in the refrigerator was still in the refrigerator. I couldn't eat anything. Verneta's face, distorted by terror and ashened by fear, was burned forever into my memory. I can see her face to this day, fifty-six years later. Can see her mouth drawn down and terror-struck, and I can't understand how she could have been as articulate as she was with her mouth so contorted. Can see her face nuzzled into Mother's neck as Mother tried to comfort her—and I imagine it looked much like it did when she was that little girl who stuck her head in the flour barrel so she could be white and go to a picture show with her little friend Billie, who was now holding her and comforting her.

Excerpted from We Were Brothers by Barry Moser. Copyright © 2015 by Barry Moser. Excerpted by permission of Algonquin Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.