The boy was also colored.
This boy, possibly retarded, was found abandoned, abused and unconscious last week.
Four hours after the boy was taken by the woman, police scanned the immediate area. The woman was tracked to Howard’s sawmill by the police hounds. The boy had been slashed over ten times about his tail and stomach area.
Officer Jackson Cramer, white, was forced to shoot the woman five times after she jumped from a tree, made threats against his life, sassed him using foul language, then went after him with the bloody knife.
ABANDONED COLORED BOY ABANDONED AGAIN
A routine patrol possibly saved the life of a six-year-old colored boy. The boy, who gave his name as Doolittle Boatwright, has known nothing but a life of despair since the day he was born.
The boy first made the news about three years ago when patrolers found him naked and near death.
In this incident, the elderly colored preacher who had taken the boy in dropped dead after being kicked in the head area by a frisky rogue mule.
The boy is currently being held in the town jailhouse while police investigate rumors of an illegal still on the property of the only colored orphanage in the county.
Police encourage members from any colored church to offer their services regarding this boy.
We skipped over a few of the clippings that seemed to be repeating some of the incidents.
“Let’s read this one. This is many years later,” Rhoda said. Her voice cracked, but I pretended not to notice.
COLORED SPORTING HOUSE RAIDED
Local police raided a house on Jersey Street being used for fornication by a woman who is well-known by the law. A Miss Lucille Boggs, an ex-convict, refused to give her age, and had several young colored girls in her company as well as ten colored prostitutes between the ages of eighteen and fifty.
A colored boy, Doolittle Boatwright, age fifteen, tipped off the police after the Boggs woman evicted him from a room he had been living in since age eight. One-legged, the boy has never attended school, and learned to read on his own and is unusually smart for a colored boy.
The boy retaliated after the Boggs woman beat him in front of her guests and turned her dogs loose on him.
According to eyewitnesses, all colored, Boggs removed the boy’s makeshift peg leg and struck him with it about his head area.
Everybody involved in this mayhem was colored. Except the police.
If the articles weren’t depressing enough, the unsophisticated journalism made them seem worse. “Those old time Southern redneck reporters sure have a shabby way with words,” I told Rhoda.
“Damn crackers. Probably some of my Caucasian relatives,” she spat.
“I can’t read any more,” I mumbled. I felt so bad for the way life had started out treating Mr. Boatwright. No matter what he had done to me, he was still a human being, and that made him one of God’s children. Just like me and Rhoda.
She skipped ahead anyway.
“Let’s read this last one. This one is dated only about twenty years ago from today.”
“OK, but after this one let’s burn them. We have enough to worry about,” I said, trying to sound firm.
“Yeah. Let’s put all this behind us,” Rhoda said seriously. “All this mess…”
We sighed and unfolded the last one we were going to read.
ONE-LEGGED COLORED MAN ATTEMPTS SUICIDE FOR THE THIRD TIME
Bad luck and misfortune continue in the life of Doolittle Boatwright, age unknown.
The one-legged man is well-known in the area by the police. He has been convicted for robbery, vagrancy, disturbing the peace, battery, attempted rape, vandalism, and breaking and entering.
After being evicted from a colored mission house for disorderly conduct, Boatwright jumped off the Lexington Bridge, where he hit a rock and landed on the riverbank.
Two weeks earlier, Boatwright jumped in front of a truck that ran out of gas before it reached him.
Police subdued Boatwright with a hose and the dogs. Boatwright was later escorted to the county mental facility in a straitjacket. Authorities summoned a specialist from the county seat to examine the man. It was determined that he suffers from a variety of mental disorders. The man was released into the custody of Ike Townes, a colored man known for taking in hopeless cases. Ike Townes, twenty years on the chain gang and a respectable fortune-teller, has had some luck with redeeming hopeless Negroes. Townes predicted that Boatwright would one day find a woman and live a normal life.
“I would say that the woman the fortune-teller predicted was your mama.” Rhoda put the last