Could you imagine seeing a cross burning in your
front yard? If you said no, that is exactly how my mother’s brother, Craig
Allen felt, until it happened to him. This is the story that he remembers as it
happened one night in a neighborhood in Buckstown, Jefferson County Parish,
Louisiana.
Craig’s story begins like this in his own words:
In the early
90s, I was offered to live in a house by a gentleman named Sealey. This man
wanted me to rehab the interior and exterior of his property. Upon arriving at
the house the grass on the property was three to four feet high and the homes
surrounding the property were very well kept. When I entered the home I could
see that it had been used as a party house. Furniture was turned over and
broken, kitchen appliances were dirty, leftover food was in the refrigerator,
piles of clothes were thrown everywhere in both bedrooms, and the bathrooms
were horrible. It needed a full restoration. After analyzing the situation, I
started on the inside since I was going to be living there. After three days of
going back and forth and cleaning, I was able to stay there to finish the
restoration. Once the inside was livable, I began working on the outside. This
included mowing the lawn, pulling weeds, and cutting bushes. While doing this
exterior work, I met some of the neighbors. I received great reviews from them,
saying they were so glad that something was being done.
Buckstown, LA is a shrimping community
consisting of 95% white population and
the headquarters of the Grand Marshall of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke. I was
unaware of this fact at the time, not really being aware that I saw no faces
that looked like mine in the community.
The people were very friendly though. After a month of living there, one
evening, I got a knock at the door. As I opened the door, entering without
invitation, were six men in wet slicker suits, the attire worn by shrimpers,
which led me to believe that they were coming straight off the water from their
boats. With some apprehension I offered them a beer. A couple of the men took
me up on it, but the others declined because they were more interested in where
the owner of the house was. I explained to them that I was there to rehab the
house with a rent to own option per a verbal agreement with the owner. I told
them Sealey was in the city and he was paying me for the work that I was doing.
He was getting the paperwork together for a rent to own option. The intruders explained
to me that the Sealey family was one of the oldest families in the area. The men
showed me a picture of the house before
any other houses were built around it. Sealey’s family was one of the founding families of Buckstown. Sure enough
there was a picture that I had removed from the wall to paint, that showed that
it was, in fact, the original house. Now there are houses all around. After
telling me the story, the intruders finally left with a message for me to tell
Sealey to contact a man named Bobby Jo. I didn’t question the request, not
really realizing the gravity of the situation I was in. I thought nothing of it because everyone was
so nice and this was some prime real estate. Two weeks later, Sealey came by to
see what had been done and paid me the last installment for the work. He had
not yet gotten the paperwork together, but had no problem with me staying there
until the paperwork was finalized the next week. Two days later I got up to go
to the store to get some more groceries. I left out from the back door of the
house. Upon returning to the house, I could see the front lawn and to my
amazement there was a ten foot wooden cross that was smoldering in smoke. I
stopped, looked around and saw that the lawn had been trampled on by many
people. How could this have happened? I hadn’t heard or seen or heard anything.
No wailing of fire sirens, no blaring police lights, and no concerned neighbor
knocking at the door warning me of a racial ritual being played out on the front
lawn of the house I was sound asleep in. The legend was true, the Klan comes as
ghosts in the night. I had been visited by a live not dead apparition. The
hair on the back of my neck stood up as I thought of what might have happened
if I had ran out of the house or had been pulled out of the house by these
terrorists. Flashes of my forefathers being burned, lynched, disfigured and
torn away from their families in the black of night brightened the corners of
my mind. I immediately ran in the house and called the police because I could
not believe that crosses were still being burned and used to intimidate and
instill fear upon innocent black people in the 90s!! The police and news
stations came. I was told that this was the Grand Duke’s territory. I asked
what my legal rights were against this crime, but I was told that I was not
welcomed even with legal documentation. I immediately packed and vacated the
premises. I was angry and confused!!!
HOW COULD SOMETHING LIKE THIS STILL BE HAPPENING IN THE UNITED STATES OF
AMERICA??
This was yet another experience I had
with racism and prejudice in the United States in the 1990s. AND THE STRUGGLE
CONTINUES.
Footnote: In doing research for my
uncle’s story I could not find any record or evidence of this story even though
my uncle’s interview was broadcast on several local television stations. COVER
UP??? EVIDENCE DESTROYED???? Who knows, it has happen before.
