Reversal of Trends: A Black Man’S Journey Across the Mason-Dixon Line

By Leroy Wilson

Leroy Wilson was born in Bishopville, South Carolina, too small of a town to warrant a Greyhound bus stop, train station, or airport. When he was still a baby wrapped in his teenage mothers arms, Leroy headed north with his grandmother in tow and settled in the slums of Brooklyn, New York. As he transformed into a street smart kid, Leroy learned about the Bible, sin, retribution, and abuse. By age fifteen, he joined the ranks of black teenage dropouts looking for trouble.

In his heartfelt memoir, Wilson chronicles his life journey from childhood to his eventual trek from the mean streets of Brooklyn to South Carolina in an effort to improve his health. As he details his experiences as a correctional officer in predominately black prison system and his attempts to exist within a good ol boy network, Wilson not only shares a glimpse into his fascinating personal story, but also sheds a light on the lingering effects of abuse, racism, loss, and the healing power of forgiveness. Follow him as he attempts to reverse all of the negative trends that had been plaguing his life.

Reversal of Trends shares one mans intriguing account of the circle of life as he returns to his birthplace to begin anew, learn to walk in a grown mans shoes, and find his place in the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781491787229

Leroy Wilson

Leroy Wilson grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and studied creative writing at Southern Wesleyan University. He is currently an area manager for a Fortune 500 company and lives in the southern region. Reversal of Trends is his first book.

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REVERSAL OF TRENDS

A Black Man’s Journey across the Mason-Dixon Line

Copyright © 2016 Leroy Wilson.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-8723-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-8722-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016901632

iUniverse rev. date:    02/26/2016

CONTENTS

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Part One

The Dark Part

Foreword

1: Why I Left

2: Downward Shift

3: Southern Discomfort

4: Blue

5: Eight In The Gate

6: Queen City

7: Self-Realization

8: This Sun Is Hot

9: Eartha

10: Disquieted Spirit

Part Two

The Darker Part

11: Going Deep

12: Wayward Flock

13: Negated

14: Running With The Wolves

15: The Devil’s Shawl

16: Patricia

17: New Millennium; Same Old Same Old

Part Three

The Darkest Part

18: True Colors

19: Bitter Sweets

20: The Dirty South

21: The Dirty-Dirty

22: Southern Exposure

23: Diluted Black

24: The Queen’s Gambit Declined

25: The Queen’s Gambit Accepted

26: The Truth

27: Out Of A Pickle

Last Words

Afterword

DEDICATION

To Ashanti, Malcolm, Jolene, Monique, and Shajvania: I couldn’t break the cycle nor could I completely reverse the trend. I pray that you will have greater success.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This was such an unlikely project that I didn’t confide in too many people until it was about seventy-five percent complete. Now that it’s finished, I’d like to say thank you to all my family members including Darlene Bumbray and Bessie Wilson in general for making me the man that I am. Family makes you who you are; be it for good or for bad.

PART ONE

The Dark Part

FOREWORD

They called it the great migration, but it may as well have been called the great escape. It occurred between 1910 and 1970. This was when over six and a half million African Americans fled the southern cotton fields, Jim Crow, and the Ku Klux Klan, for the unknown region of the North.

It was the largest mass internal movement of any one ethnic group in the history of the United States. Many of those migrating blacks were leaving their one and only financial base for an uncertain economic existence. Some were leaving homes that were bought and paid for; some were abandoning land and other property they owned, including live stock; and some were leaving family members.

By the 1980s, there was unpredictably a reversal of trends. Between 1995 and the year 2000 it hit its peak when over 680,000 African Americans moved back down south from other regions of the United States. This was a part of what would be called the new great migration.

I was born under the Jim Crow laws of the Deep South but raised in some of the most notorious inner city neighborhoods of the North. I was also a part of both of those migrating groups. Blacks returning, or heading to the South for the very first time, cited a lower cost of living, the North reneging on its promise to blacks, and better race relations in the South as their primary reasons for going south; going home. Some said they felt drawn to, and even compelled to return south. Others said they believed they were summoned back home by all of the African blood that continue to fertilize the grounds there. My reasons for migrating south had nothing to do with any of those things.

The funny thing I found about returning home though: It’s not always about what you seek; sometimes, it’s about what you find.

1

Why I Left

By the time the fool has learned the game, the players have dispersed.

— African Proverb

Ashanti Tribe

The way we were lying in bed made it virtually impossible for me to see her face. I was on top of her and I was completely nude. She was nude from the waist down. We were facing each other but she was holding on to me so tightly that her face was practically buried into my chest. The lights were dim, and soft soulful sounds were filtering in from my stereo system, which usually pumped hip-hop.

Her hips were swaying gently to the rhythm, mine were moving to and fro aggressively. It was like we were dancing together but to different beats. Trying to sync up with her caused my mind to wander momentarily, and by the time I came back to the present, I could not for the life of me; remember who I was in bed with.

I’m almost embarrassed to admit it now, but back in those days my life was far different than it is now. Now, I’m a middle-aged black man living in the substantial subjugation of the Deep South’s yoke. But back then, in those days, I was hell on wheels. I was in my early-thirties and living in the relatively fast lane of Brooklyn and the New York City club scene.

In those days I used to routinely juggle as many as five or six different women. I was also known to pick up a random hottie from the club from time to time. When it came down to my dealings with the ladies, I guess it could be said that I had that old same cow syndrome.

On the average farm there are usually several cows to each bull. The bull will not generally mate with the same cow consecutively. He will choose a different cow until he has made his rounds and then he will start over.

I was juggling so many different women at the time that I was straining to remember the one I was in bed with, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t muster up enough clarity or sobriety to remember exactly how this particular half naked female wound up in my bed.

Her perfume was everywhere, including the inside of my mouth, from where I had kissed and licked her. But what was not on the tip of my tongue was her name. Panting, I rolled off her and could finally see her face. Now I remember! I met her last night at the Manhattan Proper. We drank Hennessy and made each other laugh—sometimes that’s all it takes.

She was light-skinned, petite, and not too bad to look at. She also had a glazed over, faraway look in her eyes. I’m not sure if she was on anything beyond the expensive cognac we drank last night, and honestly, I really didn’t care. Her lifestyle was as immaterial to me as she was. She was interchangeable with all of the other women I’d shared sexual experiences with. They all had gold in their asses as far as I was concerned and I was in love with each and every one of them… for that moment.

This was the early nineties, the winding down of the sexual revolution. Condoms were still optional then, and not yet a life-saving requirement as they are now.

After she left my crib in the wee hours of the morning, I became mildly concerned about my memory lapse. But soon after, I found humor in the whole episode. I called my two boys; Whit, short for Whitaker, and Lane, and told them about the shit, and they thought it was hilarious too.

A few days later though, and out of the blue, I received a call from my doctor’s office that stopped all my laughter cold. The receptionist asked me to come into the office the next day to speak with my doctor regarding the results of my routine yearly physical.

I said sure, and then hung up disturbed by the call. Although there was nothing in the receptionist’s voice to suggest that I should worry, I worried anyway. Normally my doctor’s office would have just mailed out a letter; unless something was wrong with my lab work. What was resting heaviest on my mind was news of a killer disease that had just emerged on the scene.

To catch it meant certain death. And no one seemed to know exactly where it came from, or how it was being contracted or spread. To make matters worse, I had recently been added to the high-risk category for the shit. Not me per se, but my group.

At first they were saying that it was a homosexual disease. And then they added junkies to their hit list. I was good. I wasn’t a part of either of those two groups. In fact, I started to scorn them. I snickered when they walked by, shook my head, and said to myself, Look at their nasty asses. The Lord is punishing them for their twisted lives no doubt. And I wasn’t the only one saying those types of things either; all that were not a part of those groups were. Then all of a sudden, the powers that be started saying that if you were having unprotected sex with multiple partners, that you too were susceptible to the AIDS virus. That’s when could be heard from people of my ilk from all over the world, a collective shriek of: Oh shit!

It was a direct assault on me and my peers. The people who didn’t mess with anyone were now being messed with in a major way. We now had to stop spreading love; because our actions were suddenly deemed unsafe. The free sex days of the disco era were officially over, dead like disco, and they were being replaced by the new safe sex era. Reverberations of this could be felt from the neighborhood street corners, to offices on every corner of Wall Street.

Subconsciously, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. And I’m thinking, maybe this doctor’s visit was that other shoe for me. Death had been stalking all of the players, both minor and major, every since the onset of this epidemic. It had already claimed two major players; Easy E of the NWA fame, and Freddie Mercury, the front man of the rock group, Queen. They both caught it and died, virtually the same day. And now they were saying that Magic would be next.

Minor players from the block were also dropping like flies. The lucky ones were coming home from the free clinic literally celebrating the fact that they only had gonorrhea, syphilis, and or herpes. This scourge was hitting us simultaneously along with the crack epidemic, wreaking havoc on the African American communities.

Rumors began to swirl amongst Black conspiracy theorists that the government was behind the whole thing. I thought the notion was preposterous until I remembered what they did to us in Tuskegee.

In 1932 the United States government conducted a study where 399 black men were infected with syphilis and unleashed on the black community with no knowledge they had the disease. The study was to observe the natural progression of untreated syphilis in black men. Medical treatment was withheld from the men and none had consented to be a test subject. As a result of the study many people associated with the men died of the disease, others became permanently blind and or went insane, and many children associated with the subjects were born with congenital syphilis. The government backed study lasted forty years.

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The next day as I sat in my doctor’s office trying not to think about the AIDS virus, I recalled in vivid detail the many sexual trysts I’d had taken part of over the years. I’d read somewhere that you should go back at least ten years and count all of your sexual partners, and their sexual partners, and that every one of them could pose a potential risk to your health and life.

I thought about the lady I had blacked out on the other night and I realized that I didn’t’t even know her name, let alone her background or sexual history. And there were far too many like her to even begin to tally.

When I finally saw my doctor I was in a state of silent panic. Outwardly, I looked fine; like the picture of health. My body sculpted from daily workouts. Ironic, I thought, that I should have to get my health news from this guy. He was soft, and looked like a fast food junkie.

I sat there watching the doctor’s stubby pink fingers flip through my file. His finger stopped at a spot near the center of one of the pages. He studied that spot for a moment, looked up at me, and without changing his expression said: You drink a lot… don’t you Mr. Wilson?

What?! Take it easy Doc! Where is your bedside manner? I thought. Is that what this is all about? I folded my arms with fraudulent confidence and said. Well, I don’t think I drink all that much.

He noted my defensive posture curiously for a moment and said. You look like you’re in pretty good shape Mr. Wilson. And no one would ever guess it to look at you. So how do you suppose that I know that you drink a lot?

Well doc, I guess it has something to do with what you’re reading in my files.

That’s right, he answered.

My eyes narrowed as he explained how the human liver is designed to emit a certain level of enzymes, and how mine, because of my excessive alcohol intake, far exceeded the normal level. He also explained to me that the human liver is designed to replenish itself. As long as there are no permanent damages, he said.

Do I have any permanent damages doc? I asked.

No, he replied.

I let out a deep sigh of relief. I didn’t have AIDS, and I didn’t have permanent liver damage. I felt at the time, that I could handle anything else that he had to say. The doctor then told me that if I stopped drinking alcohol immediately, that I could reverse the negative effects placed upon my liver by the booze. But he warned me that if I continued on my present course, it wouldn’t’t be long before I did irreparable damage to my liver.

You are not yet at a crucial state. He said closing, my file. Consider this a wake-up call. I like to personally talk to guys like you, who are approaching these crucial stages, and put the onus on them for a change. Give them a chance at being responsible for their own health… And you’d be surprised at how many guys I speak to who continue to drink themselves into an early grave.

I left the doctor’s office in a state of shock. If ever I truly needed a drink, it was right now. And that’s saying a lot, considering how much alcohol had become a part of my life and lifestyle.

I started out many years ago like most of the other young brothers in my neighborhood: Standing on the corner, crotch in one hand, quart-sized bottle of Old English 800 in the other, yelling profanities and vulgarities at the young girls as they walked by.

We were only emulating the older brothers on our block we’d seen doing the same thing. We considered what we were doing, a rite of passage, and part and parcel to us becoming men. Most of us had no true examples of what real manhood looked like, so we went with the examples we had.

Going into the military helped me to develop a stronger sense of manhood, but it also made my drinking worse. There are many bruised livers among soldiers, I grant you. And by the time I returned home from the Army, I was on the hard stuff.

I did most of my heaviest drinking on the weekends, at the clubs with my two boys. During the week, we would usually just get lifted with a few. Although we drank every day, we considered ourselves only social drinkers. We also considered ourselves players. But in hindsight, we were really just three working stiffs who lived paycheck to paycheck, had random sex with different women, and drank way too much alcohol.

I can quit this shit anytime I want, was my proclamation for years. Now I had to prove it. I wasn’t a heavy drinker, but a steady one. I was always the designated driver among my crew. Not because I was sober, mind you, but because I was usually the least drunk.

We covered it up well. We wore designer clothes, had nice cribs, kept our rides clean, had nice looking women around when we wanted to, and we partied hardy. We made our addictions look cool, but inside we were dead.

Later on that night, as I sat with my boys in my stylish apartment I told them about my doctor’s visit. We didn’t usually talk about such serious matters, but I was having a somber moment.

In response, Whit picked up his drink—a sixteen ounce glass half-filled with cognac and ice—from my smoked glass coffee table and said, On my last doctor’s visit, he told me that I had blood in my urine. It’s not detectable by the human eye, he said, but it’s there.

Damn Whit! Did he say it was due to your drinking? I asked.

Yep.

And you still drinking dude?

The way I figure it my friend; you’ve got to die of something. And with that, he took a big swig from his glass.

We all laughed. Lane followed suit. He lifted his glass and said I’ll drink to that, and took a big swig.

I’m sitting there thinking, blood in the urine? Damn! That sounded too serious to be joking about to me. And Lane had the nerve to second it. Do I even know these guys? The situation opened my eyes to the type of individuals I had aligned myself with and the potential high price of such an alliance.

It was Friday night and we went out to the club as usual. I’d already informed the fellas that I wouldn’t be drinking. I figured, I’d continue to club and party hardy, hang out with my friends, have the time of my life, but I just wouldn’t drink. I’d actually convinced myself that this would work.

Eight hours later and I still hadn’t had a drink. It was one of the longest stretches of time I’d gone without a drink in several years. I’d decided to go cold turkey. Being ex-military, I was still brainwashed enough to think that I could do just about anything. I walked up to the bar, rested my arm on its smooth cold surface and ordered a club soda with a twist.

The bartender, a slender and sexy pecan tan sister about my age, smiled at me with her mouth, but as always, her eyes remained serious. I was a regular so she knew me well. When she saw that I wasn’t ordering alcohol, she started giving me free drinks on the sly tip. She must have thought that I was broke or something. I took the drinks and slipped them to my boys. I was serious about not drinking, but I wasn’t about to let good alcohol go to waste. Funny how karma works, I’d been coming to this joint for years and had never gotten a free drink, but the minute I decide to quit…

As the night progressed, my enjoyment level for the club decreased incrementally. The alcohol that I’d had in my reserve tank was now completely gone, that combined with the loud music and the shifting light patterns, was making me feel sick.

I left the bar early that night and went home alone. Pussy was the furthest thing from my mind. The next morning when I woke up, I had a craving for alcohol that you wouldn’t believe. I got dressed in the same clothes I had worn out the night before. I didn’t bother to take a shower or brush my teeth. I went out into the brisk New York City cold and drove directly to the liquor store. I copped some Hennessy, sped back home, and drank it down like it was an antidote to a poison I had ingested.

2

Downward Shift

It is better to travel alone than with a bad companion.

— African Proverb

Senegal

Six months later I was on a sixteen-hour long and dreary Greyhound bus ride down south. It finally sank in that if I truly wanted to make a change in my life and preserve my health, it would require a move away from New York. It was a very painful realization.

It was November of 1994. New York City was foggy, rainy, and cold that day. I wore my customary three quarter length black leather coat for the extended road trip. I had to come out of that coat for good once I got deeper into the south and found the southern November temps were a balmy seventy plus degrees.

I walked onto the bus carrying a twelve ounce can of Coca-cola half filled with Hennessy in one hand and my carry-on luggage in the other. I sat in the back of the bus and immediately started sipping on the congac for accompaniment for the anticipated long excursion. The rest of my alcohol was tucked safely away in my carry-on luggage.

Several hours later, I got off the bus in Camden, South Carolina. I got off in Camden because Bishopville, South Carolina, my intended destination, is too small of a town to warrant a Greyhound bus stop. There was no Amtrak train station or airport either. If you want to get to Bishopville directly, you either have to drive or parachute in.

The town was established in 1902, and named in honor of Dr. Jacques Bishop, the gentleman that owned the majority of what is now Bishopville. During that time, Bishopville was said to be mostly wilderness with a few scattered and primitive houses. For decades, prior to that, Bishopville was known as Singleton’s Crossroad.

William Singleton, a major slaveholder, owned most of the land that is now Bishopville from 1790 until it was sold to Bishop, by the Singleton family in the 1820s. The jewel of Singleton’s holdings was a Tavern that sat at the intersection of what is now Church Street and Main Street. Back in the early1800s this Tavern was a stopping post for the stagecoach that came through town from Georgetown to Charlotte. Ironically, Church and Main, where that tavern stood over two hundred years ago, is still the main and most vibrant intersection in Bishopville.

In the 1670s when English, and then French settlers first arrived from Barbados, they did so because Bishopville was surrounded by some of the most fertile farmland in all of South Carolina. These men brought with them three things: enslaved Africans, a plantation lifestyle, and knowledge of growing cash crops. Bishopville at that time was a land of slaves and slaveholders. It was a nigger factory, nothing more, nothing less. It was built by, and for the institution of slavery. Bishopville also happens to be where I was born and I’m a descendent of those slaves, those strong people who endured and persevered through known and unknown atrocities.

Most of my homies back in Brooklyn, I would venture to say, aren’t even remotely aware that an old rustic slow moving town like Bishopville still exists in this modern day and time. But nevertheless, this was home for me, and this is also where I’d returned to get my life back on track, and to basically dry out.

Although I was born there, I had very little knowledge of the town. My family left Bishopville for good in 1962, when I was still a baby; diapered in rags and wrapped up in my teenage mother’s arms. We headed up north looking like vagabonds, I’m sure. It was me my mother and her mother (whom we all called Momma) four aunts, and an uncle named Blue. He was so black till he was blue, we used to say.

We settled in the slums of Brooklyn, New York. Where we lived on top of each other like disenfranchised immigrants. I started making infrequent and irregular trips back down south almost immediately after we left.

My grandmother would usually send me down every other summer or so for two or three weeks, during the school breaks. The trips seemed hardly ever planned, or at least to me, because I was never told beforehand. My grandmother