Inside Bubba Duke and Feet's Café

You'd never have known Bubba Duke and Feet's place was a café from looking at it. It was a regular house that had been gutted out inside to make one big room. The two brothers had a rule about drinking: They sold no alcoholic beverages, only soft drinks. Teens loved it. There was no tension, no work orders, no racism.

The place was hot in the summer and cold in the winter, but that didn't stop us young folks. I can still see us dancing all over the floor, doing the latest steps or creating some of our own. I remember one dance we called the "Slop." We'd do a kinda funky motion with our bodies that was supposed to look like the motion slop makes when you pour it into the trough for the hogs.

The Burial

The Burial depicts a crowd of mourners attending the graves of six victims who lost their lives to an angry white mob. But there is an extra grave. The artist explains that he added the extra grave in order to bury "hate," the emotion that so dominated the lives he and his neighbors were living at the time. (Courtesy of WR)

When I reached my teens, everything seemed so wrong to me about the ways that white people treated black folk. It didn't take much for me to join in the Civil Rights movement. Mama used to be scared to death of white folk and she'd say to me, "If you follow those civil rights folks, I'm not gonna let you back in the house," but she'd be there, standing at the window, waiting for me each time I returned.

I was about 19 when I heard about a demonstration in Americus, Georgia. A bus came around to take everyone who wanted to go, and I went. Everything got out of hand and, when white people started shooting, we all started running. I ducked into an alley and found a car with the key in it. I got in and took off. Soon after, the police arrested me and put me in jail.