Raceology

Solomon Compton nearly emerged from the woods when he saw a Confederate Army veteran rummaging through his campsite. That campsite consisted of a pup tent, a few belongings, and the remains of a camp fire. This was on the grounds of a small plantation that had been devastated, deserted, and overgrowth with weeds.               Solomon quietly backed into the woods, and put down a cloth bag he had been carrying.   He was a black man who still wore the uniform of a private in the Union infantry. He had with him a Henry Rifle. In an era when most soldiers carried muzzle loading rifles that took a minute to load standing up exposed to bullets, it took that amount of time to load sixteen bullets into a Henry Rifle. One could load a Henry Rifle while kneeling behind a tree stump or a boulder, protected from enemy bullets.   The Henry Rifle was a lever action rifle. One man with a Henry Rifle could fire as many well aimed bull...

When Bill King came back from the war in Afghanistan, danger followed him all the way to San Francisco. You could say I live an exciting life. I would rather watch it on television. My name is Bill King. A month after I moved to California I was sitting in a bar in San Francisco’s Mission District. At about 9:00 I decided to go back to the apartment of the friend I was staying with. When I left the bar I heard a man yelling obscene insults at two Hispanic women who had just left a restaurant. My parents raised me not to be that way. I thought he should not be that way either. I walked over to talk to him. “Why are you yelling at those women?” I asked. “They’re Mexican.” “So?” “This is our country. They don’t belong here.” By now I could tell that he was harmless, possibly homeless, drunk, and twice my age. “Everyone in this country who is not an Indian came from somewhere else, or their ancestors did.” I said. “Where did you come from?” “I’m Portuguese,” he admitted....