Three Days Before the Shooting ... (223 page)

Senator, the above constitutes our unhappy bill of particulars, and as I appreciate that you are a busy man I beg pardon for taking up so much of your precious time. But please understand that our situation is
desperate
and we call upon your aid because you are one of the few that trully stands for
law and order
and really looks out for the welfare of the good
WHITE
people, who as I have tried to make crystal clear, are once again being sorely tried and tested. So in closing both me and Marthy thank you in advance for your kind consideration and look forward to the time when we will once again be safe and at peace with our fine and honorable tradition and our straightforward way of doing things. We wish you a long life and the best of everything, and we hope and pray that you will soon find time to lay the firm hand of the law on this
“backwacking”
and bring it to a teeth-rattling h
alt!
Just look into the nigger is all we ask, and
god bless.

   
Respectfully Yrs
.

   
Norm A. Mauler

   
A CONCERN CITIZEN

2010 Modern Library Edition

Copyright © 2010 by the Ralph and Fanny Ellison Charitable Trust

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Modern Library, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

MODERN LIBRARY and the TORCHBEARER Design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

A portion of this work was originally published, in different form, as
Juneteeth by
Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 1999. In addition, eight excerpts from this work appeared, also in different form, in
American Review, Iowa Review, Massachusetts Review, Noble Savage, Partisan Review, and Quarterly Review of Literature
.

eISBN: 978-1-58836-089-2

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