Then they heard shouting and murmuring ahead, the sound of a crowd. They came around a corner and there saw a large gathering of black people in front of a building. A sign on the building said FREEDMAN’S BUREAU. “What is that?” Simon stopped. He smelled danger. He was looking at chaos. A great crowd filled the street and the sound it made was comprised of longing and bitterness and confusion. A white man shoved his way among the crowd handing out tickets of some kind. A black woman suddenly jumped up into a wagon bed and began calling out for everyone to hand the tickets to her, and when they
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