Recollections of My Nonexistence

by Rebecca Solnit

The one I remembered best was about when he was a youth just entering his teens and the Barrow Gang—Bonnie and Clyde and their associates—were in the house when he and his parents came back from the fields. The gang of bank robbers was there because in a segregated society the last place you would look for white outlaws was among black people. The gang reportedly did this with at least one other black sharecropper family in Oklahoma, and I later heard that another legendary gangster, Pretty Boy Floyd, also hid out among black homes in that time when the bank robbers were folk heroes of a sort. On that visit to the Youngs’ family home, they left a ten-dollar gold piece on the table or the dresser. His mother didn’t want to take stolen money, but his father said, “The children need shoes for winter.” There were two visits. That time or another time they came home from the fields and the gang was at their table, helping themselves to food.