Darktown Quotes

“now they were expected to walk with a heavy step and newfound power through their neighborhoods. In every other part of the city, however, they were still expected to vanish, or worse.”
― Thomas Mullen, Darktown

“Doch Warten war ein Luxus, den er sich nicht mehr leisten konnte.”
― Thomas Mullen, Darktown

“The rain grew louder, the gutters talking to the downspouts.”
― Thomas Mullen, Darktown

“Rake had been amazed by hos much he missed the South while at war. Even the crushing heat. Even the sharp pain of a yellow jacket sting. Even the sight of bread gone moldy in a pantry that had't been kept cool enough. Even the orange tint of kids' bare feet playing in a clay lot. Even the way the ground disappeared from view when so many shrubs and vines grew out of the earth. The thick overwhelming ripeness of the South, the sheer three-dimensionality, the way it grew everywhere and anywhere, vibrant and unstoppable.”
― Thomas Mullen, Darktown

“They had each survived into adulthood by proceeding warily, yet now they were expected to walk with a heavy step and newfound power through their neighborhoods. In every other part of the city, however, they were still expected to vanish, or worse.”
― Thomas Mullen, Darktown

“He asked that the Lord keep her spirit, whoever she was. He asked that she find peace. And he prayed for the Lord's forgiveness, because he had seen her in that car with the white man who hit her, and he hadn't done anything to help her.”
― Thomas Mullen, Darktown

“So although only one of them had seen her face, and that just for a second, they let her disappear into the night, which would never release her.”
― Thomas Mullen, Darktown

“Atlanta, Georgia. Two parts Confederate racist to two parts Negro to one part something-that-doesn't-quiet-have-a-name-for-it-yet. Neither city nor country but some odd combination, a once sleepy railroad crossing that had exploded due to the wartime need for material and the necessities of shipping it......So Atlanta continued to grow, the trains continued to disgorge new residents and the tenements grew more crowded and the moonshine continued to be driven down from the mountains and the streets spilled over with even yet more passion and schemes and brawls, because there on the Georgia piedmont something had been set loose that might never again be contained.”
― Thomas Mullen, Darktown

“The first time Negro officers had been needed in a courtroom, the judge had refused to let them enter in uniform, demanding that they enter as "typical nigras." ...Only after much back-channel maneuvering .....after another judge's vouching for their continued "good behavior" ( as if they were dogs whose ability to control their bladders was worthy of compliments), they had recently won a concession: they could now wear their uniforms at trial.”
― Thomas Mullen, Darktown

“Sometimes it’s the ones who claim they’re progressive who are the worst, because they act like they are the very boundary between the possible and the impossible, and they never let you cross them.”
― Thomas Mullen, Darktown

“Since the white cops ventured over only when they needed a Negro to conveniently arrest for some crime, the residents had no protection from pickpockets and thieves and burglars, scofflaws and roughnecks, moonshiners and drunks and rapists.”
― Thomas Mullen, Darktown

“Horace’s mother had warned him about white people, that he should never speak to them unless they spoke first, and that if he did, he needed to say “sir” and “ma’am” and not be rude but to get away as quickly as he could beforethey did something terrible. She had refused to say what it was people like this did that was so awful. Horace figured they ate colored people, or at least colored children.”
― Thomas Mullen, Darktown

“Trying to introduce the concept of law and order to a people who had never been given reason to trust it, and who therefore found justice in blood feuds—they were so much more honorable, and interesting, and, well, bloody—was a terribly long and frustrating process.”
― Thomas Mullen, Darktown

“James James Jameson – his real name – who had escaped state prison”
― Thomas Mullen, Darktown

“The grime of living is so much more interesting than the shine of eternity, I’ve always thought.” He”
― Thomas Mullen, Darktown

“He subjected himself to the fact that the very road he was on changed names from Boulevard to Monroe not because the road itself changed but because the southern length of it was a colored neighborhood and the northern length was white and therefore the people who lived on it should put different words on their return addresses. He”
― Thomas Mullen, Darktown

“He had broken plenty of rules today. If he wasn’t fired for it, he would break a few more.”
― Thomas Mullen, Darktown

“He wanted to say, That’s my business, and mind yours. He wanted to ask them if they had a beat they should be walking. He sorely wanted to mouth off, and right then he didn’t even mind being outnumbered two to one. But they had thousands at their backs. So he tried to look friendly. Even smiled. Hating himself for it.”
― Thomas Mullen, Darktown

“There were plenty of white folks like that, happy to define themselves as not-quite-as-bad-as-some, conveniently surrounding themselves with awful people in contrast to whom they looked good.”
― Thomas Mullen, Darktown

“the best way to be allowed to do something was to do it with authority and put the onus on someone to stop you.”
― Thomas Mullen, Darktown

“You’re not impressing anyone with the ten-dollar words, Boggs. Fewer adjectives, please. No one’s giving you a PhD for this.” Since then, Boggs strained to be as succinct as possible so as not to offend his GED-holding boss. As”
― Thomas Mullen, Darktown

“You blind, son? You see a ‘ma’am’ here? I look like a white lady to you?” It had broken his heart. A”
― Thomas Mullen, Darktown

“Of the eight, seven had served in the war. Two had medals to show for it, including Smith, awarded a Silver Star for carrying two badly burned fellow soldiers out of a demolished tank and through hostile fire. Six had attended college and four, including Boggs, had diplomas (a graduation rate exponentially higher than the white cops’).”
― Thomas Mullen, Darktown