CIVIL War started a year ago, April, and I don’t know what it means to be American. I’m not. The war began when a Frenchman, Pierre Beauregard, a one-star general, ordered his troops to open fire on Americans with fifty cannons at Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. Even though folks in town proudly call Pierre “Little Napolean” nobody calls him French but me, ’cause I’m fair. They don’t call him French here ’cause he white and rich and born here . . . mostly. His family was of a French colony in Louisiana, and that French family line led him there from France. He didn’t speak English ’til he was twelve. So, I don’t know how many generations on American soil you got to live before you’re called “American,” or if English has to be your first language. No matter, negroes may always be foreigners. But I’m here. And tonight, the fall of white light and gray shadow from the moon showers me as I pour myself through the slaves’ quarters—one-room shacks built in a semi-circle around a patch of dirt.
