White Lilacs

On the day of the Fourth of July celebration, Rose Lee spends all morning with Aunt Tillie baking and cooking food. Aunt Tillie is supposed to go serve the pies and tend the food at the celebration in the afternoon, but at the last minute she asks Rose Lee to go in her place.

During the celebration, Rose Lee watches the food and does her best to listen to the speeches. She watches as Mayor Dixon and Dr. Thompson from the Academy speak about the upcoming vote and its importance. She is shocked when Miss Firth comes up during one of the speeches with a megaphone. Miss Firth tells the crowd that she is going to talk about the “other side of this issue” (133), but the crowd starts yelling at her and then drowns her out by singing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” then Miss Firth is escorted off the stage.

As the afternoon drags on, Rose Lee stops focusing on the events and begins to doze off. However, she is startled awake by Henry and a few other young boys. Henry tells her that she needs to come with them—they want her to join them in their protest against working. She hesitates, realizing how afraid she is both of the repercussions from white people and “of what Grandfather and Momma and Poppa would say” (136). After a minute, Henry gives up and leaves her there.

That night, Rose Lee goes to sleep but wakes up in the middle of the night to use the privy. She goes outside and sees a “terrible figure,” stumbling and covered in white. He calls out to her, and she realizes that it is Henry. He is covered in tar and feathers. He tells her that he was caught last night at the fairgrounds, but then faints.

Rose Lee calls to her parents, and they carry Henry inside. Momma spends several hours removing the tar using kerosine and strips of bed sheets. Rose Lee goes to get the doctor later that morning, and he helps Momma apply a balm to Henry’s skin. When he is finally able to talk, he tells them that he, Raymond (Cora’s husband), and a few other guys were confronted by a handful of young white men. Although the others got away, Henry was caught. The boys put him in their car, drove him to the edge of town, then stripped him naked and ridiculed him. They covered him in hot tar, then feathers, then told him to run. He stumbled the entire distance home.

The next day, the day after the vote, Rose Lee listens as Mrs. Bell tries to tell Tillie that moving will be a good thing. Rose Lee attempts to “bury [her] sadness” as she works, as they now had confirmation that they would be forced to move (146). Although it is difficult, she does her best to serve the Bells, realizing that their problems mean nothing to them. As she watches Edward Bell, the son, she wonders if he was one of the boys who tarred Henry.

That night, the men of Freedom have a meeting. When Poppa comes home, he tells Momma and Rose Lee that there is nothing they can do. Everyone believes that they will be paid very little for their homes and will struggle to afford to build elsewhere. He also shares that Freedom’s doctor has decided to move, leaving all the Black residents without a doctor who will treat them. At that moment, Henry comes in, still covered in bandages, and insists that they listen to him. As Poppa tells him to lie back down, Rose Lee wonders if he’s right.

The Bell family decides to take a vacation to Chicago. As they are leaving, Catherine Jane pulls Rose Lee aside. She gives her a letter for Miss Firth—who was fired from her teaching job—because her parents will not let her see her and she is afraid that Miss Firth will be gone by the time she gets back from Chicago. She doesn’t want Miss Firth to “go away thinking everybody in Dillon despises her for speaking out” (152).

After the Bells are gone, Rose Lee, Aunt Tillie, Grandfather, and a few others are tasked with thoroughly cleaning the entire house. Rose Lee starts with the top floor, which they call the “smoker,” and serves as a study for Mr. Bell. She cleans all the books on the shelves, then works her way around the other cabinets in the room. She opens one and finds a KKK robe hidden within. The arm sleeves are covered in soot. She puts it back and then quickly leaves the room, realizing that Mr. Bell was with the men who burned the cross outside the church and could have even been the one who lit it. She spends the rest of the day cleaning Catherine Jane’s room.

That evening, Rose Lee goes to find Miss Firth, who is staying in a boardinghouse with Mrs. Walker. Mrs. Walker stops Rose Lee from entering, but Miss Firth comes down and greets her with excitement. She goes back up to her room and then comes back with a gift for Rose Lee. She gives Rose Lee a sketchbook and her colored pencils and then tells her that she should draw all of Freedomtown inside it. She tells her that Freedomtown needs to be remembered, and one day the “sketchbook may be all there is to show that Freedomtown ever existed” (159). With both of them on the verge of tears, Rose Lee promises to sketch everything she can, then leaves.

Over the next couple weeks, Rose Lee continues to clean the Bell house, helps her mother with work, and spends time with Susannah. Susannah informs Rose Lee that she plans to go back to St. Louis soon.

Rose Lee opens the sketchbook from Miss Firth and finds the sketches of her and Grandfather inside. She begins sketching parts of Freedom—initially choosing places that don’t mean a lot to her, like the houses of people she barely knows. She makes sure to list the addresses of the homes and the people that live there.

Meanwhile, the men of Freedom go to City Hall to learn what they will be paid for their property. When they get their offers, each of them complains about how little it is. Mr. Lipscomb gets paid less than half what his boardinghouse is worth, while Mr. Tolivar—the owner of the grocery store—gets so little that he decides to move to Kansas where his wife is from. With the two most expensive properties in Freedom getting so little, the rest of the men realize they will all get nowhere near enough to start a new life elsewhere. Through it all, Henry tries to get the men to join the UNIA, fight back, or go to Africa, but the men dismiss him. Eventually, despite his protests, he starts working alongside Grandpa Jim in the Bells’ garden, as he is unable to return to the brickyard due to his injuries.

In August, the men of Freedom begin to search for other areas to build a new town. The City Hall suggests an area known as The Flats, but it is bad land that regularly floods and is too far from town. Instead, the men find an area called Buttermilk Hill. Mr. Lipscomb purchases land for a boardinghouse there and plans to move some of the houses he rents there. The people of Freedom become hopeful for the first time in a while.

However, one night, Mr. Lipscomb comes to their home. He tells them that he had been threatened by three men and told that he cannot move to Buttermilk Hill. Then, the next day, notices appear all over Freedom on businesses, the church, and the school, informing the residents that they need to sell any land they bought and stay out of Buttermilk Hill. Undeterred, Mr. Lipscomb begins to look at other areas in Dillon.

The next day, Poppa and Momma go with most of Freedom to City Hall to ask about the price they will get for their land. When they get there, Mayor Dixon reads a petition from members of Dillon. The signers “protest against any attempt to locate the colored population of Freedomtown in our midst” (170). Distraught, they realize that The Flats or Dogtown—a rundown section of the city that is even worse than The Flats—are their only options to stay in Dillon.

After the mayor finishes, he returns to discussing the payments for Freedom’s land. However, they are interrupted by Mr. Prince, the Booker T. Washington School principal, who runs into City Hall and tells the citizens that the school is on fire.

Everyone rushes to the schoolhouse. They do their best to put out the fire, but it is already too big, and they watch as it burns to the ground. The citizens of Freedom stay long after the fire is out, weeping, singing, and praying. Rose Lee thinks of how she has three things to be sad about: the loss of the school, the realization that the white population will stop at nothing to drive them out, and the fact that she had not yet drawn the school and now it was lost forever.