This article is SUPERB -- I reloaded it several times and THEN it let me read it -- but only in Windows' browser -- not in Google Chrome.
But LOOK at the credit at TOP -- and then the one at the bottom:
By Ben Steelman
Posted at 6:07 AM
The celebrated author and academic died last month at the age of 57
Ben Steeknab can be reached at 910-616-1788 or peacebsteelman@gmail.com.
And I learned for the FIRST TIME that Randall had volunteered and worked on the production of Liberty Cart -- which played for only a few years in Kenansville:
. . . but plenty of GOOD SEATS available!!!
I've never read the script, but my Kenan Family is featured prominently -- it the story of early Scots-Irish settlers to S.E. North Carolina:
And I ALSO learned that Randall's project not yet completed was about the SAME MISSING CHILDREN in Atlanta that had FREAKED TENNESSEE WILLIAMS OUT while I worked for him:
Kenan had said that he was working on a major project dealing with the Atlanta child murders of 1979-1981. Obituaries listed one unfinished work titled "There’s a Man Going ’Round Taking Names.”
One evening while searching for a bottle of Frascati in New York , we found a narrow liquor store wedged into the middle of a block. Entering, I felt the weight of the shelves on either side. Stacked to the peeling tin ceiling, the bottles looked as if they would fall at a sneeze. A clerk with a mustache and salt-and-pepper afro sat on a bar stool at the end the counter. Seeing him, Tennessee , still hunched from the cold, spoke, practically mumbling.
“He didn’t do it,” he said. His hands were in his pockets as he looked at the man. “I know he didn’t. He couldn’t . . .” I glanced at the clerk who sat unmoved, watching. Tennessee, fighting tears, continued addressing him. “He would never kill those children. He was framed.”
He had to be referring to Wayne Williams, the young black man in Atlanta accused of a series of child murders. The ongoing disappearance and murder of black children in Atlanta had long gone unsolved. There were rumors the Klan was behind the attacks, and with racial tension mounting, police had been under mounting pressure to find the killer. On scant evidence, they arrested Wayne Williams. The police painted him as a homosexual pedophile and murderer, but when they brought him to trial, they charged him only with the murder of two adults—none of the children. The trial was in progress in Atlanta .
Getting no response from the clerk, Tennessee began to move slowly, bottle-by-bottle, down the aisle.
I squeezed past him and found the Frascati—a miracle to find it stocked in such a small store. Wine in hand, I just wanted to get out of there. I reminded myself that New Yorkers had seen everything. I hoped this was true.
“They won’t get away with this,” Tennessee muttered to himself.
I slipped back past him and placed the bottle on the counter.
Still near tears, Tennessee looked at the clerk as he approached him. “The blacks think I’m one of them you know.”
I checked to be sure the way out was clear.
“They write me all the time. I love the blacks.”
There was no point waiting for him to pay. I pulled a twenty from my wallet. The clerk rang up the sale and handed me change.
“Tom, let’s go,” I said. “We’re late.”
Before we walked out the door, Tennessee turned and called back. “He didn’t do it. I know it. I know it . . .” The bell on the door jingled as I pulled him through to the cold night air.
Randall Kenan, courtesy of UNC Chapel Hill
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