An old woman remembers
Them had a system.
Them was on Gold Roll,
we was on Silver Roll.
Gold was better than Silver.
Everything was separated.
Them had gold clubhouses.
We had silver clubhouses.
And so on and on it went.
The only time we had gold,
was when we put it in we mouth.
You know,
to have gold teeth…
Strange… white people use silver, not gold…
I guess them was cheap.
Black policeman couldn’t arrest white people.
A Black man was a janitor,
a white man a maintenance engineer.
Books by Carlos E Russell in ALAWiT
About ALAWiT
ALAWiT is a resource for readers, writers, publishers, students and teachers interested in Afro-American and Latin American culture in general, and Afro-Latin American culture in particular. It gathers book covers, excerpts, bibliographic clues and digital downloads of works by black Latin American authors in original language and in translation.