The day finally arrived when my mother could take me out of the Nursery, at which time we all headed to my father's hometown, in Chicago. Barbara no longer referred to as Sister Barbara—just Barbara. She now had an opportunity to be a mother to her baby girl in every sense of the word, and they could enjoy the freedom of living as husband and wife. Hope for happiness was near and could feel it in every bone in her body. Unfortunately, she and Alvin encountered many problems, the first being the car my father bought was a dud and broke down in Texas. My father, a black man in the South, found a quick one day job and made enough to get us on a Greyhound bus. Another problem that they encountered was racism. During that time, people simply …show more content…
They played softball together, visited each others’ homes, and they even enjoyed babysitting me when needed. Every family member accepted my mother. Nobody could have guessed that my father would eventually become the worst racist of all, but he did. He’d taken a break from practicing Islam while living at the Fountain of the World, but he picked it up again when he relocated to Chicago. He became a black Muslim again. This racial divide eventually tore our family apart. Black Muslims do not associate with white people, and now my father had become an embarrassment and lived with a white woman. And the worst part he was married to her. However, racism was only one of the many issues that divided our little family, for you see, my father had loved Chicago, but he had a corrupted lifestyle. By October of 1956, he was on heroin, and heavily engaged in the way of life that did not include a white wife and a child. His black Muslim background, heroin use, and his friends gave my father an inner hatred for white women, and in particular, for my mother, and his anger with my mother grew into more and more physical abuse, and he would slap her across the face every day before work. Over and over again, he would use the front and backside of his hand, from one cheek to the other. She continued to endure this abuse, but one day, while at work, she washed her face after one of the