April 24 - The Killing Days

The prompt is to write a poem as a story that's told backwards from last to beginning. This piece also incorporates the poem written in long lines prompt

Yeah, they executed Lonnie Dixon, he was only 17, but they let his daddy go

Boy selling postcards for fifteen cents, of the charred body, used to be John

Carter

His corpse still hung on display, when the Arkansas Guard came to do what the Sheriff would not

Found a man standing in the intersection, 9th and Broadway, directing traffic with the burnt to a crisp, remains of John Carter's arm

Came pouring into the Black side of town, bent on ripping up property, for a dark meat barbecue, piling up church pews, doors, tables and chairs

5,000 strong these good Christian white folk gathered, men and women, many with their children

'Cause dragging his body behind a bumper in a 50 car parade had only fired up the flames of their lust 

They pumped 200 rounds of ammunition into his dead body because everybody knew that the only "good nigger was a dead nigger"

But first they'd stood him on the hood and drove away with his life as the rope snapped his neck

Poor John Carter said not to be quite right in the head

Caught by the mob, blood in their eyes, hell bent on avenging the virtue of two white women said he'd done messed with them

Few days before this murderous rage, two thousand, too many, white men stormed the jail

With a vengeance burning, where their hearts once beat, only to find their quarry long gone

Police said they had his mama, made him stand 24 hours, no food, no water, no sleep as they pried out his mouth, their oral admission of guilt

No lawyers, no rights, no written statement, just their claim he said he'd done it

They stated that the son Lonnie confessed to the crime

At first everyone thought two Black men, the Dixon's, father and son, had done killed that little white girl, some said raped her too

A girl found dead, up in the belfry of the First Presbyterian over in Little Rock

Floella McDonald, little twelve year old white girl gone missing, town speculates that a negro must a took her