When Easter came that spring, Sandy had saved enough money to buy himself a suit and a new cap from his earnings at the barbershop. He was very proud of this accomplishment and so was Aunt Hager.

“You’s a ’dustrious chile, sho is! Gwine make a smart man even if yo’ daddy warn’t nothin’. Gwine get ahead an’ do good fo’ yo’self an’ de race, yes, sir!”

The spring came early and the clear balmy days found Hager’s backyard billowing with clean white clothes on lines in the sun. Her roomer had left her when the theatre was built and had gone to work on a dam somewhere up the river, so Annjee’s room was empty again. Sandy had slept with his grandmother during the cold weather, but in summer he slept on a pallet.

The boy did not miss his mother. When she had been home, Annjee had worked out all day, and she was quiet at night because she was always tired. Harriett had been the one to keep the fun and laughter going⁠—Harriett and Jimboy, whenever he was in town. Sandy wished Harrie would live at home instead of staying at Maudel’s house, but he never said anything about it to his grandmother. He went to school regularly, went to work at the barbershop on Saturdays and to Sunday School on Sundays, and remained with Aunt Hager the rest of his time. She was always worried if she didn’t know where he was.

“Colored boys, when they gets round twelve an’ thirteen, they gets so bad, Sandy,” she would say. “I wants you to stay nice an’ make something out o’ yo’self. If Hager lives, she ain’t gonna see you go down. She’s gonna make a fine man out o’ you fo’ de glory o’ God an’ de black race. You gwine to ’mount to something in this world. You hear me?”

Sandy did hear her, and he knew what she meant. She meant a man like Booker T. Washington, or Frederick Douglass, or like Paul Lawrence Dunbar, who did poetry-writing. Or maybe Jack Johnson. But Hager said Jack Johnson was the devil’s kind of greatness, not God’s.

“That’s what you get from workin’ round that old barbershop where all they talks ’bout is prize-fightin’ an’ hoss-racin’. Jack Johnson done married a white woman, anyhow! What he care ’bout de race?”

The little boy wondered if Jack Johnson’s kids looked like Buster. But maybe he didn’t have any kids. He must ask Pete Scott about that when he went back to work on Saturday.

In the summer a new amusement park opened in Stanton, the first of its kind in the city, with a merry-go-round, a shoot-the-shoots, a Ferris wheel, a dance-hall, and a bandstand for weekend concerts. In order to help popularize the park, which was far on the north edge of town, the Daily Leader announced, under its auspices, what was called a Free Children’s Day Party open to all the readers of that paper who clipped the coupons published in each issue. On July 26 these coupons, presented at the gate, would entitle every child in Stanton to free admittance to the park, free popcorn, free lemonade, and one ride on each of the amusement attractions⁠—the merry-go-round, the shoot-the-shoots, and the Ferris wheel. All you had to do was to be a reader of the Daily Leader and present the coupons cut from that paper.

Aunt Hager and Sister Johnson both took the Leader regularly, as did almost everybody else in Stanton, so Sandy and Willie-Mae started to clip coupons. All the children in the neighborhood were doing the same thing. The Children’s Day would be a big event for all the little people in town. None of them had ever seen a shoot-the-shoots before, a contrivance that pulled little cars full of folks high into the air and then let them come whizzing down an incline into an artificial pond, where the cars would float like boats. Sandy and Willie-Mae looked forward to thrill after thrill.

When the afternoon of the great day came at last, Willie-Mae stopped for Sandy, dressed in her whitest white dress and her new patent-leather shoes, which hurt her feet awfully. Sandy’s grandmother was making him wash his ears when she came in.

“You gwine out yonder ’mongst all them white chillens, I wants you to at least look clean!” said Hager.

They started out.

“Here!” called Aunt Hager. “Ain’t you gwine to take yo’ coupons?” In his rush to get away, Sandy had forgotten them.

It was a long walk to the park, and Willie-Mae stopped and took off her shoes and stockings and carried them in her hands until she got near the gate; then she put them on again and limped bravely along, clutching her precious bits of newspaper. They could hear the band playing and children shouting and squealing as the cars on the shoot-the-shoots shot downward with a splash into the pond. They could see the giant Ferris wheel, larger than the one the carnival had had, circling high in the air.

“I’m gonna ride on that first,” said Sandy.

There were crowds of children under the bright red and white wooden shelter at the park entrance. They were lining up at the gate⁠—laughing, merry, clean little white children, pushing and yelling and giggling amiably. Sandy let Willie-Mae go first and he got in line behind her. The band was playing gaily inside.⁠ ⁠… They were almost to the entrance now.⁠ ⁠… There were just two boys in front of them⁠ ⁠… Willie-Mae held out her black little hand clutching the coupons. They moved forward. The man looked down.

“Sorry,” he said. “This party’s for white kids.”

Willie-Mae did not understand. She stood holding out the coupons, waiting for the tall white man to take them.

“Stand back, you two,” he said, looking at Sandy as well. “I told you little darkies this wasn’t your party.⁠ ⁠… Come on⁠—next little girl.” And the line of white children pushed past Willie-Mae and Sandy, going into the park. Stunned, the two dark ones drew aside. Then they noticed a group of a dozen or more other colored youngsters standing apart in the sun, just without the bright entrance pavilion, and among them was Sadie Butler, Sandy’s classmate. Three or four of the colored children were crying, but most of them looked sullen and angry, and some of them had turned to go home.

“My papa takes the Leader,” Sadie Butler was saying. “And you see what it says here on the coupons, too⁠—‘Free Admittance to Every Child in Stanton.’ Can’t you read it, Sandy?”

“Sure, I can read it, but I guess they didn’t mean colored,” he answered, as the boy watched the white children going in the gate. “They wouldn’t let us in.”

Willie-Mae, between the painful shoes and the hurt of her disappointment, was on the verge of tears. One of the small boys in the crowd, a hard-looking little fellow from Pearl Street, was cursing childishly.

“God damn old sons of biscuit-eaters, that what they are! I wish I was a big man, dog-gone, I’d shoot ’em all, that’s what I’d do!”

“I suppose they didn’t mean colored kids,” said Sandy again.

“Buster went in all right,” said Sadie. “I seen him. But they didn’t know he was colored, I guess. When I went up to the gate, the man said: ‘Whoa! Where you goin’?’ just like I was a horse.⁠ ⁠… I’m going home now and tell my papa.”

She walked away, followed by five or six other little girls in their Sunday dresses. Willie-Mae was sitting on the ground taking off her shoes again, sweat and tears running down her black cheeks. Sandy saw his white schoolmate, Earl, approaching.

“What’s matter, Sandy? Ain’t you goin’ in?” Earl demanded, looking at his friend’s worried face. “Did the little girl hurt her foot?”

“No,” said Sandy. “We just ain’t going in.⁠ ⁠… Here, Earl, you can have my coupons. If you have extra ones, the papers says you get more lemonade⁠ ⁠… so you take ’em.”

The white boy, puzzled, accepted the proffered coupons, stood dumbly for a moment wondering what to say to his brown friend, then went on into the park.

“It’s yo’ party, white chile!” a little tan-skin girl called after him, mimicking the way the man at the gate had talked. “Whoa! Stay out! You’s a nigger!” she said to Sandy.

The other children, in spite of themselves, laughed at the accuracy of her burlesque imitation. Then, with the music of the merry-go-round from beyond the high fence and the laughter of happy children following them, the group of dark-skinned ones started down the dusty road together⁠—and to all the colored boys and girls they met on the way they called out, “Ain’t no use, jigaboos! That party’s for white folks!”

When Willie-Mae and Sandy got home and told their story, Sister Johnson was angry as a wet hen.

“Crackers is devils,” she cried. “I ’spected as much! Dey ain’t nary hell hot ’nough to burn ole white folks, ’cause dey’s devils dey-selves! De dirty hounds!”

But all Hager said was: “They’s po’ trash owns that park what don’t know no better, hurtin’ chillens’ feelin’s, but we’ll forgive ’em! Don’t fret yo’self, Sister Johnson. What good can frettin’ do? Come on here, let’s we have a party of our own.” She went out in the yard and took a watermelon from a tub of well-water where it had been cooling and cut it into four juicy slices; then they sat down on the grass at the shady side of the house and ate, trying to forget about white folks.

“Don’t you mind, Willie-Mae,” Hager said to the little black girl, who was still crying. “You’s colored, honey, an’ you’s liable to have a hard time in this life⁠—but don’t cry.⁠ ⁠… You, Sandy, run round de house an’ see didn’t I heard de mailman blowin’.”

“Yes’m,” said Sandy when he came back. “Was the mailman, and I got a letter from mama.” The boy sat on the grass to read it, anxious to see what Annjee said. And later, when the company had gone, he read it aloud to Hager.

Dear Little Son:

How have you all been? how is grandma? I get worried about you when I do not hear. You know Aunt Hager is old and can’t write much so you must do it for her because she is not used to adress letters and the last one was two weeks getting here and had went all around everywhere. Your father says tell you hello. I got a job in a boarding house for old white folks what are cranky about how they beds is made. There are white and colored here in the auto business and women to. Tell Madam de Carter I will send my Lodge dues back because I do not want to be transfer as I might come home sometime. I ain’t seen you all now for more’n a year. Jimboy he keeps changing jobs from one thing to another but he likes this town pretty well. You know he broke his guitar carrying it in a crowded streetcar. Ma says you are growing and have bought yourself a new suit last Easter. Mama certainly does right well to keep on washing and ironing at her age and worrying with you besides. Tempy ought to help ma but seem like she don’t think so. Do you ever see your Aunt Harrie? I hope she is settling down in her ways. If ma wasn’t all by herself maybe I could send for you to come live with us in Detroit but maybe I will be home to see you if I ever get any money ahead. Rent is so high here I never wittnessed so many folks in one house, rooming five and six together, and nobody can save a dime. Are you still working at the barbershop. I heard Sister Johnson was under the weather but I couldn’t make out from ma’s scribbling what was the matter with her. Did she have a physicianer? You behave yourself with Willie-Mae because you are getting to be a big boy now and she is a girl older then you are. I am going to send you some pants next time I go down town but I get off from work so late I don’t have a chance to do nothing and your father eats in the restaurant count of me not home to fix for him and I don’t care where you go colored folks has a hard time. I want you to mind your grandma and help her work. She is too old to be straining at the pump drawing water to wash clothes with. Now write to me. Love to you all both and seven kisses XXXXXXX right here on the paper,

Sandy laughed at the clumsy cross-mark kisses. He was glad to get a letter from his mother, and word in it about Jimboy. And he was sorry his father had broken his guitar. But not even watermelon and the long letter could drive away his sick feeling about the park.

“I guess Kansas is getting like the South, isn’t it, ma?” Sandy said to his grandmother as they came out on the porch that evening after supper. “They don’t like us here either, do they?”

But Aunt Hager gave him no answer. In silence they watched the sunset fade from the sky. Slowly the evening star grew bright, and, looking at the stars, Hager began to sing, very softly at first:

From this world o’ trouble free,
Stars beyond!
Stars beyond!

And Sandy, as he stood beside his grandmother on the porch, heard a great chorus out of the black past⁠—singing generations of toil-worn Negroes, echoing Hager’s voice as it deepened and grew in volume:

There’s a star fo’ you an’ me,
Stars beyond!