ONE OKIE'S RACIAL RECKONINGS--only one chapter not written--just starting to see what I have

 In 2020 after being told at Stanford at the end of April that I had rapidly spreading cancer throughout my body and that the good right eye might have to be removed, I got a better diagnosis in San Luis--Valley Fever, not Lymphoma. The deterioration of the eye was checked in 4 or 5 days of a heavy anti-fungal drug but the lesion did not close for 5 months, and the scarring is permanently there, a millimeter from the macula. In the time of making our wills, preparing to die, I determined to use the time I had on an old project not on Melville, Ornery People, about ancestors and other kinfolks on this continent. Then because of current events I tightened focus. I was declared free of cancer on 11 May.  On 18 May I was pulling Negro files out of Ornery People. I was going to do something on race. Then on 25 May Floyd George was killed. After that the book was going to be on racial encounters of some sort, now ONE OKIE'S RACIAL RECKONINGS. I was pretty sick all through 2020, but able to focus early in 2021. And now I have only one chapter to go (Chapter 9) and today am putting the drafts of chapters in order. I am assuming I will go on for a long time and will soon read it all through from the beginning and revise thoroughly. I spent two and a half months on the very difficult pair of chapters I did on kinfolks massacred, and now can step back and look at what I have. If a tsunami sweeps me up today, someone could be paid to get this into print, with a real publisher maybe, self-publishing if necessary. There would be money to pay someone to get it out. 

                          ONE OKIE’S RACIAL RECKONINGS

 #01 “GODDAMN OKIES”

#02 WHO THE OKIES WERE

#03 FAMILY STORIES--BEFORE I SAW I HAD TO DO RACE--good happy oblivious stories

#04 COUSINS AT WAR ON THE CHEROKEES What the Carolinians were doing for 2 years instead of going off to fight the British

#05 JEFFERSON, COCKE, SIMS (The burning of the Sims Settlement 2 times. TJ as one of the cousins, an inconsistent one)

#06 RACIAL OBLIVIOUSNESS AT TRAP HILL (the Siamese Twins in NC--and 2 NC men who held Union meetings in 1863)

#07 UTAH AS BRIGHAM YOUNG’S MILITARY THEOCRACY

#08 SLAUGHTERING for Parley, Brigham, and Jesus, But Saving Some Babies for Ransom

#09 SIMS & SPARKS & THE “ATROCITY” AT MILLIKEN’S BEND [not written]

#10 FLETCHER HILL & FRATERNITY (1864 escape from Rebel Prison and journey to Union lines)

#11 CAPT. MATTHEWS--LIAR & MURDERER 1866 (Freedmen's Bureau lies are history now, still repeated)

#12 TOURGEE vs  MCGEHEE--KKK 1860s & 1870s (KKK & Reconstruction)

#13 WILLY SIMS & THE DANVILLE “MASSACRE" or "STREET-FIGHT”)

#14 GLENN-TUCKER JARNDYCE vs JARNDYCE OF I. T.

#15 DICK COSTNER’S GALLANTRY AT WOUNDED KNEE [real gallantry]

#16 DOVEY--BLACK COSTNERS (horror story of black family driven about

#17 LEE SPARKS--ONE BAD COP--& the Buffalo Soldiers

 #18 Appendix--RACIAL DOCUMENTS (grim items about kinfolks--disposition of slaves in wills, ads for runaways, auction ads for slaves &c)