REMEMBERING CHARLES SPEED Charles Speed was born in Freetown on January 21, 1916. He died on August 6, 1979. In that brief span of 63 years, this slight, physically handicapped man had an enormous and profound effect upon Vicksburg’s black community. He was a household products salesman. That was how he made his living. But the reason we remember him is that every week, unfailingly, come every Wednesday evening, Charles Speed brought black newspapers to the black citizens of Vicksburg. Charles Speed was how you got your copies of The Pittsburgh Courier and Chicago Defender. Charles Speed was black Vicksburg’s connection to the black world outside itself. Loaded down with a white canvas sack full of papers, slung over an arm that was permanently twisted, Charles Speed walked and worked this town from one end to the other, in season and out of season, sweating in summer and shivering in winter, to deliver his papers. To many of that time and place, he must have seemed a harmless creature; a pathetic ne’er-do-well, doing the best he could. In truth, he was powerful, radical, revolutionary. He did work that mattered. Wednesday nights in our community were for reading Charles’s papers. To those of us who loved and remember him so well, Charles never spoke a word that was anything but kind. We were this town’s black children then. And he was magic, mythical, bringing us, in his papers, comics of black cowboys. We had heroes just like us! Charles Speed never received the recognition his life and work deserved. Charles is gone more than 30 years now. But we can carry him into the next century by putting his memory in the minds of our children, and his message on their strong backs. He would like that.
Posted on: Sun, 16 Jun 2013 02:43:51 +0000
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