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Incident at Riches Department store 1958
I was twelve years old at Rich's with my nine year old cousin and my eleven year old friend. The last thing we wanted was trouble. The wind inside this large store was strange. It blew things around the many empty paper drinking cups people drank out of put down and left.
Ok we were on the balcony looking down when this black lady was walking below us. Suddenly a paper cup blew into her face. She panicked and batted it away. It was just a harmless empty paper cup but she got ** off at us thinking we had thrown it at her. We had not.
She looked up at us and said " come down here so I can stick my ** knife up your ** **.
We didn't deserve that and I told her we had not done that but she just looked at us with hate and then walked on.
It affected me a great deal. We had not thrown anything. After she was gone I saw an empty cup on the railing and making sure no one was down there I did throw it off the balcony and lo and behold the cup flew up instead of down. It landed on the floor beside us. She had accused up of the impossible.
In those days air conditioning was rare especially in private homes and one of the lures Rich's had for getting customers inside was a sign that said "It's cool inside"..
I REINTERATE, WE HAD THROWN NOTHING. WE WEREN'T THERE TO CAUSE PROBLEMS FOR ANYONE.
Some months later there was some sort of an argument between a white man and a black man with the black guy throwing a chair at him after the white guy said lets forget it. Security guards in the store held the black guy and asked if he wanted them to call the police for him and again the white guy said no lets just forget it.
However the black man wasn't going to let it go. This caused a riot in the tore and about 200 black rioters tore the store up. Destroying or looting Rich's and overall raising ** over a small incident.
After the black lady cussed us out we left the store and I never set foot into said store again until I was in my middle twenties.
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