We were a block away from the Carter house but we could hear all the yelling and screaming. Mrs. Evelyn Carter may have been the president of the Black Baptist Women’s Association, but she sure was making an ungodly racket. Mrs. Carter was going on about the shame of it all. The embarrassment of someone of their stature being mixed up with gutter trash. Her son, Joseph Carter, Jr, snapped back at his mother’s hypocrisy. Arguing that a Christian woman should not be a respecter of persons. She was yelling, “Fool, please!” and the dignified black banker Joseph Carter, Sr., was shouting for everyone to shut up when they noticed Essie and I standing in the hand carved wooden doorway of their ornate parlor.

The Carters were among the wealthiest and most prominent black families in Savannah. Their elegant victorian mini-mansion rivaled all of the finest homes of prominent white families. They came from a long line of wealthy black businessmen and women. Their enterprising ancestors fought in the Revolutionary War and purchased their freedom long before the War Between the States. They were educated in the North and returned to the South to build churches, schools and businesses for the uplift of the black community. White business and political leaders from throughout the state to them to negotiate labor and land deals in the black community. They socialized with the likes of Langston Hughes, WEB Dubois, A Philip Randolph and James Weldon Johnson. They collected black art, provided talented locals with scholarships, pushed for civil rights, endowed charities and vacationed in Europe. The Carters had been so respected and influential for so long, many considered them to be black royalty and they certainly lived a royal lifestyle. But this day Savannah’s black royals were in a knock down drag out over a nightclub singer who grew up across the way in a clapboard shack with no running water. The shouting came to an abrupt stop when the family looked up and saw us.

“What do you want?” Mrs. Carter growled.

“We want to know what your bougie black behinds did with Dalia Blue,” Essie shouted.

But before she could finish her sentence Mrs. Carter came running at her with fists flying. I jumped between the two furious women to prevent a fight and received a pummeling.

Essie was scratching my face and shouting, “You and your self-righteous Bible thumping brigade snatched that girl and disappeared her and I want her back!’

Mrs. Carter was pulling at my hair and screaming, “She better not have disappeared with my diamonds and furs! You can’t mock God! You can’t have my son! You won’t steal my husband! And you better not disappear with my mink! Bring her to me! Let me at her!”

When Joseph, Jr. and Sr., heard Essie say that Dalia had disappeared both men jumped in and pulled the women apart with such force that all three of us flew to the ground in a different corner of the room.

Joseph, Jr. cried, “What’s happened to Dalia?”

Joseph, Sr., shrieked,“Where is she? Is she harmed? Has someone harmed Dalia?”

It didn’t take long for me to realize that they hadn’t broken up the fight to protect me. Both father and son were reacting to the news that Dalia Blue, the young woman they both clearly longed for since she was a teen. After she returned home a polished celebrity Jr., believed it would be socially acceptable enough for him to take her as his wife and Joseph Sr., thought the flowers and furs would entice her to strike up an affair. Mrs. Carter had watched in horror as her husband and son grew increasingly infatuated with the rising star. She launched her church lady protest in an effort to reason with them moralistically. When that didn’t work she teamed up with the snobbish white society dames of the downtown neighborhood association to force them to think of the political and financial ramifications. That didn’t work either. Both men went to Dalia’s opening show despite all her begging, pleading and threatening. But when she opened her closet that morning and found half of her furs and jewelry missing, Mrs. Carter decided it was time to put dignity aside and beat some sense into them. She lept up from the floor and pounced on her lovestruck son and stupified husband. As she scratched and kicked, Essie got up and led me out the door.

“Come on Rubie,” she said. “That lady didn’t snatch Dalia, but she’s about to snatch the life out of those two.”