When You Wish Upon A Star

Just a short entry for now. I'll get to the rest later.

For Part One, please read A World Of Laughter, A World Of Tears

Comments in the Comments Thread, please.




They called us traitors.

Think about that for one moment: they called us traitors. The same men who had accredited my university only to withdraw all funding, the same men who were stripping us not only of our rights, but also of our dignity as human beings, the ones who considered themselves enlightened and humane for not walling us into ghettos behind barbed wire as their brothers and sisters were doing down south, though the walls that they built of laws and culture were just as vile as the chicken wire and concrete monstrosities that had arisen from Birmingham to the bloody streets of Tampa. It had been made clear that we no longer served any purpose in their society. It had been made more abundantly clear that our presence in the nation of our birth was no longer required. And yet when we took the mess of pottage offered to us for our birthright, when we reluctantly picked up stakes to move to the one nation that had promised to welcome us with open arms...they called us traitors.

Well, as the man said, if this be treason, then let us make the most of it, or so I thought at the time. It was a simple matter of liquidating my family's assets through a front corporation set up by sympathetic whites, then purchasing the tickets for passage on an ocean liner, huddling down in steerage with our like-skinned brothers and sisters so that our presence would not alarm those of lighter hue as they played up above. Purchasing a ticket on an aeroplane was, naturally, out of the question, as Negro terrorist threats had led the airline companies to "temporarily" suspend service to troublesome minorities.

We docked in West Germany, then made our way across a single border to an airport, where fifty of us were herded onto a single prop-driven aircraft that looked as if it had seen far too much service during the Great...during the Second World War. Hours on the craft, with my wife Amelia clutching my arm in fear, with our children alternately dozing and finding whatever mischief they could get into in our cramped quarters. Finally a landing on a snowy runway out in what looked to be the middle of nowhere. Dazed, hungry, and jetlagged, we all made our way down the ramp, following signs helpfully written in English. "Engineers"...that was mine. "Physicians" went off to the side, meaning that I was for now separated from my cousin and his family, who had joined us in our exile. Elsewhere I saw notices for other educated and skilled trades, all useful to a developing society.

We were herded into single-room shacks that I would have turned my nose up at only a few short years ago. Now the two beds, the kitchenette, and the shelves of books seemed the height of unimaginable luxury. However, we had no time to settle, as a thickly accented voice called through the door that the "meetink" would be starting soon.

Bundling up tightly, my family and I made our way down what served as a main street of our makeshift, prefabricated village to a sort of main hall. Soldiers stood at attention as we found our seats, clapping our hands against our arms to ward off the early-morning chill. A short, squat man, bundled in fur, ascended to the stage at the front of the auditorium. He stared at us all with what looked like the same sort of fear and disgust that we were all to familiar with back home.

This was a mistake, I thought. It's going to be just as bad...no, worse, since I barely know a few words of the language, and won't know when trouble is going to hit. I've killed us all.

The man grunted, then spread his arms wide, opening his mouth in the ugliest, most beautiful sight that I've seen in my life.

"Comrades" he shouted in his thickly accented English. "Negro comrades. Welcome to the Soviet Union!"

-Dr. Calvin Hudson, quoted in If I Forget Thee: Tales From The Second Diaspora


LATE NIGHT ACCIDENT ON BELTWAY: SENATOR IN CRITICAL CONDITION

WASHINGTON-New York Senator Jacob Javits was gravely injured in an automobile accident on the Washington, D.C. Beltway last night, in an incident allegedly caused by a hit-and-run driver. Witnesses state that the car driven by Senator Javits was forced off of the road by two Caucasian men driving a late-model black sedan.

-Washington Post, 2/14/62


JAVITS FACING MONTHS OF REHABILITATION, RESIGNS SEAT "FOR GOOD OF NATION"

-AP Wire, 3/2/62


"Cohn speaking"

"Roy..."

"I'll take it."

-Alleged phone exchange between Governor Nelson Rockefeller and former White House Chief Of Staff Roy Cohn following Rockefeller's decision to appoint Cohn to the Senate seat vacated by Jacob Javits


FUGITIVE MALCOLM LITTLE, AKA MALCOLM X, SPOTTED BY CI IN MEXICO CITY. AWAIT INSTRUCTIONS. -H. HUNT

-Confidential
 
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Japhy

Banned
Glad to see Nachos that the project lives again, like everyone who post here is going to be, but hey, lets jump into Question/Random Thought time!

-Ghana IOTL became a Republic in July 1960 and had been Independent since 1957, famously we have WEB Du Bois going over there. Also IOTL 1960 is the year that the Belgians depart the Congo and the start of the Congo Crisis in that once-at-a-time Re pubic, not to mention Kenya becomes Independent 1963 a Dominion in 1965. And the already Independent Ethiopia and Liberia, I figure Black Flight from the United States would at least be more aimed at Ghana, though a few diehards who completely despise the US might leave for the USSR, I figure they're going to be few and far between? All of those nations might also become locations for the Deportations that the Stennis Administration are bound to be starting. Might Stennis trade US Aid for the right to unload his unpersons on these new governments? And might this idea eventually blow up in the Face of US as African nations are now going to have millions of folks with a passionate hatred for the US?

-Roy Cohn's luck is obviously due to his Shadow Network, was it the FBI or the Mob? I'm leaning towards the Mob, and also wondering how America's criminal underworld is going to keep dealing with the changing political situation, Luciano may be back but he can't assert complete control over the entirety of American Crime, and even if he could, IOTL he has only until January 1962 before his death. Once that happens Cohn might only be able to depend on a few of the families. And of course as I've harassed you for years about, it would be an Interesting time for Joe Gallo to cause trouble.

-Also, with Blacks going to the Soviet Union, might we see more interest developing into what happened to those Americans who had already blazed a trail to the Worker's Paradise in the 1930's and met annihilation during Stalin's Purges?

-Finally, where are my Beats? :p And not just the likes of Allen Ginsberg, folks like Kerouac, Kessey, and Burroughs all dropped off the radar once Beano returned to the US and I'm interested in seeing what happened to all of them.

That said, Welcome back.
 
Guyana too is approaching independence, and it might be interesting to see American blacks upsetting the racial balance there or in Trinidad and Tobago.
 
Ooh, this looks very interesting. I'll be following with...well, great interest. 'Cuz it looks very interesting, y'know. ;)

Also, the Soviet Union as the land of freedom? EPIC WIN!
 
Javits out. Damn. He did good work on social policy and civil rights in the '60s and '70s.

Of course, maybe it's for the best that he doesn't have to vote on some of the legislation likely to go down the pike.
 
Yay, I loved this TL.:)

I have to say, it's frankly freaky seeing people run en masse from the USA to the U.S.S.R, which shows you just how screwed up eveything is there. These dont sound like small scale defections but a major movement of refugees.

As to what other postters said. I doubt the blacks would face serious state repression in the Soviet Union (the post-Stalin leaders were never really blood-thristy & almost all people from the US who went to even's Stalin U.S.S.R came back after their contract/job was done and the new African-Soviets have been invited to the U.S.S.R at the Politburo-level).

An African ASR would be intresting or a major African commuinty in the likes of Moscow & Leningrad. Hell this kind very rare (and major) Soviet opening to outsiders,could give impetus reformists elsewhere.
 
I as well join the cheering throngs who wish to express their contentment and enthusiasm pertaining to this work of fictional history.

Side note, is it the CIA who spots Malcolm in Mexico City? You have CI; a typo, I think, unless I missed a matter of terminology). Is he going to come to the same fate as Trotsky did some 22 years earlier in the same metropolitan? If so, I claim ice axe-wank!
 

FDW

Banned
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(Uhh, What I meant to say was WELCOME BACK STATICHAOS!!! I eagerly wait to see how this TL develops, and I apologize for my outburst here)
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
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I as well join the cheering throngs who wish to express their contentment and enthusiasm pertaining to this work of fictional history.

Side note, is it the CIA who spots Malcolm in Mexico City? You have CI; a typo, I think, unless I missed a matter of terminology). Is he going to come to the same fate as Trotsky did some 22 years earlier in the same metropolitan? If so, I claim ice axe-wank!


CI could be Confidential Informant, a law-enforcement abbreviation. For example, "S--t, they killed my CI. Now I have to torture the prisoner to find out what's going on."
 
Wooot! Chip chip huraah! An applause is deserved here.

Now, to the udpate. We are talking about ALT '60es USSR. Kruschev has such a terrible USA against him that it is likely he stays in power; he has Israel on Soviet side, immigrants from America are a extreme propaganda victory. USSR as leader of world progress. I sure hope those single room shacks are (very) interim solution. In '60es USSR was fully in construction craze and "wonderful" concrete soc-realistic apartment buildings were popping out of ground everywhere.

By that time a lot of university towns in USSR were seeing exchange and guest students from newly created Socialist Democracies of Africa so seeing a colored person won't be a OCP for people living there. :)

I wonder if significant number of refugees ends up in Yugoslavia; even with all ATL changes it should remain a more free and more liberal society than USSR.
 
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Thande

Donor
Good to see it back.

I suspect the Soviets would like a population of educated black American exiles that they can use to build African anti-colonial movements around.
 

Orry

Donor
Monthly Donor
"Comrades" he shouted in his thickly accented English. "Negro comrades. Welcome to the Soviet Union!"

Minor Quibble

Would he not have said

"Welcome to The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics....."

Thats the formal title and Soviet Russia 'did' formal
 
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