Being black in early 1960's racially torn Alabama your outlook was grim at best. What if you were a white supremacist, woke up one morning and found yourself with black skin and the black person you bullied the day before now wore your white skin? Would you hold onto to your racist views or change?
My Enemy's Face
Copyright by terrymoran.
Genre
Award Category
My first ten pages are attached in PDF format.
Synopsis:
The summer of 1965 was a turbulent time for racially torn Alabama. Its Governor preached "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." In the fictitious town of Webber, Alabama, the Governor's sentiment and views were endorsed, practiced and enforced. Only when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted and made law, was Alabama forced to come to terms with its racist and backwards ways. This also meant that Webber, Alabama, like it or not, had to comply with the newly imposed law.
Billy Ray Sawyer is the All-American kid. The high school football hero hails from the "right" side of the tracks. He is also the son of Mayor Joshua Sawyer who comes from money and may be the richest and most powerful man in Alabama, just shy of Governor George Wallace. Joshua Sawyer is a lifelong segregationist, racist and secretly heads up his region's Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Unfortunately, Mayor Sawyer has shaped and molded Billy Ray to conform and accept his racist and narrow minded ways.
Noah Franklin is the polar opposite of Billy Ray. A hard working, black son of impoverished parents, he doesn't have a racist bone in his body. Noah believes God created everyone in his own image and color is not a barrier but an opportunity. He believes if you put your mind to it, you can be whatever or whoever you want to be, regardless of the color of your skin. Noah believed this wholeheartedly until the the fall of 1965, when the federal government forced integration of the local white high school.
At the bidding of his father, Billy Ray bullies and teases the newly arrived black students, including Noah, on the first day of school integration. After school dismisses, Billy Ray and his intolerant friends chase Noah through the woods and administer a brutal beat down to teach a lesson to this young man who believes in equality for all.
Through what can only be explained as an Act of God, Billy Ray wakes up the next morning with black skin, and looking exactly like Noah. Likewise, overnight Noah is now a carbon copy of Billy Ray. Both their spirits and faith are tested through triumphs and failures in a community not ready for change or unity. Hate turns into friendship as the two teenagers must deal with their new circumstances. In an ultimate act of sacrifice, one will be forced to lay down his life to save the other. In an act of unselfishness, the other will race against time to save him.
