A History of the African-American People (Proposed) by Strom Thurmond (14 page)

S
IMON
& S
CHUSTER
, I
NC
.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020

October 30, 2002

Dear Barton,

I figured out that backwards spelling. Very clever. Did you do that on purpose?

Thanks for the details on the playing doctor experiences. That all sounds delightful, and of course I understand when you say your motives were altruistic. It’s just that I cannot myself ever remember acting altruistically—certainly not when my clothes or anybody else’s clothes were off. I once told the most obnoxious girl in our (or anybody else’s) high school not only that she had a great personality but that I loved her. And you know what that bought me—simply the right to remove her bra and suck on one nipple. I don’t know why one, but she guarded the other as if it were the Hope Diamond. Maybe she was saving that one for marriage.

You are much more outward-thinking, I see.

OK—east of Wilmington. Got it! Philly. Not my favorite city but certainly easy to get to. Right? And I don’t mean to suggest I know Philly well enough to have an opinion really. Who knows? I expect you do. Is it sort of like Paris? Anyway, Philly it is.

Duolccm

p.s. Tomorrow’s the Halloween party Snell has cooked up. As far as I know, I’m the only guest. He says he’ll supply costumes. Pray for me.

F
ROM THE
D
ESK OF
P
ERCIVAL
E
VERETT

November 1, 2002

Jim:

I didn’t mean to ignore your other letter exactly. It did have a strange calming effect on me. Like dribbling bourbon between my toes and strummin on the old banjo.

Really, though I got lost in the story about how much you enjoyed basketball and sex in high school, I did do what you said. I went back to this second batch of stuff from Wacko Wilkes and tried to see if there isn’t something there.

What do you think? All these petitions from Northern blacks do hint at something that is a partial but important truth: the South functioned as the North’s convenient Other, allowing the North to do very little toward establishing equal schooling, housing, and voting rights by presenting a whipping boy. Focusing on the demonic South allowed the North to keep its attention away from itself, certainly away from the plight of actual black people right there on the other side of the tracks.

That’s true enough and it may hint at a stronger truth for us. What do you think? The North operated this way, constructing the South so as to deflect its attention away from its own defects and establish a kind of automatic virtue it could always draw on. The simple fact of living in the North allowed any asshole to feel righteous without doing a damned thing. The automatic quality is what strikes me. And maybe there’s an automatic quality too in Strom’s alliance with things like States’ Rights. I haven’t got it figured out yet, but maybe we will find that he is, for all his political smarts, less a calculator than a guy operating day by day within a set of assumptions he never questions, that are there for him in the air he breathes and come to him automatically. I guess we just have to be careful that we don’t breathe in the same air—or at least mix it with some L.A. smog.

What do you think?

P

Interoffice Memo

November 3, 2002

Dear Percival,

I see.

Maybe so. Maybe old Strom just was there and acted on being there, kind of like a weather vane? Well, that makes him too passive, but I see what you mean. The North never really thought much about equality for blacks, just found itself in the pleasant situation of being able to feel real good by pointing out how unjust to the blacks the South was. That was certainly easier than doing anything themselves.

But I see what you’re saying: it’s like both sides are battling windmills, setting up caricatures of the other and tilting away at them. Blacks simply define the field; they are of themselves of almost no importance.

That’s too cynical, right?

But you’re thinking Strom is less an independent force than a reflector of positions that are, somehow or other, always there for him—really there before him. He doesn’t wake up on Tuesday and think things through; he wakes up on Tuesday to find things thought through for him.

J

O
FFICE OF
S
ENATOR
S
TROM
T
HURMOND
217 R
USSELL
S
ENATE
B
UILDING
W
ASHINGTON
, D.C. 20515

November 5, 2002

Joy—

What was the name of the girl who gave you her breast? Maybe I knew her. You ever think that maybe her other breast was deformed and she was ashamed of it, trying to protect it and save her dignity? Maybe it was wizened, marked with lines or strange circles, equipped with multiple nipples. Who can say? I’m rather glad you cannot, as it would probably have supplied you with more fuel for mockery. Not everything about sex is funny, you know. Women are not simply objects with tits and pussies and so forth either, just there to be manipulated and lied to so you can—AH! Mother enters the picture again, right?

Philadelphia? Are you mad? That’s North. Look further east and a little south.

Baa

F
ROM THE
D
ESK OF
P
ERCIVAL
E
VERETT

November 5, 2002

Jim—Let’s draft a letter right away to Wilkes, laying out the grounds of our confusion and trying to get him to tell us what the fuck he’s doing. You want to draft it and THEN SEND IT TO ME (not Wilkes, until I see it)?

Percival

S
IMON
& S
CHUSTER
, I
NC
.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020

November 8, 2002

Dear Percival and James,

Well, our project is attracting some attention, you’ll be glad to hear, and it’s attention from the highest quarters. Because my dealings with those in high positions, elected and appointed, would be damaged, perhaps irreparably, were I to bandy about names, I must leave you to guess, or, rather, not to guess but to quiet your curiosity on this point.

In any case, I received a phone call this morning from a Senator—I think I can say that much—asking about our project. This senior and highly respected Senator said that he had heard talk (in the corridors of the Senate and the Senate dining room) about our project. (He also said he had heard wonderful things about me, which I pass on just for completeness sake.) I might add that, in addition to having his ear to the ground, he is a person who has fought back against calamity and, even worse, the calumny of the vicious press in reporting an accident he had years ago. I can’t use names, but it is a tribute to his fighting spirit and that of his family the way he has stood solid and large against those who would be willing to turn a mere accident into something more.

I’ll add only that he is not even of Senator Thurmond’s party and thus is speaking out of concern for the dignity and democratic forms of the Senate. To quote him, “I wouldn’t even call it ‘concern,’ Martin, confident as I am that a friend like you—may I call you a friend? [I said “certainly”]—will do the thing right. I know I can count on you and won’t insult you by asking.”

So, I think that’s wholly reasonable. And I’ll just repeat the luminous Senator’s words: I know I can count on you to do this thing right and won’t insult you by asking. I mean I can count on you not to mock Senator T or anything like that, right?

Yours truly,
Martin A. Snell
Martin Snell, Editor