The Black Rose (58 page)

Sarah shook her head. “No, child. You’re wrong. That train was a sign, and it’s just up to me to see how to use it. You know what? We need to start building on that property I bought north of New York, in Irvington by the Hudson River. We need to talk to Mr. Tandy, that colored architect, and build the most beautiful home Negroes have ever owned.”

The water splashed as Lelia sat up straight, her eyes full of joy and astonishment. “Yes, Mama! With thirty rooms, at least, in a grand Italian style—”

“Yes, but it’s not just that I want such a fancy place for us, Lelia. It’s for the
race
. It’s something folks can be proud of, something we ain’t never had before now. And I know Mr. Ransom gets nervous when I bring up politics, but I can’t keep silent on that end either. God rest Booker T. Washington’s soul, but I think Mr. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter and the rest of them are right—the time to be quiet and keep working hard is over, Lelia. It’s like your daddy used to tell me, it ain’t enough to work hard. I’m real proud Mr. Asa Philip Randolph’s wife is using her Walker hair parlor to keep up her husband’s political newspaper, or they’d have been in the poorhouse by now for sure, but that ain’t all I can do. I need to raise up my voice. I have money now, so my voice is louder. Maybe folks will listen. Maybe this is the time for us, Lela.”

Just that quickly, Lelia’s expression seemed to deflate. Politics, apparently, didn’t inspire her as much as the talk of building a mansion. “Oh, Mama … isn’t it enough you work yourself half to death without trying to save the whole race, too?”

In her mind, once again, Sarah saw that train backing toward her in Clarksdale.

No, child
,
it ain’t nearly enough for me,
she thought.
The good Lord saw fit
to give me a pulpit, and now it’s time to preach.

Chapter Thirty-three

WASHINGTON, D.C.

AUGUST 1, 1917

Sarah had known simultaneous gloom and exultation in her life many times, because she’d learned that her waves of sorrow and joy flowed over her in currents, one after the other. As she stood in front of the White House gate under the heat of the summer sun, gazing at the majestic white columns she had seen many times in photographs, she felt her heart swelling with both excitement and grief. She was grateful to be here, especially in her present company, but the reason they had all come made her stomach ache. She’d been on the verge of tears for weeks.

What was happening to her people?

Of all the places Sarah had lived, St. Louis had felt most like home. That was where all the seeds for where she was now seemed to have been planted. And East St. Louis, Illinois, right across the bridge, was as familiar to her as any city in America. She’d had customers there.

It was bad enough that the United States had entered the war overseas in April, a war with proportions that baffled and terrified Sarah. She couldn’t guess how many young men would die in this Great War in foreign lands. But now a war had been declared at home: In July a melee had broken out in East St. Louis that newspapers were touting as the worst race riot in American history. More than one hundred men, women, and children dead. Six thousand people displaced from their homes because of fires set by a mob of three thousand whites who destroyed houses, churches, and businesses. She’d heard reports from people she knew in St. Louis—Rosetta, for example, and Jessie Robinson, wife of St. Louis printer C.K. Robinson, whom she’d known from church when she was a washerwoman and who had since become a good friend—that the police and National Guard had stood by and done nothing while buildings were torched and people were beaten and lynched. Negroes had been shot as they fled their burning homes. Even a child had been shot and then thrown into a burning building to be roasted alive, she’d heard.
Negroes ain’t people to
them,
Rosetta had written her. How well Sarah knew!

They done kilt him. I seen it. Oh, you poor girl, your man is dead.

The memory of losing Moses on that rainy day in Vicksburg was like a brand to Sarah, and it had been seared anew since the riot. The anti-lynching march called the Negro Silent Protest Parade in Harlem three weeks after the riot had helped her pain some, although Sarah had felt that same bittersweet mingling of exhilaration and sorrow. With the women and children wearing bright white and the men clad in dignified mourning clothes, ten thousand Negroes had marched in stark silence along Fifth Avenue; the only sound had been the muffled beat of a mournful drum. Sarah had never experienced anything like it; to be swallowed in the midst of her people, unified in purpose, demonstrating their undeniable humanity to all who watched them pass. Even the children’s faces had been set in sad determination as they marched for their futures under a mammoth streamer behind the American flag that read
YOUR HANDS ARE FULL
OF BLOOD.

Was it too much to ask to be allowed to live in peace and freedom in a nation that was sending its young men overseas to fight for it elsewhere? Was it too much to ask that lynching be made a federal crime, since states were none too interested in putting a stop to it? Two years ago, D.W. Griffith’s film
Birth of a Nation
had portrayed Negroes as clowns and schemers and the Ku Klux Klan as heroes instead of terrormongers. And while Negroes and fair-minded whites had protested the film, President Woodrow Wilson, a Southerner, had endorsed it.

That fact, almost more than any other, kept Sarah’s heart from rejoicing as she stood in front of the White House with an assemblage of colored leaders. The man inside this White House, who publicly supported segregation, was not a friend to Negroes. He had agreed to see them—
And that’s
a start; it has to mean something
, Sarah tried to convince herself—but the meeting probably would not bear fruit. Margaret Murray Washington had confided to Sarah how frustrated and disappointed her husband had felt in his role as a racial adviser to Presidents Roosevelt and Taft.
Just because
they ask your advice doesn’t mean they’ll take it
, she’d told Sarah,
and you can
find yourself wondering why they asked in the first place.

But maybe it would be different this time, Sarah thought. So many people dead! She and other colored leaders in Harlem had brought a petition to President Wilson asking that lynching and mob violence be made a national crime. Leadership had to begin at the highest level, and at least it would be a start. How could anyone fail to condemn murder, even against Negroes?

She’d
make
him care, Sarah decided. She’d talk from the heart, as she always did in her speaking engagements. She would tell him about Moses. She would use the same persuasive powers she’d been practicing all these years to sell Walker products and inspire women to try to change the mind of a president.

James Weldon Johnson, who stood beside Sarah, let out a long sigh as he stared at the impressive building before them. The writer and NAACP activist had pleasant features and perfect diction. Sarah loved the stirring song he had written, “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” which his brother J. Rosamond Johnson had composed the music for, and she’d had the piece performed on her organ at social gatherings at her home on 136th Street. The Johnson brothers were refined, intelligent men who sparked everyone who met them, and Sarah was proud to know them.

“Well … Here goes nothing, I’m afraid,” Mr. Johnson said in a flat tone.

“And nothing’s exactly what he’ll give,” someone else in the party muttered, either
New York Age
publisher Fred Moore or Reverend Adam Clayton Powell, pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. Sarah didn’t see which of them had spoken.

“At least he said he’d listen,” Sarah said earnestly. “That’s how anything gets started.”

“Well, let’s pray you’re right about that, Madam Walker,” said W.E.B. Du Bois, who stood at the head of the group. Sarah was convinced the Harvard-educated leader was the most poetic and intelligent man she had ever had the pleasure of meeting, with enough fire to match his intellect. The slender man dabbed perspiration from his dramatically receding hairline before slipping his handkerchief back into his coat pocket. His beard was neatly trimmed, and his mustache curled upward at both ends without a stray hair out of place. “I say we go on inside to the battlefront, then, gentlemen … and
lady
,” Mr. Du Bois said, recognizing Sarah with a nod of his head. “Our appointment is at noon, and we don’t want to keep the president waiting.”

After Reverend Powell suggested they bow their heads in a prayer, they formed a small processional past the gate, telling the guards in their dress military uniforms that President Wilson was expecting them. Only then did Sarah’s heart begin to pound in anticipation.

Although Sarah kept her eyes straight ahead, she could feel heavy stares following them through the immaculately polished hallways of the White House. Some of the stares were merely curious, she knew, and some were probably outright hostile. Negroes were rarely considered a welcome sight in such august surroundings. They traveled through several passages, past colorful portraits of past presidents, banners, and patriotic memorabilia. The building was blanketed in a respectful hush, except for the sound of their shoes on the floors.

According to a handsome grandfather clock, it was ten minutes to noon when they reached a fair-size room they were told was the executive waiting room, with plush antique chairs and a small conference table. All of them took their seats in thoughtful silence. The room also doubled as a library, apparently, with glass-enclosed shelves of books with worn spines. Had Thomas Jefferson read any of these books? Or Abraham Lincoln?

At noon, when the silence of the room was broken by the resounding bells of the grandfather clock, the double doors opened. Instinctively, they all rose to their feet, but the man who entered the room was not the president. He was a mousy, dark-haired man with tortoiseshell eyeglasses and a nervous smile. “Ah, Mr. Du Bois,” the man said, reaching out to shake their leader’s hand. “I’m Joseph Tumulty, the president’s secretary. After so much correspondence, it’s good to meet you in person. We appreciate your making this journey.”

They all nodded and shook his hand as they were introduced, then found themselves in the midst of an awkward silence. Mr. Tumulty cleared his throat. “I’m afraid I bring bad news, which isn’t unusual during these times, as you might imagine. We’re happy to read your petition and give it utmost consideration, but the president is unable to meet with you.”

Sarah’s breath died in her throat. Glancing at the eyes of the other men in her group, she saw them exchange knowing gazes. They looked disappointed, but not surprised.

“It would only take a moment,” Mr. Du Bois said calmly. “He needs to know—”

Mr. Tumulty shrugged, his voice becoming curt. “I’m sorry. A meeting is impossible.”

“War business?” Reverend Powell said, his hands behind his back.

At that, Mr. Tumulty’s face began to flush red. “No … not that … but he’s signing an important bill. It has to do with … farming. The animal feed supply …” His voice trailed off.

None of them said a word. If the president was more concerned about animal feed than lynching, they knew there were no words they could utter that could possibly matter to his ears.

Only two weeks later, Sarah was able to shake off the growing sense of frustration she’d felt in the wake of the East St. Louis riot and her disappointing visit to the White House. That feeling had grown worse a week after the visit, when she heard dreadful news about Negro soldiers rioting and shooting white residents in Houston. The incident was apparently sparked by a Negro soldier’s beating after he complained to a police officer who slapped a Negro woman, but it was still a horrible mark against Negro enlisted men.

But now, if anything, Sarah felt a sense of rebirth.

Sarah had created the Madam C.J. Walker Hair Culturists Union of America in April of 1916, hoping to contribute to good causes and protect her agents from competitors who might infringe on their prices. The union’s first convention was scheduled to be held in Philadelphia beginning August 30. As much as Sarah wanted to look forward to the first national gathering of her agents, she arrived in the city with a nagging dread about the event. The local organizers had assured her and Mr. Ransom that the convention would be a rousing success, but Sarah wasn’t so sure. As the ranks of her agents had swelled in the past few years, so had countless incidents of mismanagement, misrepresentation, and all sorts of petty complaints. As if she didn’t have enough to worry about with shipping and suppliers, every time she turned around, she seemed to hear reports about agents removing labels from her products to sell as their own, performing poorly, or criticizing her publicly. And these were the same people who owed their livelihoods to her! Philadelphia’s branch of the union was growing quickly, but Sarah recently had learned from the organization’s president that Walker agents were supplying white drugstores in Philadelphia that were not authorized to carry her products. The agents knew Sarah’s rules and standards, and yet too many were willing to ignore both. Didn’t people have any loyalty? What was wrong with these Negroes?
You
can lead a horse to water
, Sarah often thought, shaking her head,
but Lord
knows you can’t make some of
’
em drink.

Growing pains, Lottie called it. All the nonsense put Sarah in a foul mood, so she was braced for controversy when she went to Philadelphia.

The meeting convened at Union Baptist Church on Fitzwater Street, and Sarah realized right away that her mood would improve drastically as she sat beside Mr. Ransom and the other union officers, including Sadie, at the pulpit. Sadie looked
so
good in her businesslike white linen suit and fashionable ostrich-feather hat; and Mr. Ransom looked proper as always in his gray suit, bow tie, and finely shined black leather shoes. All morning they watched women stream steadily into the church in growing numbers, their voices rising from soft murmurs to a powerful din. There were many faces she knew, of course—Sadie was there, and tireless little Lizette from Pittsburgh, and scores of others—but there were also many agents she did not know, women who had completed the correspondence course or had been trained by others. And, exactly as she had wanted to impart to them, these women were the perfect advertisement for the products and method they sold; some of the women were wearing hats, but she could see that their hair was shiny and healthy, and many of them sported tight, lovely curls. Walker Company truly had taken on its own life with a sisterhood of well-coiffed, dignified Negro women of all skin shades, educational levels, and ages who had come to take care of business. As the church filled, Sarah felt her heart rejoicing.