Three Days Before the Shooting ... (213 page)

“Now Thompson here was talking about our not having any ‘forms’ through which we can see what the Nigra is up to politically and I’ve been demonstrating that he’s mistaken. But he’s right to the extent that the Nigra hasn’t developed any forms of his own. He’s just copied the white man and twisted what he copied to fit the Nigra taste. But he does have his own Nigra church, and his own Nigra religion, and the point I want to make is that he gets
political
according to his religion. Did you ever hear that explained before?”

“I haven’t,” I said.

“I know it. None of you have; so I’ll go on and tell you. Baptist Nigras and Methodist Nigras and Holy Roller Nigras are O.K. Even Seven Day Adventist Nigras are all right—even though they’re a bit strange even to other Nigras. All these Nigra religions are O.K. But you have got to watch the Nigra who changes
from
Baptist
to
Episcopalian
or
Catholic. Because that is a Nigra who has gone ambitious and turned his back on the South. And make no mistake, that Nigra isn’t searching for God, no siree; he’s looking for a political scantling to head-whip you with.

“And watch the young Nigra who joins up with Father Divine. It’s not the same as when a pore old-fashioned Nigra who’s lost in the North gets homesick
for the South and joins up; the young one is out to undermine society and is probably staying up nights scheming and praying and trying to get God on the Nigra side. Same thing when a Nigra becomes a Jew—who the hell ever heard of one of our
good
Nigras joining up with the Jews? When a Nigra does that he’s political, subversive, unruly and probably over-sexed—even for a Nigra!

“Now what are some of the political aspects of the Nigra here in D.C.? Well, around here things are so out of hand, mongrelized and confused that I don’t know where to begin, but here are a few manifestations: Nigras visiting white folks; walking or riding along the streets with white women; visiting the Congress; hanging around Abe Lincoln’s monument; visiting white churches; carrying picket signs; sending delegations to see the President; carrying briefcases with real papers in them; Nigras wearing homburg hats and Chesterfield overcoats; hiring uniformed chauffeurs, especially if the chauffeur is white. All these things are political, because the Nigra who does them is dying to become a diplomat so that he can get assigned abroad from where he aims to monkey with our sovereign states rights.

“To these add those Nigras from Georgia and Mississippi who turn up wearing those African robes and turbans in an effort to break into white society and get closer to white folks. Gentlemen, there’s nothing worse or more political than a Nigra who denies the United States of America because that is a Nigra who has not only turned his back on his mammy and pappy but has denied the South!

“Here are some other forms of Nigra politics which y’all have over-looked: these young buck Nigras going around wearing berets, beards and tennis shoes in the wintertime and whose britches are so doggone tight that they look like they’re ‘bout to bust out of them. They’re not the same as the white boys who dress that way, they’re politically dangerous and it’s worse, in the long run, than letting a bunch of Nigras run around the Capital carrying loaded pistols. A law ought to be passed before something serious occurs.

“And be on watch for your quiet Nigra. Be very careful of the Nigra who’s too quiet when other loud-mouthed Nigras—who are safe Nigras—are out sassing white folks on the street corners and in the Yankee press and over the Yankee radio and T.V. Never mind the loudmouths, they’re like the little fyce dogs that bark at you when you approach the big gate and then, when you walk into the yard they run to lick your hand. Throw them a bone. But keep your eye on the quiet Nigra who watches every move the white man makes and studies it, because he’s probably trying to think up a theory and a strategy and tactic to subvert something….”

“But go back to the automobile,” Wiggins said. “My father-in-law is a dealer and I think he needs instruction.”

“I’m glad you reminded me,” McGowan said. “Now I’ve told you about those little foreign cars but there’s more to the political significance of Nigras and
autos. Cadillacs
used
to be O.K. but after what that Nigra did today on Senator Sunraider’s lawn, I’m not so positive. That doggone Nigra was trying to politicalize the Cadillac! Which proves again what I say about everything the Nigra does being potentially political. But once you grasp this fact you also have to watch the Nigra who doesn’t want a Cadillac, because he can stand a heap of political analysis.

“And pay close attention to the Nigra who has the money to buy one but picks an Imperial instead. Likewise the Nigras who love English autos. Watch all Nigras who pick Jaguars, Humbers, and if you ever hear of one, Rolls Royces. Likewise those who go around bragging about the Nigra vote electing the president of the United States. Such Nigras are playing dirty politics even though they might not be able to vote themselves. Yes, and watch the Nigra who comes telling a white man about the Nigra’s ‘gross yearly income,’ because there you have an arrogant, biggety Nigra who is right up in your face talking open politics and who thinks you don’t recognize it. Unless of course, you’re convinced that the Nigra is really trying to tell you that he knows how you and him can make some quick money. In such a case the Nigra is just trying to make a little hustle for himself, so make a deal with him and don’t worry about it because that Nigra doesn’t give a damn about anybody or anything except himself—while the other type is trying to intimidate you.

“Then there’s the Nigra who reads the Constitution and the law books and
broods
over them. That’s one of the most political types there is. And like unto him is the Nigra who scratches his behind when he talks to a white man instead of scratching his head in the traditional Southern Nigra manner—because even where the Nigra
scratches
is political!

“But gentlemen, let me hasten to say after this very brief and inadequate catalogue of Nigra political deviousness, that to my considerable knowledge no Nigra has ever even
thought
about assassinating anybody. And I’ll tell y’all why: It was bred out of him years ago!”

Even as I laughed I watched the conflicting expressions moving back and forth across McGowan’s broad face. It looked as though he wanted desperately to grin but like a postage stamp which had become too wet, the grin kept sliding in and out of position. And I in turn became agitated. My laughter—it was really hysteria—was painful. For I realized that McGowan was obsessed by history to the point of nightmare. He had the dark man confined in a package and this was the way he carried him everywhere, saw him in everything. But now, laughing, I realized that I envied McGowan and admitted to myself with a twinge of embarrassment, that some of the things he said were not only amusing but true. And perhaps the truth lay precisely in their being seen humorously. For McGowan said things about Negroes with absolute conviction which I dared not even think. Could it be that he was more honest than I, that his free expression of his feelings, his prejudices, made him freer than I? Could it be that his freedom to say what he felt about all that Sam the waiter symbolized actually
made him freer than I? Suddenly I despised his power to make me feel buried fears and possibilities, his power to define so much of the reality in which I lived and which I seldom bothered to think about.

And was it possible that the main object of McGowan’s passion was really an idea, the idea of a non-existent past rather than a living people?

“Yes, gentlemen,” McGowan was saying. “The only way to protect yourself from the Nigra is to master politics and that you Yankees have never done because y’all have never studied the Nigra.”

Across the room I watched Sam, his hands held behind him, smiling as he chatted pleasantly with a white-haired old gentleman. Were there Negroes like McGowan, I wondered. And what would they say about me? How completely did I, a liberal, exradical, northerner, dominate Sam’s sense of life, his idea of politics? Absolutely, or not at all? Was he, Sam, prevented by some piety from confronting me in a humorous manner, as my habit of mind, formed during the radical Thirties, prevented me from confronting him; or did he, as some of my friends suspected, regard all whites through the streaming eyes and aching muscles of one continuous, though imperceptible and inaudible, belly laugh?
What the hell
, I thought,
is Sam’s last name?

JUNETEENTH

QUARTERLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE 4
(1965): 262–76

No, the wounded man thought, Oh no! Get back to that; back to a bunch of old-fashioned Negroes celebrating an illusion of emancipation, and getting it mixed up with the Resurrection, minstrel shows and vaudeville routines? Back to that tent in the clearing surrounded by trees, that bowl-shaped impression in the earth beneath the pines?… Lord, it hurts. Lordless and without loyalty, it hurts. Wordless, it hurts. Here and especially here. Still I see it after all the roving years and flickering scenes: Twin lecterns on opposite ends of the platform, behind one of which I stood on a wide box, leaning forward to grasp the lectern’s edge. Back. Daddy Hickman at the other. Back to the first day of that week of celebration. Juneteenth. Hot, dusty. Hot with faces shining with sweat and the hair of the young dudes metallic with grease and straightening irons. Back to that? He was not so heavy then, but big with the quick energy of a fighting bull and still kept the battered silver trombone on top of the piano, where at the climax of a sermon he could reach for it and stand blowing tones that sounded like his own voice amplified; persuading, denouncing, rejoicing—moving beyond words back to the undifferentiated cry. In strange towns and cities the jazz musicians were always around him. Jazz. What was jazz and what religion back there? Ah yes, yes, I loved him. Everyone did, deep down. Like a great, kindly, daddy bear along the streets, my hand lost in his huge paw. Carrying me on his shoulder so
that I could touch the leaves of the trees as we passed. The true father, but black, black. Was he a charlatan—am I—or simply as resourceful in my fashion. Did he know himself, or care? Back to the problem of all that. Must I go back to the beginning when only he knows the start …?

Juneteenth and him leaning across the lectern, resting there looking into their faces with a great smile, and then looking over to me to make sure that I had not forgotten my part, winking his big red-rimmed eye at me. And the women looking back and forth from him to me with that bright, bird-like adoration in their faces; their heads cocked to one side. And him beginning:

On this God-given day, brothers and sisters, when we have come together to praise God and celebrate our oneness, our slipping off the chains, let’s us begin this week of worship by taking a look at the ledger. Let us, on this day of deliverance, take a look at the figures writ on our bodies and on the living tablet of our heart. The Hebrew children have their Passover so that they can keep their history alive in their memories—so let us take one more page from their book and, on this great day of deliverance, on this day of emancipation, let’s us tell ourselves our story….

Pausing, grinning down…. Nobody else is interested in it anyway, so let us enjoy it ourselves, yes, and learn from it.

And thank God for it. Now let’s not be too solemn about it either, because this here’s a happy occasion. Rev. Bliss over there is going to take the part of the younger generation, and I’ll try to tell it as it’s been told to me. Just look at him over there, he’s ready and raring to go—because he knows that a true preacher is a kind of educator, and that we have got to know our story before we can truly understand God’s blessings and how far we have still got to go. Now you’ve heard him, so you know that he can preach.

Amen! They all responded and I looked preacher-faced into their shining eyes, preparing my piccolo voice to support his baritone sound.

Amen is right, he said. So here we are, five thousand strong, come together on this day of celebration. Why? We just didn’t happen. We’re here and that is an undeniable fact—but how come we’re here? How and why here in these woods that used to be such a long way from town? What about it, Rev. Bliss, is that a suitable question on which to start?

God, bless you, Rev. Hickman, I think that’s just the place we have to start. We of the younger generation are still ignorant about these things. So please, sir, tell us just how we came to be here in our present condition and in this land….

Not back to that me, not to that six-seven year old ventriloquist’s dummy dressed in a white evening suit. Not to that charlatan born—must I have no charity for me?…
.

Was it an act of God, Rev. Hickman, or an act of man…. Not to that puppet with a memory like a piece of flypaper….

We came, amen, Rev. Bliss, sisters and brothers, as an act of God, but through—I said through, an act of cruel, ungodly man.

An act of almighty God,
my treble echo sounded
, but through the hands of cruel man.

Amen, Rev. Bliss, that’s how it happened. It was, as I understand it, a cruel calamity laced up with a blessing—or maybe a blessing laced up with a calamity….

Laced up with a blessing, Rev. Hickman? We understand you partially because you have taught us that God’s sword is a two-edged sword. But would you please tell us of the younger generation just why it was a blessing?

It was a blessing, brothers and sisters, because out of all the pain and the suffering, out of the night of storm, we found the Word of God.

So here we found the Word. Amen, so now we are here. But where did we come from, Daddy Hickman?

We come here out of Africa, son; out of Africa.

Africa? Way over across the ocean? The black land? Where the elephants and monkeys and the lions and tigers are?

Yes, Rev. Bliss, the jungle land. Some of us have fair skins like you, but out of Africa too.

Out of Africa truly, sir?