Black Like Me (18 page)

“Boy, come here. Hurry!”

Astonished, I obeyed.

“Get those bags out of the cab,” she ordered testily, seeming outraged at my lack of speed.

Without thinking, I allowed my face to spread to a grin as though overjoyed to serve her. I carried her bags to the bus and received three haughty dimes. I thanked her profusely. Her eyebrows knitted with irritation and she finally waved me away.

I took the early afternoon bus for Tuskegee, walked through
a Southern town of great beauty and tranquility. The famed Tuskegee Institute was, I learned, out of the city limits. In fact the major portion of the Negro residential area is out of the city limits - put there when the city fathers decided it was the simplest way to invalidate the Negro vote in local elections.

The spirit of George Washington Carver hangs strongly over the campus - a quiet, almost hauntingly quiet area of trees and grass. It radiates an atmosphere of respect for the work of one’s hands and mind, of human dignity. In interviews here, my previous findings were confirmed: with the exception of those trained in professions where they can set up independent practice, they can find jobs commensurate with their education only outside the South. I found an atmosphere of great courtesy, with students more dignified and more soberly dressed than one finds on white campuses. Education for them is a serious business. They are so close to the days when their ancestors were kept totally illiterate, when their ancestors learned to read and write at the risk of severe punishment, that learning is an almost sacred privilege now. They see it also as the only possible way out of the morass in which the Negro finds himself.

Later that afternoon, after wandering around the town, I turned back toward the Institute to talk with the dean. A white man stood in front of a Negro recreation parlor near the college entrance gates and waved to me. I hesitated at first, fearing he would be just another bully. But his eyes pleaded with me to trust him.

I crossed slowly over to him.

“Did you want me?” I asked.

“Yes - could you tell me where is Tuskegee Institute?”

“Right there,” I said, pointing to the gates a block away.

“Aw, I know it,” he grinned. I smelled whiskey in the fresh evening air. “I was just looking for an excuse to talk to you,” he admitted. “Do you teach here?”

“No, I’m just traveling through,” I said.

“I’m a Ph.D.,” he said uncomfortably. “I’m from New York - down here as an observer.”

“For some government agency?”

“No, strictly on my own,” he said. I studied him closely, since other Negroes were beginning to watch us. He appeared to be in his early fifties and was well enough dressed.

“How about you and me having a drink?” he said.

“No, thanks,” I said and turned away.

“Wait a minute, dammit. You people are my brothers. It’s people like me that are your only hope. How do you expect me to observe if you won’t talk to me?”

“Very well,” I said. “I’ll be glad to talk with you.”

“Hell, I’ve observed all I can stomach,” he said. “Let’s go get just roaring blinko drunk and forget all this damned prejudice stuff.”

“A white man and a Negro,” I laughed. “We’d both hear from the merciful Klan.”

“Damned right - a white man and a Negro. Hell, I don’t consider myself any better than you - not even as good, maybe. I’m just trying to show some brotherhood.”

Though I knew he had been drinking, I wondered that an educated man and an observer could be so obtuse - could create such an embarrassing situation for a Negro.

“I appreciate it,” I said stiffly. “But it would never work.”

“They needn’t know,” he whispered, leaning close to me, an almost frantic look in his eyes as though he were begging not to be rejected. “I’m going to get soused anyway. Hell, I’ve had all this I can stand. It’s just between you and me. We could go into the woods somewhere. Come on - for brotherhood’s sake.”

I felt great pity for him. He was obviously lonely and fearful of rejection by the very people he sought to help. But I wondered if he could know how offensive this overweening “brotherhood” demonstration was. Others stood by and watched with frowns of disapproval.

At that moment a Negro drove up in an old car and stopped. Ignoring the white man, he spoke to me. “Would you like to buy some nice fat turkeys?” he asked.

“I don’t have any family here,” I said.

“Wait a minute there,” the white man said. “Hell, I’ll buy all your turkeys … just to help you out. I’ll show you fellows that not
all white men are bastards. How many’ve you got in there?” We looked into the car and saw several live turkeys in the backseat.

“How much for all of them?” the white man asked, pulling a ten-dollar bill from his wallet.

The vendor looked at me, puzzled, as though he did not wish to unload such a baggage on the generous white man.

“What can you do with them when you get them out of the car?” I asked.

“What’re you trying to do,” the white man asked belligerently, “kill this man’s sale?”

The vendor quickly put in: “No … no, mister, he’s not trying to do that. I’m glad to sell you all the turkeys you want. But where you want me to unload them? You live around here?”

“No, I’m just an observer. Hell, take the ten dollars. I’ll give the damned turkeys away.”

When the vendor hesitated, the white man asked: “What’s the matter - did you steal them or something?”

“Oh, no sir …”

“You afraid I’m a cop or something?”

The unpardonable had been said. The white man, despite his protestations of brotherhood, had made the first dirty suggestion that came to his mind. He was probably unaware of it but it escaped none of us. By the very tone of his question he revealed his contempt for us. His voice had taken on a hard edge, putting us in our place, as they say. He had become just like the whites he decried.

“I didn’t steal them” the turkey man said coldly. “You can come out to my farm. I’ve got more there.”

The white man, sensing the change, the resentment, glared at me. “Hell, no wonder nobody has any use for you. You don’t give a man a chance to be nice to you. And dammit, I’m going to put that in my report.” He turned away grumbling. “There’s something ‘funny’ about all of you.” Then he raised his head toward the evening sky and announced furiously: “But before I do anything else, I’m going to get drunk, stinking drunk.”

He stamped off down the road toward open country. Negroes around me shook their heads slowly, with regret. We had
witnessed a pitiful one-man attempt to make up for some of the abuses the man had seen practiced against the Negro. It had failed miserably. If I had dared, I would have gone after him and tried to bridge the terrible gap that had come between him and us.

Instead, I walked to the street lamp and wrote in my notebook:

“ We must return to them their lawful rights, assure equality of justice - and then everybody leave everybody else to hell alone. Paternalistic - we show our prejudice in our paternalism - we downgrade their dignity.”

It was too late to visit the dean of Tuskegee, so I went to the bus station and boarded a bus for Atlanta via Auburn, Alabama.

The trip was without incident until we changed buses in Auburn. As always, we Negroes sat in the rear. Four of us occupied the back bench. A large, middle-aged Negro woman sat in front of us to the left, a young Negro man occupied the seat in front of us to the right.

At one of the stops, two white women boarded and could find no place to sit. No gallant Southern white man (or youth) rose to offer them a place in the “white section.”

The bus driver called back and asked the young Negro man and the middle-aged Negro woman to sit together so the white women could have one of the seats. Both ignored the request. We felt tensions mount as whites craned to stare back at us.

A redheaded white man in a sports shirt stood up, faced the rear and called out to the Negro, “Didn’t you hear the driver? Move out, man.”

“They’re welcome to sit here,” the Negro said quietly, indicating the empty seat beside him and the one beside the woman across the aisle.

The driver looked dumfounded and then dismayed. He walked halfway to the rear and, struggling to keep his voice under control, said: “They don’t want to sit with you people, don’t you know that? They don’t want to - is that plain enough?”

We felt an incident boiling, but none of us wanted the young
Negro, who had paid for his ticket, to be forced to vacate his seat. If the women did not want to sit with us, then let one of the white men offer his seat and he could come and sit with us. The young Negro said no more. He gazed out the window.

The redhead bristled. “Do you want me to slap these two jigaboos out of their seats?” he asked the driver in a loud voice.

We winced and turned into mummies, staring vacantly, insulating ourselves against further insults.

“No - for God’s sake - please - no rough stuff,” the driver pleaded.

One of the white women looked toward us apologetically, as though she were sorry to be the cause of such a scene. “It’s all right,” she said. “Please …” asking the driver and the young man to end their attempts to get her a seat.

The redhead flexed his chest muscles and slowly took his seat, glaring back at us. A young teenager, sitting halfway to the front, sniggered: “Man, he was going to slap that nigger, all right.” The white bully was his hero, but other whites maintained a disapproving silence.

At the Atlanta station we waited for the whites to get off. One of them, a large middle-aged man, hesitated, turned and stepped back toward us. We hardened ourselves for another insult. He bent over to speak to the young Negro. “I just wanted to tell you that before he slapped you, he’d have had to slap me down first,” he said.

None of us smiled. We wondered why he had not spoken up while the whites were still on the bus. We nodded our appreciation and the young Negro said gently: “It happens all the time.”

“Well, I just wanted you to know - I was on your side, boy.” He winked, never realizing how he had revealed himself to us by calling our companion the hated name of “boy.” We nodded wearily in response to his parting nod.

I was the last to leave the bus. An elderly white man, bald and square of build, dressed in worn blue work clothes, peered intently at me. Then he crimped his face as though I were odious and snorted, “Phew!” His small blue eyes shone with repugnance, a look of such unreasoning contempt for my skin that it filled me
with despair.

It was a little thing, but piled on all the other little things it broke something in me. Suddenly I had had enough. Suddenly I could stomach no more of this degradation - not of myself but of all men who were black like me. Abruptly I turned and walked away. The large bus station was crowded with humanity. In the men’s room, I entered one of the cubicles and locked the door. For a time I was safe, isolated; for a time I owned the space around me, though it was scarcely more than that of a coffin. In medieval times, men sought sanctuary in churches. Nowadays, for a nickel, I could find sanctuary in a colored rest room. Then, sanctuary had the smell of incense-permeated walls. Now it had the odor of disinfectant.

The irony of it hit me. I was back in the land of my forefathers, Georgia. The town of Griffin was named for one of them. Too I, a Negro, carried the name hated by all Negroes, for former Governor Griffin (no kin that I would care to discover) devoted himself heroically to the task of keeping Negroes “in their place.” Thanks in part to his efforts, this John Griffin celebrated a triumphant return to the land from which his people had sprung by seeking sanctuary in a toilet cubicle at the bus station.

I took out my cleansing cream and rubbed it on my hands and face to remove the stain. I then removed my shirt and undershirt, rubbed my skin almost raw with the undershirt, and looked into my hand mirror. I could pass for white again. I repacked my duffel, put my shirt and coat back on and wondered how I could best leave the colored rest room without attracting attention. I guessed it was near midnight, but the traffic in and out remained heavy.

Oddly, there was little of the easy conversation one generally hears in public rest rooms, none of the laughter and “woofing.” I waited, listening to footsteps come and go, to the water-sounds of hand-washing and flushing.

Much later, when I heard no more footsteps, I stepped from my cubicle and walked toward the door that led into the main waiting room. I hurried into the crowd unnoticed.

The shift back to white status was always confusing. I had
to guard against the easy, semi-obscene language that Negroes use among themselves, for coming from a white man it is insulting. It was midnight. I asked a doorman where to find a room for the night. He indicated a neon sign that stood out against the night sky - YMCA, only a block or so away. I realized that though I was well dressed for a Negro, my appearance looked shabby for a white man. He judged me by that and indicated a place where lodging was inexpensive.

T
elephone calls
to the
Sepia
office in Fort Worth. They asked me to do some more stories about Atlanta. My photographer, Don Rutledge, could not get there for two days. I telephoned the Trappist monastery at Conyers, Georgia, about thirty miles away and asked if they would receive me for a short visit. I felt the past weeks, the strange sickness that cried for a change, for some relief from the constant racial grind.

I checked out of the Y and boarded a bus for Conyers.

The driver had mastered one of the techniques of degrading the Negro. Every time a white person got off, the driver said politely: “Watch your step, please.” But whenever a Negro approached the front to get off, the driver’s silence fairly roared. His refusal to extend even this courtesy to passengers who had paid as much as any white for the tickets was so conspicuous it made me aware of the stirrings of resentment among the Negroes behind me.

Nicely dressed, respectable Negro women, even the aged, could not draw from him the courteous warning, “Watch your step.” The implication was clear and unmistakable.