Someone Wishes to Speak to You (12 page)

After having thanked the Hills for the most enjoyable of evenings, Mathew had suggested in the taxi back to Lucienne’s flat that they should take Yvonne’s advice and hire a car to visit Macon. Lucienne was very enthusiastic and so the following morning, Mathew phoned Macon’s tourist office who recommended that he make reservations at the Lakeside Inn. He duly reserved two rooms for the coming weekend, with views of Lake Tobesofkee.

With approximately three months to go before it was time to submit his dissertation, Mathew returned to his Hartington Hall weekday routine in order to finalise the writing up of his thesis. He had to restrict socialising with his university friends as much as possible. Whenever he had time to reflect on Lucienne and Antonia, he found it almost impossible to reconcile his respective deep feelings for them. This had not been helped at all when he had received a rather romantic letter from Antonia, who had written to say how much she missed his company, especially when she had returned home to Yorkshire, and that she did so much hope he would be back in the UK by Christmas. What with Lucienne’s regular expressions of love for him, Mathew found himself in an
emotional tug of war. He felt that he had adopted somewhat of a ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ attitude in his relationship with them both. However, with no foreseeable solution to his emotional disarray, Mathew decided to concentrate as much as possible on his priority; preparing his doctorate dissertation.

On Friday afternoon, Mathew collected an excited Lucienne from the Yerkes Center’s reference library, and although the heat of the day was still intense, the drive down to Macon through the rolling hills proved to be a very enjoyable journey. They followed a sign to the shores of Lake Tobesofkee and soon arrived at the small, quaint-looking Lakeside Inn. While Mathew removed their overnight bags from the boot, he noticed that the ‘Vacancies’ sign behind a glass panel on the front door was being turned around.

As they entered the reception area of the hotel, a middle-aged man with the appearance of a bull mastiff glared at Lucienne.

‘Did you read the sign?’ he snarled at Mathew. ‘There’s no vacancies here tonight.’

‘I’ve booked and paid for two lake-view rooms on my Amex card. Here’s the confirmation reference.’ Although taken aback by such a rude reception, Mathew was quick to find the slip of paper in his wallet and hand it to the increasingly angry-looking man, who then disappeared into a back office where he could be overheard almost screaming at someone. He returned a few minutes later.

‘Well, there’s been a mistake with these reservations. There’s only one room with a lake view available, which you can have, but the black girl will have to take a room at the far end of the building. If the lady doesn’t like it,’ he sneered sarcastically, ‘she can try a hotel in another part of Macon which she may find more . . . appropriate.’

Shocked by such aggression, Mathew had to do everything possible to control his anger. Glowering back at the hotelier, after a long pause, he replied as calmly as he was able, ‘Could
we see the rooms?’ The man returned to the office and after more angry words from within they were joined by an agitated and tearful-looking lady, who took them upstairs.

‘These will just about do – as long as my friend has the lake view room,’ Mathew insisted. ‘I’m sure you’ll agree the other room is far from acceptable for a lady to sleep in.’

‘I’m afraid you have to take the lake view room. My husband, Jed Jarman, he’s the owner and he sticks to his rules. There’s a notice at the entrance which says “Rights of Admission Reserved”. It states that only Europeans are allowed to stay in this part of his hotel, non-Europeans have to be accommodated elsewhere.’ The woman looked at the floor. ‘I’m really sorry I can’t help you, but those are the rules.’

Mathew was tempted to contact the local sheriff’s office immediately and cite the 1964 Civil Rights Act that had officially ended such public segregation in the USA almost ten years before, but decided against it. Prior to leaving Atlanta (he had not considered it necessary to mention it to Lucienne), one of his friends had warned him that Macon was in a district of the Deep South where there was still quite a sizeable percentage of the white population who resisted change. His friend had warned him that should he encounter any ‘rednecks’ in Macon while out with Lucienne, to be careful not to overreact in case the situation should escalate.

That evening, in spite of the hotel restaurant being only half full, as soon as they arrived at the dining room they were immediately guided to a table in the far corner, as if Jarman wished to completely hide the presence of Lucienne from the rest of his hotel guests. However Lucienne, being the level-headed, mature mortal that she had always been, acted as if everything was in order and during the course of the meal she was as cheerful and as charming as ever. After taking coffee in the hotel lounge, where they had also been directed to a table in a secluded corner and received a few
disapproving looks as they walked through the room, Mathew had accompanied Lucienne to her room at the far end of the building, passing as they went a bathroom with a ‘Whites Only’ notice on its door. After giving Lucienne a quick hug and kissing her gently on her lips, he said ‘I’m so sorry to have brought you here . . . I’ll take this whole despicable racist attitude up with the appropriate Civil Rights authorities in Macon before we go back. I can’t believe people still think like this, I never expected it.’

‘It’s not your fault, Mathew. But we’re here now and we can’t do anything about it, so we may as well make the best of the weekend, don’t you think?’

He smiled and kissed her again, impressed at her strength and resilience under such trying circumstances.

The following morning, after an early breakfast, Mathew phoned Dr Murray Cohen. As suggested by Yvonne, Osman Hill had provided them with an introduction to this friend of his, an archaeologist by profession, who had for many years been gathering African-American art and now had a sizable collection of artefacts and documents, with the idea of establishing an African-American Museum in Macon. Dr Cohen invited them to his home that morning.

‘How lovely to meet you both! Any friend of Osman Hill is a friend of mine – come right in.’ As soon as they entered Dr Cohen’s house Mathew was tempted to tell him about Jed Jarman’s extreme racist attitude, but he decided to leave the matter until later in the day.

While they were sitting on the veranda with some ice-cold lemon drinks, Dr Cohen told them that he had been awarded his doctorate from the University of Georgia as a result of the data he had collected during the major excavations of the Ocmulgee Monument, which had taken place in the 1930s.

‘Much of the research we carried out was with a
ground-scanning instrument, very primitive compared with anything in use today but it allowed us to locate shapes underground.’

‘Really?’ said Mathew. ‘Archeology fascinates me, but I’m ashamed to say I know very little about it.’

‘Well, for this dig, it was the ground scanner that led to all the other discoveries. As we found the forms underground, we could identify the unearthed dwellings of an ancient civilization of mound builders. These were near the Ocmulgee River, just to the north west of what’s now downtown Macon.’

‘So what kind of things did you find?’ asked Lucienne.

‘Pretty much what we were expecting to find – pieces of domestic ware, animal bones, axe heads, even some fine decorative pieces – but the quantity and the analysis we were able to carry out meant that the site is now considered to be one of the largest Mississippi-period settlements in the eastern USA with mounds dating back about 1000 years. It gave us an incredible amount of data on how they lived their lives.’

Although the doctor’s sizeable collection of artefacts was not currently open to the general public, he had made a room in an outbuilding available to schools as an educational resource devoted to the African-American experience as far back as 1619. As he showed them round, Mathew and Lucienne found the doctor’s commentary about African-American art, history and culture during the past 350 years to be enlightening and enthralling. He was generous enough to spend the majority of the morning explaining in detail the historically significant achievements of African-American inventors, military leaders, artisans, musicians, writers and artists, as well as a number of outstanding heroes.

‘Now this,’ Dr Cohen explained, ‘is one of the jewels of the collection. It’s called “From Africa to America”, a work by a contemporary Macon artist, Wilfred Stroud.’ They took in the intricate mural in front of them, depicting the journey of Africans from West Africa to America beginning in the early seventeenth century, portraying significant events up to
the twentieth century. It was an incredibly moving piece in which the artist had managed to capture the suffering of slaves and degradation of African-American people and their struggle against oppression.’

‘Your collection is quite remarkable, Dr Cohen,’ said Lucienne. ‘It has a great historical value – do you have a plan for the future?’

‘My dearest wish is that it will form the main nucleus of an African-American museum in Macon for all to benefit by, so that it can help educate and promote understanding.’

Once they had seen the collection and were back on the shaded veranda, Mathew decided the time was right to bring up the problem of the Lakeside Inn.

‘Dr Cohen . . . I wanted to ask your advice on something. We arrived at the Lakeside Inn yesterday having pre-booked two rooms, and were treated with the most hostile racism I have ever witnessed. The owner, a Mr Jed Jarman, tried to pretend there were no vacancies and eventually, Lucienne was put in a room at the back of the hotel instead of one the lake view rooms I’d asked for – we were practically hidden from view at dinner. How should I go about complaining to the relevant authorities? We can’t let Jarman carry on treating people like that.’

‘I honestly can’t believe this attitude is still going on in Macon . . . I am genuinely shocked by what you’ve told me. Coincidentally, I’ve just been elected as chairman of the city’s Anti-Racial Discrimination Board and I will certainly do something about this as soon as I can, on Monday morning. In the meantime, I would recommended that on your return to Atlanta, you write a letter to the Mayor of Macon at City Hall on university note paper, with an open copy of it to the Chief of Police, both at the same address, as well as mailing a copy to him. That way I can table the letter at the next meeting of the ARDB.’

Dr Cohen realised how upset Lucienne must be, although
she hid it well. He guided them through his garden to an outhouse in order to show them his collection of written material about the part that Macon had played as the main armory for the Confederate forces during the American Civil War, and how the Union forces had laid a successful siege to Fort Macon in 1882. But he was particularly keen to show them both his sizeable collection of writings about the Civil Rights Movement, and how it had been less than ten years since African Americans had to enter a cinema by a separate door; drink from different water fountains; use separate toilets; and were segregated on city buses, in schools and in the majority of public places. Even park benches had notices on them denoting ‘Whites Only’.

‘At the height of the demonstrations in Macon against the passing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964,’ he explained, ‘I wrote a lead article for the
Macon Telegraph
voicing my strong support for the Democrats’ intention to have the act passed by Congress. As a result of the article, my house was targeted by members of the local Ku Klux Klan. They painted a swastika in red paint on the most prominent part of my garden wall and wrote “The Home of a Nigger Lover” in large letters. They’re a nasty bunch of fellas.’

‘Were they ever caught?’ asked an outraged Mathew. It was vile to think of such a decent and deeply humanitarian man being sought out for this sort of abuse.

‘No, they’re probably people I see all over town – storekeepers, bank tellers, mechanics – but they hide behind those white robes and become invisible. Over sixty-five per cent of the population of Macon are African Americans, but members of the KKK are still promoting their extremist, reactionary, far-right policies – the owner of the Lakeside Inn is probably an active Klan member. In spite of it being almost ten years since the Civil Rights Act was passed, the Mormon Sect are still not admitting African Americans to their priesthood. I should think it will take at least three generations, through
education, tolerance and enhanced integration between the races, to breed out this narrow-minded bigotry.’

Mathew expanded on his own views on segregation and how, during his early days at Scaife University in Tupelo, he had joined the city’s Civil Rights Movement and participated in a protest march. ‘It surprised me how much criticism I received from some of the more hard-line fellow students for being so directly involved with the movement. I thought they would think the same way as I did,’ Mathew explained. ‘I had an ancestor, Robert Milligan, who was elected as MP for Bradford in 1851 – he was a dedicated disciple of William Wilberforce. During his six-year tenure as a member of Parliament, his main mission was to do as much as possible to promote the emancipation of slaves in the West Indies; a
raison d’être
that my family have always been immensely proud about.’

During the course of the morning, the doctor had taken a liking to Mathew and Lucienne and had been pleased by the way they had showed such enthusiasm about his collection, as well as to the background that had led up to the passing of the Civil Rights Act. As he was very embarrassed about their reception at the hotel and wished to minimise any further discrimination directed at these friends of Professor Osman Hill, he invited them to return to his home at 6.30 that evening for pre-dinner drinks, prior to taking them as his guests to a popular, informal Brazilian restaurant in downtown Macon. He told them that the restaurant’s owner was an Afro-Brazilian immigrant from Salvador in the state of Bahia, and was not only his friend but also served as a valuable member of the city’s ARDB.