Go Tell It on the Mountain

by James Baldwin

For it had been the will of God that they should hear, and pass thereafter, one to another, the story of the Hebrew children who had been held in bondage in the land of Egypt; and how the Lord had heard their groaning, and how His heart was moved; and how He bid them wait but a little season till He should send deliverance.

the cook, sent over in a napkin bits of ham and chicken and cakes left over by the white folks—

She was content to stay in this cabin and do washing for the white folks, though she was old and her back was sore. And she wanted Florence, also, to be content—helping with the washing, and fixing meals and keeping Gabriel quiet.

Gabriel was the apple of his mother’s eye.

With the birth of Gabriel, which occurred when she was five, her future was swallowed up. There

Florence was a girl, and would by and by be married, and have children of her own, and all the duties of a woman; and this being so, her life in the cabin was the best possible preparation for her future life. But Gabriel was a man; he would go out one day into the world to do a man’s work, and he needed, therefore, meat, when there was any in the house, and clothes, whenever clothes could be bought, and the strong indulgence of his womenfolk, so that he would know how to be with women when he had a wife.

She hoped that Gabriel would break his neck.

That night had robbed her of the right to be considered a woman.

forever. Since she could not be considered a woman, she could only be looked on as a harlot,

Gabriel had not wished to be baptized. The thought had frightened and angered him, but his mother insisted

that it was only fury,

In a moment, Florence thought with scorn, tears

would fill his eyes, and he would promise to “do better.” He had been promising to “do better” since the day he had been baptized.

point. He could not endure the thought of being left alone with his mother, with nothing whatever to put between himself and his guilty love.

Tears stood suddenly in her own eyes, though she could not have said what she was crying for. “Leave me be,” she said to Gabriel, and picked up her bag again. She opened the door; the cold, morning air came in. “Good-bye,” she said. And then to Gabriel: “Tell her I said good-bye.”

halfbreed gigolo.

Looking at his face, it sometimes came to her that all women had been cursed from the cradle; all, in one fashion or another, being given the same cruel destiny, born to suffer the weight of

It was not that he could not make money, but that he would not save it.

like, and a man yet more childish than any she had known when she was young.

And she would not answer. She hated to be called “Flo,” but he never remembered.

“I done told you time and again to give me the money when you get paid, and let me do the shopping—’cause you ain’t got the sense that you was born with.”

“The only surprise I want from you is to learn some sense! That’d be a surprise! You think I want to stay around here the rest of my life with these dirty niggers you all the time bring home?”

“I thought I married a man with some get up and go to him, who didn’t just want to stay on the bottom all his life!”

“You ain’t got to be white to have some self-respect! You reckon I slave in this house like I do so you and them common niggers can sit here every afternoon throwing ashes all over the floor?”

petulant

penitent.

But at the same time she felt that his tenderness, his passion, and his love were real.

She's so confused

“You stink of whisky. Let me alone.” “Ah. I ain’t the only one got a tongue. What you got to say to this?” And his hand stroked the inside of her thigh. “Stop.” “I ain’t going to stop. This is sweet talk, baby.”

So he essentially raped his wife

and she thought of Deborah.

rubbed bleaching cream into her skin.

“No … well, it ain’t no good news neither, but it ain’t nothing to surprise me none. She say she think my brother’s got a bastard living right there in the same town what he’s scared to call his own.”

“Being a preacher ain’t never stopped a nigger from doing his dirt.”

Very true

And if Deborah’s right, he ain’t got no right to be a preacher. He ain’t no better’n nobody else. In fact, he ain’t no better than a murderer.”

Don’t know why you keep wasting all your time and my money on all them old skin whiteners. You as black now as you was the day you was born.”

I’ll make you to know that black’s a mighty pretty color.”

“God’s got your number, knows where you live, death’s got a warrant out for you.”

And he felt that this silence was God’s judgment; that all creation had been stilled before the just and awful wrath of God, and waited now to see the sinner—he was the sinner—

“I looked at my hands and my hands were new. I looked at my feet and my feet were new. And I opened my mouth to the Lord that day and Hell won’t make me change my mind.” And, yes, there was singing everywhere; the birds and the crickets and the frogs rejoiced, the distant dogs leaping and sobbing, circled in their narrow yards, and roosters cried from every high fence that here was a new beginning, a blood-washed day!

Again: she never called him Gabriel or “Gabe,” but from the time that he began to preach she called him Reverend,

“Florence ain’t never thought none of these niggers around here was good enough for her.”

When she smiled now it was a heightened joy. “He done blessed me already, Reverend. He blessed me when He saved your soul and sent you out to preach His gospel.”

Heaven so high, and the sinner so low. Woe is me! For unless God raised the sinner, he would never rise

again!”

was not comfortable with these men—that was it—it was difficult for him to accept them as his elders and betters in the faith. They seemed to him so lax, so nearly worldly; they were not like those holy prophets of old who grew thin and naked in the service of the Lord.

They don't appear to be all "holy" to him

They each had, it seemed, a bagful of sermons often preached; and knew, in the careless lifting of an eye, which sermon to bring to which congregation.

they did not give God the glory, nor count it as glory at all;

uniform. And if only, he felt, his mother could be there to see—her Gabriel, mounted so high!

substance. Everyone at the table roared, but Gabriel felt his blood turn cold that God’s ministers should be guilty of such abominable levity, and that that woman sent by God to comfort him, and without whose support he might readily have fallen by the wayside, should be held in such dishonor.

don’t think it’s right,” said Gabriel, “to talk evil about nobody. The Word tell me it ain’t right to hold nobody up to scorn.”

For he remembered how much older she was than he—eight years;