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A man of striking ugliness; fat, with a bullet-head set on a short neck, with a nose much too wide for its face, upon which he wore black-lensed glasses.
the lights catching his black-lensed glasses until it seemed that his head floated free of his body and was held close to it only by the white band of his collar.
how he persisted and worked noontimes, nights and mornings for the privilege of studying, or, as the old folk would say, of ‘rubbing his head against the college wall.’
The clouds of darkness all over the land, black folk and white folk full of fear and hate, wanting to go forward, but each fearful of the other. A whole region is caught in a terrible tension. Everyone is perplexed with the question of what must be done to dissolve this fear and hatred that crouched over the land like a demon waiting to spring,
like that great pilot of ancient times who led his people safe and unharmed across the bottom of the blood-red sea. And your parents followed this remarkable man across the black sea of prejudice, safely out of the land of ignorance, through the storms of fear and anger, shouting, LET MY PEOPLE GO! when it was necessary, whispering it during those times when whispering was wisest. And he was heard.”
stopped by the strange figure of a man whose pitted features revealed no inkling of whether he was black or white … Some say he was a Greek. Some a Mongolian. Others a mulatto—and others still, a simple white man of God. Whoever, and whatsoever, and we must not rule out the possibility of an emissary direct from above—oh, yes!—and remember how he appeared suddenly,
And so, my young friends, my sisters and brothers, you went with him, in and out of cabins, by night and early morning, through swamps and hills. On and on, passed from black hand to black hand and some white hands, and all the hands molding the Founders freedom and our own freedom like voices shaping a deep-felt song. And you, each of you, were with him. Ah, how well you know it, for it was you who escaped to freedom. Ah, yes, and you know the story.”
those indescribably glorious days, in which the Founder was building the dream not only here in this then barren valley, but hither and yonder throughout the land, instilling the dream in the hearts of the people. Erecting the scaffolding of a nation. Broadcasting his message that fell like seed on fallow ground, sacrificing himself, fighting and forgiving his enemies of both complexions—oh yes, he had them, of both complexions. But going forward filled with the importance of his message, filled with his dedicated mission; and in his zeal, perhaps in his mortal pride, ignoring the advice of
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voice began again, disembodied now, and it was as though he had never paused, as though his words, reverberating within us, had continued their rhythmic flow though their source was for a moment stilled:
Frost formed its icy patterns upon the window’s edges. And the whistle of the train was long-drawn and lonely, a sigh issuing from the depths of the mountain.
saw the looming great North Star and lost it, as though the sky had shut its eye. The train was curving the mountain, the engine loping like a great black hound, parallel with the last careening cars, panting forth its pale white vapor as it hurled us ever higher. And shortly the sky was black, without a moon …” As his “mooo-o-on” echoed over the chapel, he drew his chin against his chest until his white collar disappeared, leaving him a figure of balanced unbroken blackness, and I could hear the rasp of air as he inhaled. “It was as though the very constellations knew our impending sorrow,”
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And as we knelt there on the swaying floor our words were less prayers than sounds of mute and terrible sorrow.
with his singing of the old familiar melodies soothed the doubts and fears of the multitude; he who had rallied the ignorant, the fearful and suspicious, those still wrapped in the rags of slavery; him, there, your leader, who calmed the children of the storm.
The leader was dead and he thrown suddenly at the head of the troops like a cavalryman catapulted into the saddle of his general felled in a charge of battle—vaulted onto the back of his fiery and half-broken charger. Ah! And that great, black, noble beast, wall-eyed with the din of battle and twitching already with its sense of loss. What command should he give?
the black-draped coffin lying in state among them—inescapably reminding them—they felt the dark night of slavery settling once more upon them. They smelt that old obscene stink of darkness, that old slavery smell, worse than the rank halitosis of hoary death. Their sweet light enclosed in a black-draped coffin, their majestic sun snatched behind a cloud.
how my heart swelled to return to this great institution after so great a while to move among its wealth of green things, its fruitful farmland and fragrant campus. Ah! and the marvelous plant supplying power to an area larger than many towns—all operated by black hands. Thus, my young friends, does the light of the Founder still burn. Your leader has kept his promise a thousandfold. I commend him in his own right, for he is the co-architect of a great and noble experiment.
I wanted to rush from the building, but didn’t dare. I sat stiff and erect, supported by the hard bench, relying upon it as upon a form of hope. I could not look at Dr. Bledsoe now, because old Barbee had made me both feel my guilt and accept it. For although I had not intended it, any act that endangered the continuity of the dream was an act of treason.
I hurried past the disapproving eyes of teachers and matrons, out into the night. A mockingbird trilled a note from where it perched upon the hand of the moonlit Founder, flipping its moon-mad tail above the head of the eternally kneeling slave.
Lights began to appear in the girls’ dormitories, like the bursting of luminous seeds flung broadside by an invisible hand.
their quavering voices weaving and embroidering his story.
My God, boy! You’re black and living in the South—did you forget how to lie?”
Suddenly his face twitched and cracked like the surface of dark water.
Boy, what do you know other than how to ruin an institution in half an hour that it took over half a hundred years to build?
Your poor judgment has caused this school incalculable damage. Instead of uplifting the race, you’ve torn it down.”
I gave you an opportunity to serve one of our best white friends, a man who could make your fortune. But in return you dragged the entire race into the slime!”
It was as though I were being put through a fraternity initiation and found myself going back. He looked at me, still laughing with agony. My eyes burned.
I thought you had caught on to how things are done down here. But you don’t even know the difference between the way things are and the way they’re supposed to be.
Power doesn’t have to show off. Power is confident, self-assuring, self-starting and self-stopping, self-warming and self-justifying. When you have it, you know it.
He paused to let it sink in and I waited, feeling a numb, violent outrage.
“You’re nobody, son. You don’t exist—can’t you see that?
Cold drops of sweat moved at a glacier’s pace down my spine …
“I don’t even insist that it was worth it, but now I’m here and I mean to stay—after you win the game, you take the prize and you keep it, protect it; there’s nothing else to do.” He shrugged. “A man gets old winning his place, son. So you go ahead,
the play of light upon the metallic disks of his glasses, which now seemed to float within the disgusting sea of his words.
Nobody I knew, not even my own mother, would believe me if I tried to tell them. Nor would I tomorrow,
you have some vague notions about dignity. In spite of me, such notions seep in along with the gimcrack teachers and northern-trained idealists.
“You’re a nervy little fighter, son,” he said, “and the race needs good, smart, disillusioned fighters. Therefore I’m going to give you a hand—maybe you’ll feel that I’m giving you my left hand after I’ve struck you with my right
From somewhere across the quiet of the campus the sound of an old guitar-blues plucked from an out-of-tune piano drifted toward me like a lazy, shimmering wave, like the echoed whistle of a lonely train, and my head went over again, against a tree this time, and I could hear it splattering the flowering vines.
His voice rose with the conviction of his chapel speeches. “Son, if you don’t become bitter, nothing can stop you from success. Remember that.”
He was not the type usually sent out to accompany violent cases and I was glad until I remembered that the only violent thing about the vet was his tongue. His mouth had already gotten me into trouble and now I hoped he wouldn’t turn it upon the white driver—that was apt to get us killed. What was he doing on the bus anyway? God, how had Dr. Bledsoe worked that fast?
“New York!” he said. “That’s not a place, it’s a dream. When I was your age it was Chicago. Now all the little black boys run away to New York. Out of the fire into the melting pot.
for God’s sake, learn to look beneath the surface,” he said. “Come out of the fog, young man. And remember you don’t have to be a complete fool in order to succeed. Play the game, but don’t believe in it—that much you owe yourself. Even if it lands you in a strait jacket or a padded cell. Play the game, but play it your own way—part of the time at least. Play the game, but raise the ante, my boy. Learn how it operates, learn how you operate
you ain’t going North, not the real North. You going to Washington. It’s just another southern town.”
Then it was gone. In less than five minutes the spot of earth which I identified with the best of all possible worlds was gone, lost within the wild uncultivated countryside.
The very thought of my contacts gave me a feeling of sophistication, of worldliness, which, as I fingered the seven important letters in my pocket, made me feel light and expansive.
my prize brief case, still as shiny as the night of the battle royal,
Moving into the subway I was pushed along by the milling salt-and-pepper mob, seized in the back by a burly, blue-uniformed attendant about the size of Supercargo, and crammed, bags and all, into a train that was so crowded that everyone seemed to stand with his head back and his eyes bulging, like chickens frozen at the sound of danger.
shook her head and smiled while I stared with horror at a large mole that arose out of the oily whiteness of her skin like a black mountain sweeping out of a rainwet plain. And all the while I could feel the rubbery softness of her flesh against the length of my body.
