Now, the well-mannered Negro is embarrassed by the crude behavior of the others. They are not friends, and have never seen each other before. So why should he or she be embarrassed? It is like this: The well-bred Negro has looked around and seen America with his eyes. He or she has set himself to measure up to what he thinks of as the white standard of living. He is conscious of the fact that the Negro in America needs more respect if he expects to get any acceptance at all. Therefore, after straining every nerve to get an education, maintain an attractive home, dress decently, and otherwise conform, he is dismayed at the sight of other Negroes tearing down what he is trying to build up. It is said every day, “And that good-for-nothing, trashy Negro is the one the white people judge us all by. They think we’re all just alike. My people! My people!”
What that educated Negro knows further is that he can do very little towards imposing his own viewpoint on the lowlier members of his race. Class and culture stand between. The humble Negro has a built-up antagonism to the “Big Nigger.” It is a curious thing that he does not resent a white man looking down on him. But he resents any lines between himself and the wealthy and educated of his own race. “He’s a nigger just like us,” is the sullen rejoinder. The only answer to this is “My people! My people!”
So the quiet-spoken Negro man or woman who finds himself in the midst of one of these “broadcasts” as on the train, cannot go over and say “Don’t act like that, brother. You’re giving us all a black eye.” He or she would know better than to try that. The performance would not only go on, it would get better with the “dickty” Negro as the butt of all the quips. The educated Negro may know all about the differential calculus and the theory of evolution, but he is fighting entirely out of his class when he tries to quip with the underprivileged. The bookless may have difficulty in reading a paragraph in a newspaper, but when they get down to “playing the dozens” they have no equal in America, and, I’d risk a sizeable bet, in the whole world. Starting off in first by calling you a seven-sided son-of-a-bitch, and pausing to name the sides, they proceed to “specify” until the tip-top branch of your family tree has been “given a reading.” No profit in that to the upper class Negro, so he minds his own business and groans, “My people! My people!”
It being a traditional cry, I was bound to hear it often and under many circumstances. But it is not the only folk label that I heard. “Race Pride”—“Race Prejudice”—“Race Man”—“Race Solidarity”—“Race Consciousness”—“Race.”
“Race Prejudice” I was instructed was something bad that white people used on us. It seemed that white people felt superior to black ones and would not give Negroes justice for that reason. “Race Pride” was something that, if we had it, we would feel ourselves superior to the whites. A black skin was the greatest honor that could be blessed on any man. A “Race Man” was somebody who always kept the glory and honor of his race before him. Must stand ever ready to defend the Negro race from all hurt, harm and danger. Especially if a white person said “Nigger.” “You people, “Negress” or “Darkies.” It was a mark of shame if somebody accused: “Why, you are not a Race Man (or woman).” People made whole careers of being “Race” men and women. They were champions of the race. “Race Consciousness” is a plea to Negroes to bear their color in mind at all times. It was just a phrase to me when I was a child. I knew it was supposed to mean something deep. By the time I got grown I saw that it was only an imposing line of syllables, for no Negro in America is apt to forget his race. “Race Solidarity” looked like something solid in my childhood, but like all other mirages, it faded as I came close enough to look. As soon as I could think, I saw that there is no such thing as Race Solidarity in America with any group. It is freely admitted that it does not exist among Negroes. Our so-called Race Leaders cry over it. Others accept it as a natural thing that Negroes should not remain an unmelting black knot in the body politic. Our interests are too varied. Personal benefits run counter to race lines too often for it to hold. If it did, we could never fit into the national pattern. Since the race line has never held any other group in America, why expect it to be effective with us? The upper class Negroes admit it in their own phrases. The lower class Negroes say it with a tale.
It seems that a Negro was asked to lead the congregation in prayer. He got down on his knees and began, “Oh, Lawd, I got something to ask You, but I know You can’t do it.”
“Go on, Brother Isham and ask Him.”
“Lawd,” Brother Isham began again, “I really want to ask You something but I just know You can’t do it.”
“Aw, Brother Isham, go on and tell the Lawd what you want. He’s the Lawd! Ain’t nothing He can’t do! He can even lead a butt-headed cow by the horns. You’re killing up time. Go ’head on, Brother Isham, and let the church roll on.”
“Well then, Lawd, I ask You to get these Negroes together, but I know You can’t do it.” Then there is laughter and “My people! My people!”
Hearing things like this from my childhood, sooner or later I was bound to have some curiosity about my race of people.
What fell into my ears from time to time tended more to confuse than to clarify. One thing made a liar out of the one that went before and the thing that came after. At different times I heard opposite viewpoints expressed by the same person or persons.
For instance, come school-closing time and like formal occasions, I heard speeches which brought thunderous applause. I did not know the word for it at the time, but it did not take me long to know the material was traditional. Just as folk as the songs in church. I knew that because so many people got up and used the same, identical phrases: (a) The Negro had made the greatest progress in fifty years of any race on the face of the globe. (b) Negroes composed the most beautiful race on earth, being just like a flower garden with every color and kind. (c) Negroes were the bravest men on earth, facing every danger like lions, and fighting with demons. We must remember with pride that the first blood spilled for American Independence was that of the brave and daring Crispus Attucks, a Negro who had bared his black breast to the bullets of the British tyrants at Boston, and thus struck the first blow for American liberty. They had marched with Colonel Shaw during the Civil War and hurled back the forces of the iniquitous South, who sought to hold black men in bondage. It was a Negro named Simon who had been the only one with enough pity and compassion in his heart to help the Savior bear His cross upon Calvary. It was the Negro troops under Teddy Roosevelt who won the battle of San Juan Hill.
It was the genius of the Negro which had invented the steam engine, the cotton gin, the air brake, and numerous other things—but conniving white men had seen the Negro’s inventions and run off and put them into practice before the Negro had a chance to do anything about it. Thus the white man got credit for what the genius of the Negro brain had produced. Were it not for the envy and greed of the white man, the Negro would hold his rightful place—the noblest and the greatest man on earth.
The people listening would cheer themselves hoarse and go home feeling good. Over the fences next day it would be agreed that it was a wonderful speech, and nothing but the God’s truth. What a great people we would be if we only had our rights!
But my own pinnacle would be made to reel and rock anyway by other things I heard from the very people who always applauded, “the great speech,” when it was shouted to them from the school-house rostrum. For instance, let some member of the community do or say something which was considered either dumb or venial and the verdict would be “Dat’s just like a nigger!” or “Nigger from nigger leave nigger”—(“Nothing from nothing leave nothing”). It was not said in either admiration or pity. Utter scorn was in the saying. “Old Cuffy just got to cut de fool, you know. Monkey see, monkey do. Nigger see de white man do something, he jump in and try to do like de white man, and make a great big old mess.” “My people! My people!”
“Yeah, youse mighty right. Another monkey on de line. De white man, you understand, he was
a railroad engineer, so he had a pet monkey he used to take along wid him all de time. De monkey, he set up there in de cab wid de engineer and see what he do to run de train. Way after while, figger he can run de train just as good as de engineer his own self. He was just itching to git at dat throttle and bust dat main line wide open. Well, one day de engineer jumped down at de station to git his orders and old monkey seen his chance. He just jumped up in de engineer’s seat, grabbed a holt of dat throttle, and dat engine was splitting de wind down de track. So de engineer sent a message on ahead, say ‘Clear de track. Monkey on de line!’ Well, Brer Monk he was holding de throttle wide open and jumping up and down and laughing fit to kill. Course, he didn’t know nothing about no side tracks and no switches and no schedules, so he was making a mile a minute when he hit a open switch and a string of box cars was standing on de siding. Ker-blam-er-lam-er-lam! And dat was de last of Brer Engine-driving Monk. Lovely monkey he was, but a damned poor engineer.” “My people! My people!”
Everybody would laugh at that, and the laughter puzzled me some. Weren’t Negroes the smartest people on earth, or something like that? Somebody ought to remind the people of what we had heard at the schoolhouse. Instead of that, there would be more monkey stories.
There was the one about the white doctor who had a pet monkey who wanted to be a doctor. Kept worrying his master to show him how, and the doctor had other troubles, too. Another man had a bulldog who used to pass the doctor’s gate every day and pick a fight with the monkey. Finally, the doctor saw a way to stop the monkey from worrying him about showing him how to be a doctor. “Whip that bulldog until he evacuates, then bring me some of it, monkey. I’ll take it and show you how to be a doctor, and then I’ll treat it in a way so as to ruin that bulldog for life. He won’t be no more trouble to you.”
“Oh, I’ll git it, boss. Don’t you worry. I sho’ wants to be a doctor, and then again, dat old bulldog sho’ is worry-some.”
No sooner did the bulldog reach the gate that day, than the monkey, which could not wait for the bulldog to start the fight as usual, jumped on the dog. The monkey was all over him like gravy over rice. He put all he had into it and it went on until the doctor came out and drove the dog off and gave the monkey a chance to bolt into the office with what he had been fighting for.
“Here it tis, boss. It was a tight fight, but I got it.”
“Fine! Fine!” the doctor told him. “Now, gimme that bottle over there. I’ll fix that bulldog so he’ll never be able to sit down again. When I get through with this, he’ll be ruined for life.”
“Hold on there, boss! Hold on there a minute! I wish you wouldn’t do dat, boss.”
“How come? You want to get rid of that old bulldog, don’t you?”
“Dat’s right, I sho’ do.”
“Well, why don’t you want me to fix him, then?”
“Well, boss, you see it’s like dis. Dat was a tight fight, a mighty tight fight. I could have been mistaken about dat bulldog, boss, we was all tangled up together so bad. You better leave dat fixing business alone, boss. De wrong man might git hurt.”
There were many other tales, equally ludicrous, in which the Negro, sometimes symbolized by the monkey, and sometimes named outright, ran off with the wrong understanding of what he had seen and heard. Several white and Negro proposals of marriage were compared, and the like. The white suitor had said his love had dove’s eyes. His valet had hurried to compliment his girl by saying she had dog’s eyes, and so on.
There was a general acceptance of the monkey as kinfolks. Perhaps it was some distant memory of tribal monkey reverence from Africa which had been forgotten in the main, but remembered in some vague way. Perhaps it was an acknowledgment of our talent for mimicry with the monkey as a symbol.
The classic monkey parable, which is very much alive wherever the Negroes congregate in America, is the one about “My people!”
It seems that a monkey squatted down in the middle of a highway to play. A Cadillac full of white people came along, saw the monkey at play and carefully drove around him. Then came a Buick full of more white people and did the same. The monkey kept right on playing. Way after a while a T-model Ford came along full of Negroes. But instead of driving around the monkey, the car headed straight for him. He only saved his life by a quick leap to the shoulder of the road. He sat there and watched the car rattle off in the distance and sighed “My people! My people!”
A new addition to the tale is that the monkey has quit saying “My people!” He is now saying, “Those people! Those people!”
I found the Negro, and always the blackest Negro, being made the butt of all jokes, particularly black women.
They brought bad luck for a week if they came to your house of a Monday morning. They were evil. They slept with their fists balled up ready to fight and squabble even while they were asleep. They even had evil dreams. White, yellow and brown girls dreamed about roses and perfume and kisses. Black gals dreamed about guns, razors, ice-picks, hatchets and hot lye. I heard men swear they had seen women dreaming and knew these things to be true.
“Oh, gwan!” somebody would chide, laughing. “You know dat ain’t so.”
“Oh, now, he ain’t lying,” somebody else would take up the theme. “I know for my own self. I done slept wid yaller women and I done slept wid black ones. They is evil. You marry a yaller or a brown woman and wake her up in de night and she will sort of stretch herself and say, “I know what I was dreaming when you woke me up. I was dreaming I had done baked you a chicken and cooked you a great big old cake, and we was at de table eating our dinner out of de same plate, and I was sitting on your lap and we was just enjoying ourselves to death!” Then she will kiss you more times than you ask her to, and go on back to sleep. But you take and wake up a black gal, now! First thing she been sleeping wid her fists balled up, and you shake her, she’ll lam you five or six times before you can get her awake. Then when she do git wake she’ll have off and ast you, “Nigger, what you wake me up for? Know what I was dreaming when you woke me up? I dreamt dat you shook your old rusty black fist under my nose and I split your head open wid a axe.’ Then she’ll kick your feets away from hers, snatch de covers all over on her side, ball up her fists agin, and gwan back to sleep. You can’t tell me nothing. I know.” “My people!”
This always was, and is still, good for a raucous burst of laughter. I listened to this talk and became more and more confused. If it was so honorable and glorious to be black, why was it the yellow-skinned people among us had so much prestige? Even a child in the first grade could see that this was so from what happened in the classroom and on school programs. The light-skinned children were always the angels, fairies and queens of school plays. The lighter the girl, the more money and prestige she was apt to marry. So on into high school years, I was asking myself questions. Were Negroes the great heroes I heard about from the platform, or were they the ridiculous monkeys of every-day talk? Was it really honorable to be black? There was even talk that it was no use for Negro boys and girls to rub all the hair off of their heads against college walls. There was no place for them to go with it after they got all this education. Some of the older heads held that it was too much for Negroes to handle. Better leave such things for the white folks, who knew what to do with it. But there were others who were all for pushing ahead. I saw the conflict in my own home between my parents. My mother was the one to dare all. My father was satisfied.
This Negro business came home to me in incidents and ways. There was the time when Old Man Bronner was taken out and beaten. Mr. Bronner was a white man of the poor class who had settled in aristocratic Maitland. One night just after dark, we heard terrible cries back in the woods behind Park Lake. Sam Mosely, his brother Elijah, and Ike Clarke, hurried up to our gate and they were armed. The howls of pain kept up. Old fears and memories must have stirred inside of the grown folks. Many people closed and barred their doors. Papa and the men around our gate were sullen and restless as the cries churned
over the woods and lake.
“Who do you reckon it is?” Sam Mosely asked.
“I don’t know for sure, but some thinks it’s Jim Watson. Anyhow, he ain’t home yet,” Clarke said, and all of them looked at each other in an asking way.
Finally Papa said, “Well, hold on a minute till I go get my rifle.”
“Tain’t no ifs and buts about it,” Elijah Mosely said gravely. “We can’t leave Jim Watson be beat to death like that.”
Papa had sensed that these armed men had not come to merely stand around and talk. They had come to see if he would go with the rest. When he came out shoving the sixteen bullets into his rifle, and dropping more into his pocket, Mama made no move to stop him. “Well, we all got families,” he said with an attempt at lightness. “Shoot off your gun, somebody, so de rest will know we ready.”
Papa himself pointed his Winchester rifle at the sky and fired a shot. Another shot answered him from around the store and a huddle of figures came hurrying up the road in the dark.
“It’s Jim Watson. Us got to go git him!” and the dozen or more men armed with double-barreled shotguns, breech-loaders, pistols and Papa’s repeating Winchester hurried off on their grim mission. Perhaps not a single one of them expected to return alive. No doubt they hoped. But they went.
Mama gasped a short sentence of some sort and herded us all into the house and barred the door. Lights went out all over the village and doors were barred. Axes had been dragged in from wood piles, grass-hooks, pitch-forks and scythes were ranked up in corners behind those barred doors. If the men did not come back, or if they only came back in part, the women and children were ready to do the best they could. Mama spoke only to say she wished Hezekiah and John, the two biggest boys, had not gone to Maitland late in the afternoon. They were not back and she feared they might start home and—But she did not cry. Our seven hounds with big, ferocious Ned in the lead, barked around the house. We huddled around Mama in her room and kept quiet. There was not a human sound in all the village. Nothing had ever happened before in our vicinity to create such tension. But people had memories and told tales of what happened back there in Georgia, and Alabama and West Florida that made the skin of the young crawl with transmitted memory, and reminded the old heads that they were still flinchy.