I drove slowly through Clarksdale, stopping frequently to ask directions, until I had found the old Memphis road going northward alongside the Illinois Central Railroad tracks. The hottest part of the August day had passed, but the dark clouds of the thunderstorm the secretary’s wife had warned me about were moving rapidly up the Mississippi River a few miles away as I began driving up the rough dirt road toward Coahoma.
During the first few miles I was able to go as fast as twenty miles an hour and I was confident that by driving all night I would be able to get to Memphis by sunup the next morning and then deliver the secretary’s car to him at the YMCA hall in Millington soon after breakfast.
The afternoon thunderstorm was moving faster than I could drive on the rutted road and I began to wonder if I should have stayed in Clarksdale as the girl had begged me to do. I had gone about nine or ten miles when the rain suddenly began coming down in tropical torrents and it was too late then to turn around and go back. The ruts were soon filled with water and the windshield became so splattered with muddy water that I had to lean over the side of the car in order to see where I was going.
Then all at once the road was an endless mud puddle and the rear wheels began spinning helplessly in the slush. Even then I thought I could manage to keep the car going by driving slowly and carefully in the slick Delta mud. But suddenly I felt the wheels slide from the road and an instant later the car went into the ditch and turned upside down before I could get out and keep from being pinned under it. I heard the windshield crack and splinter at the same moment the oilcloth top was flattened upon me and the steering wheel. At first there was a faint gurgling of running water not far away and then I felt it flowing against my head.
The engine had stopped when it was submerged in the ditch water and I could hear the beating of rain upon the overturned car and the frequent sharp cracks of lightning striking trees in the cypress swamp beside the road. It was not long until I smelled gasoline leaking from the tank over my head and I was afraid the car would catch on fire.
When I tried to move, there was a stinging pain in my left arm. I kept on struggling to pull my arm free so I could crawl out, even though the pain became more intense each time I moved, and I realized that I was trapped under the weight of the car. Then, with drowsiness coming over me, all I could think of was the cool white counterpane on the soft bed in Clarksdale.
I remembered nothing after that until sometime during the morning of the next day.
When I opened my eyes and looked around me that morning, I was in a small narrow room with roughly raftered ceiling, unpainted board walls, a single window, and a large smoke-blackened brick fireplace. After that I could see that I was in a wood-posted wide bed and covered with a colorful patchwork quilt.
Gazing at the high-posted bed and patch-work quilt, and not knowing how I had come to be there, I wondered if I were dreaming or if I were actually in bed in Bisco’s house in Georgia. Closing my eyes, I could see the room in Bisco’s house as clearly as I had always remembered the night I wanted to get into his bed.
I had no idea about how much time had passed when I opened my eyes again, but I saw a large and fleshy Negro woman standing at the side of the bed and watching me with solemn concern. Her skin was shiny-black and her heavy breasts lay on the bulge of her stomach. When she saw me look at her, she leaned over the bed and put her hand on my forehead. Her hand was cool and comforting and I hoped she would never take it away.
Presently she straightened up, her teeth gleaming with a motherly smile, and nodded confidently. Waking up and seeing her like that in a familiar-looking room, she looked exactly as I remembered Bisco’s mother long before in Coweta County in Georgia when I wanted to spend the night in Bisco’s house and sleep in the quilt-covered bed. I raised my head from the pillow and looked around the room to see if Bisco were there, too. Nobody else was in the room.
As I lay there wondering how I came to be where I was, I could remember the automobile sliding from the muddy road and turning upside down in the ditch. I knew I had tried to free my arm so I could crawl out, but I could remember nothing else after that. Staring at the rafters overhead, I began to worry about what the YMCA secretary would think about my driving ability when he found out that his automobile was upside down in a ditch beside the old Memphis road somewhere in Mississippi.
Presently a tall, muscular, mulatto-colored Negro wearing mud-stained overalls walked into the room and came to the side of the bed. He smiled at me, just as the Negro woman had done, as though glad that I had at last opened my eyes.
First, he asked me what my name was and where I lived, and then he told me that his name was Troy and that his wife was Mandy. While he was talking to me, his wife brought my clothes and laid them on the foot of the bed. Together with socks and underwear, my cotton khaki uniform had been laundered and ironed. My shoes had been cleaned, too, and my felt hat with the YMCA insignia cord around the hatband had been cleaned and dried and creased in its original shape.
The motherly Negro woman left the room and went outside where I could hear the voices of several children who were playing in the yard. Troy helped me to the side of the bed, saying he was sure that my left arm was only bruised and sprained and not broken, and that if it had been broken he would have gone to Clarksdale for a doctor.
While Troy was helping me get dressed, buttoning my shirt and tying my shoes for me, he told me how glad he was that I had not been seriously hurt when the car turned over and pinned me under it. He said it was lucky that he had happened to come along just when he did, or otherwise I might have been drowned in the rising ditch water.
By the time I had finished dressing, Troy had told me what had happened the night before. He said when the thunderstorm came up and drenched the ground, he had to stop plowing in a field about a quarter of a mile down the road and was almost home with his team of mules when he saw the car upside down in the ditch. He called several times, but there was no answer, and yet he was afraid somebody might be under the car. Then when he crawled down into the ditch, he could see my arm dangling over the side of the car, but there still was no answer when he spoke to me.
Troy said there was no way to get me out of the ditch until the car could be moved in some way, so he hitched the two mules to one of the wheels and turned the car on its side. He said both of us were a muddy mess by that time, and, since it was dark by then, he could not even see my face. He knew I was still alive, even though I was unconscious, because I was breathing. He got the car uprighted on its wheels, put me on the back seat, and the two mules pulled it about a hundred yards up the road to his house.
He said he and his wife decided the best thing to do was to carry me inside the house, take off my muddy clothes, wash me, and put me to bed until morning. The nearest doctor was eleven miles away in Clarksdale and there was no way to telephone.
After I had been washed and put into bed, Troy told me, he and his wife felt my arms and legs and ribs until they were confident that I had no broken bones. There were only two rooms in the house and, since I was in one of the only two beds, the children slept in the other one and he and Mandy took turns sleeping on a quilt in the kitchen. Keeping the lamp burning all night, one of them sat beside the bed and kept watch over me until daybreak.
It was about nine o’clock that morning when I finally woke up and saw them for the first time.
They brought me a plate of scrambled eggs and a lot of bacon and a baking pan of Mandy’s hot biscuits, but my head was aching so much that I could eat very little, and I told Troy I wanted to leave and get back to Millington as soon as I could. My left arm was still numb and dangling at my side, and, even if I had been able to use it, the automobile was in no condition to be driven. The front axle was sprung, one of the wheels had fallen off, and all the gasoline and oil had leaked out while the car was upside down in the ditch.
Troy told me that a passenger train would be going from Clarksdale to Memphis in the afternoon and that if we went to Coahoma
, two miles up the road, the station agent would flag it down for a passenger. Assuring me that he would take good care of the car and not let anybody touch it until it was sent for, Troy hitched the two mules to the wagon and we drove up the road to Coahoma.
Along the way I told Troy about Bisco in Middle Georgia and how we had been playmates when we were very young and that when I woke up that morning I was sure I was in Bisco’s house and that he and Mandy were Bisco’s parents. I had hoped Troy would say that he or his wife were kin to Bisco, or at least knew him, but he said all their relatives lived in Mississippi and that he had never known anybody from Georgia. However, he did say that he was proud to be somebody who reminded me of a fine fellow like Bisco and he hoped that someday Bisco and I would come back together to visit so all of us could have a big all-day reunion with Mandy cooking us one of her fried chicken dinners.
When we were within sight of Coahoma, I began wondering how I could repay Troy for everything he had done for me from the time he found me under the car in the ditch until he put me on the train to Memphis. By that time I was beginning to realize that I might have drowned in the rising water in the ditch if Troy had not found me in time to save my life. I still had ten dollars the YMCA secretary had given me for expenses and a few dollars of my own, but I did not know how much the train ticket would cost.
When we got to the railroad station in Coahoma, I bought a ticket only as far as Memphis, and not all the way to Millington, since it would cost less and I knew I could get a free ride in an army truck from Memphis to Millington.
After paying for the ticket, I had almost ten dollars left and I gave all of it to Troy. He protested and tried to make me take it back, saying that everything he had done was a favor and he did not want pay for being friendly. He said there was so much unfriendliness in the world that it made him feel proud to have a chance to do a favor for a white man.
The train stopped at the station only long enough for me to get aboard. Standing on the steps of the coach as the train began to move, I realized it was unlikely that I would ever see Troy again and it reminded me of the last time I had seen Bisco. Looking backward from the steps, I could see Troy waving to me until the train went out of sight around a curve.
Late that night in Millington I told the YMCA secretary what had happened to his car, though quickly assuring him that it would be safe at Troy’s house until it could be towed back to Clarksdale for repairs.
Frowning and shaking his head, the secretary was silent for several moments. Presently he said that he should have listened to his wife and left the automobile where it was in Clarksdale. When he asked me if I had been hurt when the car turned over, I told him that my arm was sore and that I still had a headache. After that he asked how his wife was when I saw her. I told him that she had said she was lonely in Clarksdale and wanted to come to Millington.
He looked at me with a quick glance and said that I had better get my head examined. Then, as he walked away, he told me that he wanted me to be ready to drive him to Memphis in the YMCA staff car on Friday afternoon for the week end.
13
THE NEGRO STUDENT of the nineteen-sixties in Bisco Country has come of age undaunted by a racial heritage of fear, docility, and subservience. Even though he is still in high school or junior college, and one of the many thousands unlikely to have the opportunity to study at a major university in the South, education has already inspired him with a desire for the freedom of conduct and expression his parents and grandparents never knew.
Now for the first time the Negro student in Arkansas or elsewhere in the Deep South has the courage to rebel openly against the social and economic restrictions that have been imposed upon his race for the past two centuries. And like students everywhere in the contemporary world, he does not hesitate to reject the reactionary principles of the established order when they attempt to suppress the progressive ideals of youth.
All traditions cling tenaciously to the past, and racial traditions in particular are deeply rooted in the white man’s South. As most Negro students know, they have a long way to go before they will be able to cross the long-established color lines and succeed in abolishing racial discrimination and placing it in a chapter of history. They are learning that the passage of law granting civil rights is one thing and that the banishment of prejudice is something else.
What inspires students everywhere is the universal human desire for freedom. In this new era of total emancipation in America, education is providing Negro youth with the promise of freedom as well as the vision to see it within reach. It is no wonder, then, that Negro students are rapidly acquiring the courage to put in their claim for social freedom as well as civil freedom.
The trouble is, though, that claiming a right, or making a demand for it, has not always been enough. Resorting to violence and revolt has often been the only means of striving to gain an idealistic aim; however, this is essentially an appeal to public opinion, which is a potent force in a democracy and is capable of being more effective than a display of might. This is why the act of integrating a restaurant and sitting at a lunch counter is merely a token demonstration against discrimination. The ultimate success of desegregation will be decreed not by law but by the sympathy and humanity of people.
What the serious Negro student has always hoped to accomplish by go-ins and stand-ins and sit-ins was much more than having the right to order a sandwich from a white waitress in a public place and to eat it in a white man’s presence. His real objective is to gain the right—even at the cost of civil disobedience if necessary—to have the same opportunity as a white student to study law or economics or medicine or engineering at the university of his choice. Like everybody else, he knows that the policy of avowed segregationists in the Deep South to provide equal, but separate, educational institutions for Negro and white has been as discriminatory and undemocratic in fact as the intent is in purpose.
The ambition of the eighteen-year-old Negro high school senior in Little Rock is to be a chemical engineer. He is an A-student in chemistry and physics at a Negro high school and he would like to attend the state university and study for advanced degrees in industrial engineering. There is no likelihood now of his being admitted to the state university when he graduates from high school. When the time comes that he would be admitted, his school days will be too far behind him and he will have become an involuntary dropout.
I don’t know what’s going to happen to me. I could never get enough money to go North to a good university. The Negro colleges in Arkansas don’t offer the advanced courses I want to take. My folks don’t have the money to send me out of the state where tuition would be very high. But if I could go to the state university here, I’d manage by working at some kind of job. I like experimenting in chemistry and working with oil and pulp to find some new synthetics.
If I could keep on, maybe I’d discover something that’s never been done before—just like some people have done by experimenting with pines and peanuts and such things. That takes a lot of study, though, and better laboratories than we’ve got at high school. Maybe someday they’ll open up the state university for everybody, but right now it looks like it’ll be too late for me.
I’ve applied for scholarships at a lot of universities in the North. So far nothing’s happened. I’m still hoping, though. I guess they get a lot of applications from people like me down here, and they can’t help everybody. If I’m lucky, I might get one. But if I don’t get a scholarship, I’ll try to think of something else to do about it. I don’t want to spend my life swabbing toilets and washrooms like my daddy does.
We do a lot of talking at school about segregation and such things, but there’s not much new to be said about it—unless Dick Gregory says something funny. You learn more about that by looking around and seeing how it is in Little Rock. Everything’s divided right down the middle—black and white, Negro and white, colored and white, nigger and white.
You can’t do this and you can’t do that. Wat
ch your talk and watch your step. Get going, nigger. That’s what the young white boys say. My folks are used to it. They’ve lived with it all their lives—forty years or more. My dad’s always telling me to watch out and take care and keep my mouth shut and stay out of trouble. My mother’s the same way—she’s scared to death of white people.
I’m not exactly scared. I just don’t like it. That’s all. It doesn’t seem right—having to keep from doing something or going somewhere because some white people don’t want you to. I’m not going to do something wrong when it’s against the law. I know better than that. But the way it is, there’re a lot of things a colored boy will get in trouble about. A white man will give you a shove for nothing at all. Even if you don’t shove back, they’ll claim it’s a scuffle and then you’re taken off to jail for disturbing the peace.
That’s what I don’t like about the way Negroes are treated. Whites know how to get around the civil rights law. You can be walking along the street where it’s crowded and watching your step all the way. Then if you accidentally get pushed against a white man it can be real bad trouble even if it wasn’t your fault. And if he’s a mean white—even if you apologize and say you’re sorry—colored can get knocked down or shot at for as little as that.
I don’t have hard feelings toward all white people. I wouldn’t know what to hate them about—except the mean ones. Most of them are richer than the colored and a lot of them have fine cars and live in big houses. But that’s no reason to hate them—I’d have a fine car and a big house myself if I could. And there are a lot of colored better off than poor whites. The way I see it, that sort of evens things up fifty-fifty. And I don’t hate them because they have white skin and I’ve got black skin. That makes no more difference to me than if they’re Methodist and I’m Baptist or something.
The one kind of white man I don’t like is the one who’ll cheat you—and there’re plenty of those. They’re the ones who make a big living by cheating the colored. Some of them are the bill collectors who come around once a week to collect installment payments for something that’s been bought on time—like a TV or a washing machine or some furniture. Some of the other cheating kind are the salesmen who go house-to-house selling something that’s going to be shoddy even if they never come back and deliver it after collecting the down payment. Those cheating whites have all kind of tricks. They’re the whites you’ve got to watch out for.