Black Like Me (20 page)

But though financing is the key, other elements are no less important. Education, housing, job opportunities and the vote enter the picture of any improving community. The Negro leader, the “successful” man in Atlanta, is deeply imbued with a sense of responsibility toward his community. This is true of the doctors, the lawyers, the educators, the religious leaders and the businessmen.

“There is no ‘big Me’ and ‘little you,’ ” T.M. Alexander, one of the founders of the Southeastern Fidelity Fire Insurance, said. “We must pool all of our resources, material and mental, to gain the respect that will enable all of us to walk the streets with the dignity of American citizens.”

In the matter of education, Atlanta has long been eminent. With men of the quality of Benjamin Mays, president of Morehouse, and Rufus Clement, president of Atlanta University - to mention only two who are world-renowned - the intellectual climate is of high quality. The most impressive proof of this is found in the classrooms where teachers and students face squarely the problems that haunt this country, particularly the race problem. I visited the sociology class of Spelman College where Dr. Moreland (Mrs. Charles Moreland) bullied and taunted and challenged her class to think and talk. This handsome and brilliant young woman, like her students, despises the idea that in America any man has to “earn” his rights to first-class citizenship. In the classes I attended, one of the students was assigned to take the role of the white racist, and to argue his points to the other students. It was a brutal and revealing session. The comparison between them and the white racists was cruel indeed. The students have better manners, more learning, more courtesy and infinitely more understanding.

Every leader is interested in better housing. Many professional men, particularly doctors like F. Earl McLendon, have developed residential areas as their contribution to the cause. Atlanta has virtually miles and miles of splendid Negro homes. They have destroyed the cliché that whenever Negroes move into an area the property values go down. In every instance, they have improved the homes they have bought from the whites and built
even better ones. The philosophy here is simple. Try to anchor as many Negroes as possible in their own homes.

The fourth element, the vote, the right of the governed to govern themselves, has long been a cherished goal of all thinking men of Atlanta. Every business, professional and civic leader is also a leader in politics. In 1949, the Democrats, under A.T. Walden, and the Republicans, under John Wesley Dobbs, united to form the Atlanta Negro Voters League; and the Negro began to have a voice in his government. It has become an increasingly important and responsible one. By 1955 this type of political action helped elect Atlanta University President Rufus E. Clement to the city school board, making him the first Negro to hold elective office in Georgia since the Reconstruction. (See Bardolph,
The Negro Vanguard
, New York: Rinehart & Co., 1959.)

All take into account the cooperation of a fair-minded city administration under the leadership of Mayor Hartsfield. Almost alone among politicians of the South, Mayor Hartsfield has not sunk to the level of winning votes at the Negro’s expense. He has proved the point that a man can, after all, stand up for justice and constitutional law and still not sacrifice his political career.

Benjamin Mays, J.B. Blayton, L.D. Milton, A.T. Walden, John Wesley Dobbs, Norris Herndon of the Atlantic Life Insurance Company, banker-druggist C.R. Yates, W.J. Shaw, E.M. Martin, Rev. Samuel Williams, Rev. William Holmes Borders, Rev. H.I. Bearden, Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr., and his son, Martin Luther King, Jr. - each has contributed and continues to contribute to the American dream in its best sense.

I recall scenes picked at random:

- The look of growing concern on photographer Don Rutledge’s face as we moved from one scene to another - concern and humiliation to realize that these men, these scenes, these ideals were unknown to most Americans and utterly beyond the comprehension of the Southern racist. It was a look, however, overspread with delight;

- The look of surprise and vast amusement on Dr. Benjamin Mays’ intelligent face when I confided to him my journey as a Negro;

- At Spelman College, hearing Rosalyn Pope play magnificently the Bach Toccata in D, and then the strange, bewildered expression on her face when she told me about arriving in Paris to spend a year studying piano - the strangeness of living in a great city where she could attend concerts to her fill, where she could walk into any door where she was a human being first and last and not dismissed as a “Negro”;

- The evening in T.M. Alexander’s home, the talk with his wife and his brilliant children: “We realize that we have to run just to keep up.” They are intent, like the other members of the community, upon doing everything within their power to nullify the picture of the loud, the brassy, the pushy and “successful” Negro;

- The long talk with the Reverend Samuel Williams in his living room. A forceful man, but quiet, of fine intellect. Professor of Philosophy. “I spent years,” he told me, “studying the phenomenon of love.”

“And I spend years studying the phenomenon of justice.”

“At base, we spend years studying the same thing,” he said.

It was time to return to New Orleans. My assignments in Atlanta with Rutledge were finished. He was anxious to get back to his wife and child. I asked him if he knew a first-rate photographer in New Orleans, since I wanted to go back over the terrain again as a Negro and have photos made. The project fascinated him and we arranged to drive to New Orleans together so he could photograph it.

I
n New Orleans I
resumed my Negro identity and we went to all of my former haunts to photograph them.

Getting photos proved a problem. A Negro being photographed
by a white arouses suspicions. Whites tended to wonder, “What Negro celebrity is he?” and to presume I was uppity. It equally aroused the curiosity of the Negroes. The “Uncle Toms” think that every Negro should bury his head in the sand and pretend he is not there. They distrust any Negro prominent enough to be photographed by a white photographer. Others feared I might be an Uncle Tom going over to the white side.

We had to arrange to be at the same spot at the same time, but pretended to have no relationship. Rutledge appeared to be simply another tourist taking photos, and I just happened to be in them.

One day we got some unexpected help. He approached a fruit stand in the French Market and began taking photographs. I walked up from another direction and bought some walnuts and an apple. An elderly and civil woman waited on me while another woman talked to him some distance away. She said, “Why don’t you hurry up and get a picture of that funny old nigger before he leaves?” Rutledge said he believed he would, and I, pretending to be unaware of the plot, obliged by hanging around the fruit stalls.

An hour later we went into the fish market. I showed interest in buying a fish and at that moment Rutledge walked up and asked the vendor if he minded being photographed with some of the fish. The vendor was delighted. He left me standing at the counter and went to pose with a giant fish in his hand. I followed, pretending to think this was the fish he would sell me. Trying not to be impolite to me, he nevertheless maneuvered every possible way to keep me out of the pictures, and finally, when I stuck close to him, he became irritated and told me customers weren’t allowed behind the counter. Then, when Rutledge said: “That’s good right there, hold it,” the man faced front and gave his most winning smile. A nod from Rutledge told me we had enough pictures, so I drifted away and out the door.

We returned to the shoe stand, where we had no problems since my old partner, Sterling Williams, was intelligent and knowledgeable. Otherwise we had to take the pictures quickly and disappear before a crowd gathered and began to ask questions,

The experience had subtler points that did not escape
Rutledge. Having a Negro for a companion took him inside the problem. He could avail himself of any rest room, any water fountain, any café for a cup of coffee; but he could not take me with him. Needless to say, he was too much of a gentleman to do this, and there were times when we went without that cup of coffee or that glass of water.

F
inally the photos
were taken, the project concluded, and I resumed for the final time my white identity. I felt strangely sad to leave the world of the Negro after having shared it so long - almost as though I were fleeing my share of his pain and heartache.

I
sat in the jet
this afternoon, flying home from New Orleans, and looked out the window to the patterns of a December countryside far below. And I felt the greatest love for this land and the deepest dread of the task that now lay before me - the task of telling truths that would make me and my family the target of all the hate groups.

But for the moment, the joyful expectation of seeing my wife and children again after seven weeks overwhelmed all other feelings.

When the plane landed, I hurried to collect my bags and walk out front. The car soon arrived, with children waving and shouting from the windows. I felt their arms around my neck, their hugs and the marvelous jubilation of reunion. And in the
midst of it, the picture of the prejudice and bigotry from which I had just come flashed into my mind, and I heard myself mutter: “My God, how can men do it when there are things like this in the world?”

The faces of my wife and mother spoke their relief that it was over.

That night was a festival. The country was aromatic with late autumn, with the love of family, with the return to light and affection. We talked little about the experience. It was too near, too sore. We talked with the children, about the cats and the farm animals.

Among Don Rutledge’s historical photographs of John Howard Griffin - taken after the
Black Like Me
journey, December 1959, in New Orleans - this image provided the cover art for several paperback editions around the world. It continues to be the most well known of Rutlege’s images and was featured as the cover art for
Man in the Mirror: John Howard Griffin and the Story of Black Like Me
(Orbis Books,1997), Robert Bonazzi’s study of the classic text.

Griffin under the sunlamp:
Ultraviolet radiation accelerated the darkening process, initiated by Oxsoralen, the drug used to treat vitiligo (a condition that causes white splotches on the skin).

Below:
As described in the text, Griffin was warned against looking at white women - including movie posters (p. 60).