Gospel (148 page)

Mary Jean had been beaming to all her subjects, winking to someone she knew, rolling her eyes at some of the honors, little waves to someone special she just noticed, but now it was time to speak. After the mild applause subsided, she began.

“What does it mean to be Greek? I'll tell you what it means. It means we give a little more, work a little harder, and do a little more than our friends who favor a non-Greek lifestyle. Some people think of a sorority as a place to drink or where women go shopping together and, yes, well, we do that too!” Mild laughter. “But the real point of our being here is to raise our selves to a higher plane. We are in a position, since we are banded together, to really really help some underprivileged people in this state—to make a difference. Girls whose mothers have made bad life choices: poverty, hopelessness, drugs. Sometimes their kids are lucky and they end up in foster care or in shelters but, even so, they must feel sometimes that nobody cares. But we at Theta Kappa Theta care, and our Little Sister program, which brings these girls out for a weekend here at Cozy House, is one of the most important things we do. I think of a little girl, a little black girl, named Tasha and…” Mary Jean looked away, a noble stare into the middle distance, then composed herself. “… I'm sorry, I just get a little emotional when I see how some girls have literally nothing in life and I think what good it does for them to see us, in school, on a positive path, with nice things to aspire to.”

Jerilyn smiled at Margaret, but when Margaret looked away, she looked at her watch and mapped a path to the door. She could still stick her head in Sigma Kappa Nu by four
P.M
.
and then get home and write her paper.

Old East, Old West, the Playmakers Theatre, and many other landmarks of campus were slave-built,
3
but there was some free-black labor as well, particularly where furniture and ornament remain (many of the original Thomas Day' pieces survive). In 1799 the debate club took up the proposition of “Ought slavery to be abolished in the United States?” Starting Chapel Hill's long history of being a radical hotbed, the “yes” faction won the night.
5
But that was just a brief foray into abolitionism. UNC would not have been possible without slavery.

Chapel Hill never bought slaves outright, but they were in the business of leasing, trading and selling. All the young gentlemen at Chapel Hill were provided servants and they had to pay a fee to the university for their services that in turn went back to the slave-owners whose slaves were being loaned to UNC. You could expect $35 for your slave in a school-year contract.
6
Wealthier boys were always bringing their own personal slaves to campus, but they put a stop to that in 1845–it cut in on UNC's slave-leasing enterprise.'

UNC owes its existence to something called the “es cheat,” which means that when someone died intestate or without a surviving heir, their property, including slaves, went to the university. UNC would auction off all the human property and thereby fund itself.
8
Funding the university with, say, a tax would likely fail before the historically cheapskate North Carolina voter, so the escheat remained in place. This is out of Kemp Battle's
History of the University of North Carolina, 1776-1799,
which shows how it worked:

A free negro had a daughter, the slave of another. He [the free negro] bought her, and she then became the mother of a boy. The woman's father died without kin and intestate. His child and grandchild became the property of the university. They were ordered to be sold. This sounds hard, but it was proved to the board that they were in the lowest stage of poverty and degradation and that it would redound to their happiness to have a master. It must be remembered that slaves were considered to be as a rule in better condition than free negroes.
9

That was probably the most-beloved president of our university soft-pedaling human trafficking for UNC's gain—and he wrote that as late as 1907.

There is no one, particularly local historians, who will say a word against this sanctified place.

ALSO BY WILTON BARNHARDT

Emma Who Saved My Life

Show World

Lookaway, Lookaway

W
ILTON
B
ARNHARDT
is the author of three previous novels:
Emma Who Saved My Life, Show World,
and
Lookaway, Lookaway.
A native of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, he teaches fiction in the masters of fine arts in creative writing program at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, where he lives.

GOSPEL
. Copyright © 1993 by Wilton Barnhardt. All rights reserved. For information, address Picador USA, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Barnhardt, Wilton.

Gospel / Wilton Barnhardt.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-312-11924-0 (pbk.)

1. Sacred books—Fiction. 2. Lost books—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3552.A6994G67 1995

813'.54—dc20

94-46583

CIP

First published in the United States by St. Martin's Press

First Picador Edition: March 1995

eISBN 9781250047229

First eBook edition: June 2013