New Boy (19 page)

"Sure, I remember you," she said with a big smile. "You went away to a school up North, didn't you?" For a moment I felt as famous as the people in the pictures on the wall.

"Yeah, that's right," I said casually.

"How's it going up there?"

"It's all right, so far. It's a lot different from here."

"I can believe that," she said with a laugh, and then she became serious. "How come you're here?"

"Well, Russell was telling me about what you all were trying to do," I said, "and I was interested."

"Why don't we get started," said Russell. He was sitting at the head of the long table, and the rest of us took seats across from one another. "Everybody know each other?" I still hadn't met Roosevelt's cousin or the two fellows who had come in with Sylvia, so I introduced myself.

"I'm Rob Garrett," I said. "I grew up here and went to school here until last year. Right now I'm going to school up North, but I'm still interested in what's going on around here." Russell looked at Roosevelt's cousin.

"My name is Paulette Gentry," she said. She spoke confidently, but she held her head down in a way that made her seem
shy. "I'm a freshman in the high school and Roosevelt is my cousin." She looked at Roosevelt and smiled.

"What about you fellows?" said Russell, nodding at the other two boys.

"Joseph Rivers," said the smaller of the two. "I'm a freshman at Virginia Baptist College. I'm from Montgomery, Alabama."

"Albert Jarvis is my name," said the other boy, in a deep voice. "I'm also a freshman at Virginia Baptist and I'm from Atlanta, Georgia." He was dark-skinned and muscular, with a thick neck and a shaved head. He looked like a football player or maybe one of Minister Malcolm's men.

"All right," said Russell, "this is the meeting where we're finally going to decide what we're going to do. With the right kind of pressure, we can force an end to segregation in the city a lot sooner than the courts will. The suits filed in the courts are so tied up in knots, we could be stuck living with life the way it is now for years. We been meeting down here for months trying to agree on some action we can take that will speed things up, but all we done is talk." Russell looked impatiently at each of us. "We got to make up our minds whether we gonna do something. And if we're not, we should admit it and go home."

"Well, I feel we should pick out a business downtown that practices segregation, like White Tower, and start picketing," said Sylvia. "They make a lot of money off our kids buying those hamburgers. We can make signs, and I know a lot of kids who would want to help."

"When you gonna do it?" said Roosevelt, sounding skeptical. "On the weekends? Most kids are in school during the day, and the ones that aren't in school, you don't want to have on a picket line. And by the way, Sylvia, if your daddy finds out you're skipping school to walk on a picket line, he'll whip you so bad you won't be able to sit down for a week." Roosevelt snickered at Sylvia from across the table.

"So what do
you
want to do, Roosevelt?" said Sylvia, clearly irritated at Roosevelt's foolishness.

"Why don't we start by passing out leaflets after school? We could divide up the leaflets and pass them out in front of stores that we know discriminate," said Roosevelt.

"In other words, all of'em," said Russell with a smile. "What would you put on the leaflet?" Russell seemed mildly interested in what Roosevelt had to say.

"A Call to Action! This store discriminates against Negroes. Don't give them your business,'" said Roosevelt, writing out the words in the air with his index finger. "Something like that."

"Y'all talking about a
boycott,
" said Joseph, the college student from Alabama. "That's what they did in Montgomery with the buses. Finally won too, but it took a long time. Over a year, three hundred eighty-one days,
and
we had the whole Negro community behind us. Let me tell you, a boycott is hard to keep up. People get discouraged. They lose interest. If you start one just make sure you can finish it, because if you can't, the whites will finish it for you."

"What do you mean?" I said. Joseph looked at me with surprise.

"We talking about changing
their
whole way of life, as well as our own. For years, they've been used to treating us any old kind of way, without any back talk. Well, a boycott is back talk, and a lot of white people won't tolerate it. They will strike back. In Montgomery," said Joseph, "they tried to kill Dr. King. Bombed his house. One time I was on my way home with a group of my friends after a rally for the boycott. We were walking down the street on the sidewalk and a pickup truck jumped the curb and followed us right onto somebody's lawn, trying to run us down. I saw the guy behind the wheel. He was an old white guy with a red face. And you know what? The guy was smiling, with both hands on the wheel, smiling like crazy. We ran up on the nearest porch and rang the bell, and a colored guy came to the door and let us in, but I was shaking so hard I could barely talk."

There was a long silence after Joseph spoke, and I thought of Tyrone and how he had come after me on Seventh Avenue for my back talk. I thought of Tyrone's smile and what was behind it, and how I was shaking when I got back to Cousin Gwen's apartment that night, and the danger that lurked in being different, especially when you start standing up for yourself. And I recalled Cousin Gwen in the kitchen after Thanksgiving dinner, telling my mother how it was important for me to stand on my own two feet. I thought she would be pleased that I was at this meeting. I looked around the basement, at the picture of Jesus
hanging on the wall in the front of the room and the photographs of famous Negroes. I felt like I was in Sunday school. Threadbare hymnals were piled on a table, together with a box of old crayons and a few dog-eared religious coloring books. Despite the grim turn in the discussion, I was thrilled to be there, sitting at a table with other kids just like me, all of us wanting to bring segregation to a halt. I knew I would never have a discussion like this in a class at Draper.

Finally Roosevelt broke the silence. "What's your idea?" he said, looking across the table at Joseph.

"Direct action," Joseph quickly replied. "You got to be willing to put yourself on the line and take the consequences." He was a small, wiry fellow, with reddish brown skin and intense, dark brown eyes. When he spoke, his arms were extended across the table with his hands clasped, as though he was pleading. "A couple of us at the college have been talking about starting a sit-in." Except for Albert, the other college student, who seemed impassive, the others around the table, including me, looked at Joseph with curiosity. It was obvious that he knew a lot more about this stuff than any of us.

"What do you mean?" said Russell.

"I mean directly confronting the system, throwing yourself in front of the train, man, putting yourself in the gears of the white man's machine and bringing that sucker to a halt!" said Joseph. Like a preacher, he was feeling the spirit of his message and transmitting it to those around him. "We're talking about picking out a store downtown like Woolworth's. A group of us will go in there and sit down in the white section of the lunch counter and wait to be served, and we won't be looking at no clock to see if the bell has rung for class."

"But suppose they don't serve you?" said Sylvia.

"We wait until they do," said Joseph. "We wait and wait and wait some more."

"Yeah, but they could make you wait forever," Roosevelt said.

"That's right," Joseph said. "But as long as we sit, they can't do any business at our seats. Sooner or later, something's got to give." He seemed to have an answer for everything. It was a simple idea and I could tell that it was catching on with the group, but I could also imagine how something like this could get out of hand.

"What are you going to do when somebody calls the cops?" I said.

"Nothing," said Joseph.

"
Nothing?
" said Roosevelt, leaning back in his chair in disbelief.

"That's right, nothing," said Joseph evenly. "If you agree to go through with this, you have to be prepared to be arrested and take the consequences."

"You mean go to jail?" said Russell.

"That's right," said Joseph, "if it comes to that." Again a hush fell over the room as Joseph's words began to sink in. Then Albert spoke, and it seemed as if the walls were shaking.

"We think if the first group gets arrested, there will be others to take its place."

"Yeah," said Roosevelt. "But when does it end? They can keep arresting y'all and putting y'all in jail, as long as they want." He seemed to be having doubts.

"We wouldn't ask the high school kids to get arrested," said Joseph. "But we would like to have your help in passing out leaflets outside the store, explaining to customers what's going on inside and asking them not to patronize the store until the lunch counters are integrated."

"So we're gonna pass out leaflets and have a boycott after all," crowed Roosevelt. "What did I tell you?"

"When are you planning on doing this?" Russell said.

"Sometime in the spring," said Joseph. "We'll let you know."

When the meeting ended, the basement of the church was buzzing with excitement. Everyone walked out of the church together and stood on the sidewalk waiting for Russell to lock up. The sun was setting and the crickets were starting to sing, and you could feel the night approaching. Roosevelt's cousin, Paulette, was standing near him, but in the dusk, I could barely see her features. She hadn't said a word during the meeting. Probably scared, I thought. After all, she was just a kid. Russell put the key in his pocket and came over. "All right, Joseph, you gonna let me know when you're ready to do it," he said. "But give me a couple of weeks to get my side ready. I gotta line up enough kids to keep leafleting as long as you're in there."

"That means we'll need paper for the leaflets and a mimeograph machine to run them off," I said. "We can take up a collection to buy the paper, but I can't help you with the mimeograph machine."

"There's one in the office at Daddy's church," said Sylvia. "And it's brand new. Now I just have to figure out how to sneak in there and run them off without getting caught. How many you think we'll need anyway?" she asked Joseph.

"Four, five thousand to start with," said Joseph. "Maybe more. You can pass out a lotta leaflets in one day alone."

"Oh, Lord," said Sylvia. "I could be in there with that mimeograph machine all night. I'm gonna have to think about this." Everybody said goodbye, and Russell and I rode back to my house together.

"We have to keep this quiet," said Russell. "If anyone finds out, our parents will do whatever they can to stop us."

"Well, you don't have to worry about me," I said. "It's easy for me to keep things to myself." We both laughed. Russell dropped me off in front of my house. The lights were on inside and I knew Mom was inside getting dinner ready. I'm going back to school right after New Year's Day, I thought, and then it hit me. If the sit-in was in the spring and I was in Connecticut, I could miss the whole thing, unless it was still going on when I finished the school year. The school year ended early at Draper, sometime in May. With luck, the sit-in would still be going and I could participate. I didn't think about the danger. After all, I
would be away at school most of the time. There would be plenty of time to be scared, and, in a way, I was looking forward to it. I said goodbye to Russell, promised to send him a couple of bucks each week from my allowance to help pay for the leaflet paper, and went inside to wash up for dinner.

Before sitting down at the dinner table, my father had taken off his coat and loosened his tie. Now, strapped in his red suspenders, he sat carving a small roast of pork while my mother served boiled potatoes. I was still so excited from the meeting that I had lost my appetite, so I ate very little. Of course, my mother noticed.

"Aren't you hungry, son?" she said. "You always used to like roast pork." She sounded as though I had forsaken my connection to the family.

"It's okay, Mom," I said. "I've just been thinking about going back to school. My mind is elsewhere."

"Your mother said you were out with Russell this afternoon," Dad said.

"Yeah. We were driving all around," I said. "You know, Dad, Russell has his license. I want to get mine soon. Maybe the next time I come home?"

"That's fine, son," answered my father, "but I'd better teach you how to drive first."

On New Year's Eve, my parents and I went to a party at the home of Dr. and Mrs. Edgar Braxton. It was a big party, with lots of doctors, lawyers, businessmen, and teachers, many of whom had lived in town all their lives, earning a comfortable living serving the Negro community but making the necessary accommodations that segregation required. Teachers, of course, had to teach in a Jim Crow schoolhouse every day, and because they didn't make as much money as other professionals, they sometimes took side jobs. Mr. Eddie Gilliam, a science teacher at Booker T. Washington Junior High, lived two doors down from us. He drove a dark blue Lincoln Continental that he traded in every year for the latest model, and to pay for it, he also waited tables at the Jefferson Davis Club, an exclusive downtown men's club, or the Cavalier Country Club, also very swank but located outside the city. Sometimes I saw Mr. Gilliam leaving his house after school in the late afternoon dressed in his white waiter's coat, black pants, and a black bow tie, and as he climbed into the
Lincoln, I wondered what it was like for him to smile and bow and serve white men who were professionals like himself, with college degrees and positions of respect just as he had. What was it like for him to overhear their chatter about Bobby Jones and Ty Cobb and the heat and the niggers and how they were becoming more lazy and trifling every day, and, at the same time, more uppity.

Still, colored professionals were better off than most Negroes in town, and most were looked up to, even envied. But success, like everything else, often came at a price. W. K. Evans, the busiest undertaker in town, had a terrible drinking problem, so bad, people said, that you could smell liquor on his breath at the cemetery. And a lot of the doctors had family trouble. Keeping late hours and making house calls made it easier for them to chase women. I once overheard my parents talking about Dr. Walter King. His wife had recently learned that he had another whole family with two children living in secret on the other side of town. Mrs. King had called Mom in a daze, trying to figure out what to do. "I told her to put him out," said Mother. "Get all his clothes and put 'em in a box and leave it on the sidewalk in front of the house and change all the locks on all the doors."