The Street Sweeper (16 page)

*

Pay attention to the small details. It is the mark of a professional. When Adam Zignelik said this to his students he was referring to the craft of a professional historian. More than fifty years earlier William McCray learned the same thing as it pertains to lawyers. He learned it from Thurgood Marshall not merely through it being said but also by simply watching him and the way he worked. Thurgood taught all the attorneys
working under him what Charles Hamilton Houston had taught him; they were going to have to be twice as good as lawyers arguing
against
the extension of civil rights to non-whites. William noted the way Thurgood argued in court and the firm but unfailingly polite manner in which he addressed all judges, even those he knew were opposed to his most passionate beliefs. He noted the total absence of any crossing out in his boss’s written arguments as they appeared in court documents, in the briefs handed up. If Thurgood changed so much as one word the whole document would be retyped. It was a part of his punctiliousness that he passed on to William and the others. Later, William would pass this on to his son Charles, the historian.

An astute observer at the US Supreme Court in Washington on 17 May 1954 might have suspected before the commencement of the actual proceedings that something was up. He would have noticed the enthusiasm of the recently appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren during the usually formal and staid preliminary admission ceremony welcoming the new members of the bar. And what was a frail-looking Justice Jackson doing sneaking into the building through a seldom-used side entrance so soon after suffering a severe heart attack, and why did he stop off to knowingly advise some of the other judges’ clerks without explanation, ‘I think you boys ought to be in the courtroom today’?

Thurgood knew to be there that day. Two-thirds of the way through Chief Justice Warren’s reading out of the majority opinion it wasn’t yet clear which way the court was going to find. Thurgood fixed a stare on Justice Stanley Reed, a native of Kentucky, whom he thought the most likely to lead a push in favour of retaining segregation. He would have to appear before him again so he needed to be careful with the way he looked at him but he continued to look for what gamblers call a ‘tell’ in Justice Reed’s eyes. The Chief Justice continued reading aloud. He had been reciting the majority’s review of previously decided cases when Thurgood heard him read the sentence that suddenly showed the majority’s hand. Referring to black children, Chief Justice Warren said, ‘To separate them and others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely
ever to be undone.’ Thurgood just had to keep still and keep breathing. When the Chief Justice reached the paragraph that began with ‘we conclude’, he added a word that was not found in the printed text. The word was ‘unanimously’. At around this time Justice Stanley Reed, a native of Kentucky, had tears in his eyes.

Whatever was churning inside him, Thurgood Marshall, the gradualist, maintained his composure as he listened to the Supreme Court unanimously decide in
Brown versus Board of Education
that it was wrong and illegal to segregate school children on the basis of race. It was not only morally wrong, it was also unconstitutional.

Thurgood was numb. He found the nearest payphone and called the LDF office in New York. Jake Zignelik took the call and William McCray stopped what he was doing after the third time he heard Jake say the only thing he had said after ‘hello’ up till then in the conversation: ‘Oh
my God!
’. Everyone in the office wanted to speak to Thurgood after he had spoken to William, who had grabbed the phone off Jake. Thurgood instructed them to phone Roy Wilkins and Walter White and Kenneth Clarke too. As soon as Thurgood’s call had finished the switchboard began to light up with calls from all over the country. Exactly the same thing was happening at the same time at the office of the NAACP.

Thurgood took the first plane back to New York. The first call he took when he got back to the office was from John W. Davis, the 79-year-old one-time Democratic presidential candidate, counsel in the Brown case for the state of South Carolina, and, while only one of a large group of lawyers who had argued the case for retaining segregation, he was its unofficial leader. Davis had called to congratulate Thurgood. Work stopped for everyone. Champagne flowed freely in the LDF office. People were laughing, walking in and out of each other’s offices. No one could quite believe it. The drinks session grew more festive. From the board members to the receptionists, everyone was celebrating the decision. Reporters arrived and quickly joined the group. More than by alcohol, people were intoxicated and numbed by history so fresh its full effect could not even begin to be divined. Before long people adjourned to Thurgood’s favourite restaurant, the Blue Ribbon, where at some stage Thurgood interrupted the celebrations with a sober and prophetic
reminder. ‘I don’t want any of you fooling yourselves; it’s just begun, the fight has just begun.’ While they knew he was right, Jake Zignelik and William McCray were part of a large group of revellers still celebrating at the Blue Ribbon after 1 am.

*

‘And what of Dietrich Bonhoeffer?’ Adam Zignelik asked his ‘What is History?’ class rhetorically. ‘His visit to New York in 1930 played an important part in the evolution of his thinking. In addition to that friendship with a black student at Union Theological Seminary, he befriended a French theology student, the pacifist Jean Lasserre. Lasserre’s pacifism and his insistence on the centrality – to all branches of Christianity – of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount affected him deeply. In conversations in the streets around here where you walk, Lasserre led Bonhoeffer to the conclusion that this was it; the Sermon on the Mount was the whole point.

‘This stayed with Bonhoeffer when he returned to Germany in the summer of 1931 and found seven million people unemployed. It was still with him on 30 January 1933 when, shortly before noon, Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany. You can safely assume it was with him on 1 April of that year when it became government policy to boycott Jewish stores and businesses. You will have seen the photos of the store windows with the Jewish Star of David painted on the windows and the stormtroopers from the SS and the SA patrolling the streets outside, enforcing the new law. It wasn’t difficult to enforce. It met with little resistance.’

*

There was a knock at the door of the apartment Diana shared with Adam Zignelik. It was the man with the moving van. He had come for the boxes. Diana was holding a photo of Adam as a toddler in quilted overalls. Was there something she should have said? Was there some form of words that she hadn’t thought of, a form of words that could have made Adam see that they were never likely to love anyone else more than they loved
each other so questions of jobs and salaries and location were all secondary? The man knocked on the door again. It was only for so long that it was polite to pretend not to have heard the knock. She couldn’t pretend to be surprised he was there. They’d already spoken over the intercom. She looked around the living room. What about the bathroom? What about the bedroom? She’d been through each of them several times since Adam had gone to work but should she look one more time? Could she take the photo? ‘Just a minute,’ she called. Could she take the photo? For a moment she thought to ask the man who had come for the boxes.

*

Professor Charles McCray, Chair of the History Department, was on the phone in his office with the door slightly ajar when his father William arrived to see him. William looked at the young woman who sat outside his son’s office and who stood to greet him.

‘Hello, Mr McCray,’ she said warmly. ‘Lovely to see you. How are you today?’ Not only could he not remember her name, he also couldn’t even remember her title. Was she his son’s secretary or his personal assistant? Did she work for him, for a few professors or for the department generally? None of this mattered as much as her name when greeting her but since he couldn’t remember any of it and there wasn’t time to look for clues around her workstation, he just smiled before shaking her hand with an enthusiastic hello. She would be able to guess at his age to within ten years and would therefore go on to assume he was declining intellectually and she would therefore deem him incapable of offending her. Everything was just fine.

‘I’m sure he won’t be long. He’s just on a call at the moment. I’ll tell him you’re here.’

‘Thank you,’ William said. The thought occasionally crossed his mind on these visits that Charles didn’t hurry with the tasks he had to complete before he invited him into his office. But even as the thought would cross his mind he was aware he had no evidence to support this and was ashamed of ever thinking it.

‘Sorry, Dad, I couldn’t get off. It was someone from the President’s office and I –’

‘Bush?’

‘No, the President of the university. Nearly as big.’

‘What have you done now, Charlie? You in trouble again?’ his father asked through a gentle smile.

Charles stretched in his chair. ‘Yeah, there’s always something going on around here and I always seem to get dragged in. It’s like they want to stop me from getting my work done. Somebody does. That’s the
real
conspiracy around here.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Someone’s invited one of those 9/11 conspiracy theorists to give a talk.’

‘What, one of those guys who says the Neo-cons were behind it and when he says Neo-cons he means “the Jews”?’

‘Kinda … That and a bit more. Apparently this guy says 4000 Jews stayed home from the World Trade Center on 9/11 ‘cause they got tipped off.’

‘Oh, I hadn’t heard that one.’

‘You’re slipping, Dad. That one’s not so new.’

‘Tell me nobody involved with this is black.’

‘I wish I could.’

‘Oh no, they
are
black?’

‘Well, that phone call is the first I’ve heard of it so I don’t know. But –’

‘Let me guess. The President wants you to look into it?’

‘The President’s asked me to be on an ad-hoc subcommittee to look into this thing so you can bet your bottom dollar
somebody
involved in this is going to be African American. You can sort of hear it on the phone even before they say it. I’m telling you, this is the last thing the university needs right now. This is the last thing
I
need right now.’

‘Well, you just got to stop this guy from coming, Charlie.’

‘It’s not that simple, Dad; you of all people know that.’

‘Yes, it is. It
is
that simple.’

‘There’s a little thing called the First Amendment, which I know you’ve heard of.’

‘Freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom to intimidate and whip up racial hatred.’

‘Then there’s academic freedom to consider.’

‘Don’t tell me this guy was invited by a faculty member?’

‘I don’t know yet but I’m going to know soon, like it or not. The President’s going to make sure I know and,’ he said, leaning back in his chair and stretching again, ‘that’s why I already know that somebody in this picture is going to be, just
has
to be, African American.’

‘All the more reason you’ve got to stop it, Charlie.’

‘All the more reason?’

‘We don’t need another nutcase. Stamp it out, Charlie, if it is as it sounds. Do what you can to stamp it out fast.’

‘I don’t know. Maybe the sheer absurdity of this guy’s argument is the best weapon against it.’

‘Yes, I’ve heard that one. But that’s allowing it to cloak itself in the respectability of the university. Don’t mess around. Pull it out by the roots, Charlie.’

‘Oh, the roots go much farther and much deeper than I’ve got time to dig. I’d have to quit my job and go digging deep as a coalmine to look for all those roots. And that’s assuming I have any real sway in this anyway.’

‘Don’t shirk it, Charlie.’

‘I could just be the spokesperson here.’

‘Well, there’s precedent for that, I guess. Give an African American a PhD, make a mess and get him to clean it up, like they did with Condi and Colin.’

‘I think you’re letting
them
off a bit lightly. And no one
gave
me anything!’

‘It’s a figure of speech, Charlie, especially when it comes from me. I’m just telling you not to be anybody’s patsy and definitely don’t be the guy who shirked it.’

‘Dad, I’ve just had the phone call about it now, only one brief phone call. I hardly know anything –’

‘Do what’s right here, Charlie.’

‘Geez, now I’ve made a rod for my back with
you
, haven’t I?’

‘A rod for
your
back?’

‘Another one.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘I don’t know. I’m tired, Dad. Just let me find out what this is all about first. There’s no way ‘round it though. I’m their man. There will be plenty of time for us to argue about this. Let’s just have a nice dinner tonight. Okay?’

*

‘In April 1933 with the boycott of Jewish businesses already under way,’ Adam explained to his class, ‘Bonhoeffer was asked to deliver a talk to his clerical brethren. He chose as his topic “The Church and the Jewish Question”.

‘The country was a sea of swastikas. It was in this environment that Bonhoeffer wrote what was in fact really a challenge to the Church, his own Church. He said that the Church had three possible courses of action. First, it could question the State as to the legitimacy of the State’s actions. Second, the Church could help the victims of the State’s actions. The Church, he said, was unconditionally obliged to do this. Remember, anti-Semitism was now State sponsored and opposition to the State was extremely dangerous.

‘On 7 April 1933 legislation was passed promoting an “Aryan Church” that excluded not only Jews, whom Martin Luther had, from the time the German Church was established, wanted to convert but also Christians of Jewish descent. They were now to be excluded too. Luther’s problems with the Jews had been doctrinal. Now Hitler added the insurmountable layer of racism. It was in the midst of all of this that Bonhoeffer wrote and delivered his challenge to the Church with its three possible courses of action, the third of which was really quite astonishing. The third possible course of action for the Church, Bonhoeffer wrote, was not merely to bandage the victims of the wheel, but to stop the wheel. Imagine saying that. We could stop the wheel. We
should
stop the wheel. That’s what he was saying.’