Black Like Me (22 page)

I looked at him with a resurgence of faith in a public figure. He kept me on camera twenty minutes and he asked pointed questions that did not evade the issue. Before the interview was over, we were both deeply moved. At the end he asked me about discrimination in the North. I told him I was not competent to answer. I told him that the Southern racist invariably brought up the point that things aren’t perfect in the North either - which is no doubt so - as though that fact justified his injustices in the South.

I
t was a busy weekend
. I spent more and more time in my room between interviews and conferences with Mr. Levitan and our PR man, Benn Hall, while Mr. Levitan had a constant stream of visitors in his suite.

On Tuesday I did a TV documentary with Harry Golden. The Mike Wallace show went on that evening, and then a long radio interview on the Long John show from midnight until four thirty in the morning. I got no sleep. Benn Hall offered me tranquilizers, but I did not dare take one for fear it would put me out completely. The
Time
article would be out that evening. I was anxious to see how they would treat the story. But I was most nervous about the Mike Wallace show, and told Benn Hall that if Wallace asked one wrong question, I would get up and walk out. He assured me Wallace would be sympathetic, but I had strong reservations. I particularly feared he would get embroiled in a religious discussion, bring in my Roman Catholicism in a way that
could embarrass the Church.

The Golden show went all right. It was easy, with the director taking pains to keep it informal and to encourage me. I got off to a bad start, but we did it over and it came out all right.

Then, in the evening, Benn Hall came to pick me up. We took a taxi to Mike Wallace’s office, stopping at the corner of Broadway and 14th to pick up a copy of
Time
. It was around eight o’clock and the streets were wet under a drizzling rain. Benn left me in a cigar stand and ran across the street to get the magazine. In a moment he returned with two copies. The story was good - they told it right and straight. Relieved, we walked to Wallace’s office.

When they showed us in, Wallace rose from his chair behind the desk and shook hands. I was surprised to find him so much more youthful in appearance than I had imagined; but he looked also tired and uncomfortable. He offered me a seat and without pretense asked if I wanted to see the questions he planned to ask me. I told him no. He appeared to know that I viewed him cautiously and that I was not enthusiastic about this interview. He fumbled uncomfortably for words and I took a liking to him. From the hints he dropped (“We’ve investigated you pretty thoroughly”), I was aghast - he knew things about the trip, the names of people I had stayed with - many things I had tried to hide in order to protect the people involved.

“Please,” I pleaded. “Don’t mention those names on the air. I’d be afraid their lives would be endangered, and they were my friends.”

“Hell - I’m not going to do a damned thing to hurt them,” he said. “Look - I’m on your side.”

“How did you find out about all of this?” I asked.

“Oh, it’s part of the business,” he said.

We sat in his office, both of us dull, both of us tired to death. Our talk frittered out. He asked how the Coates shows went, said he heard they were excellent. “That makes me want to do better,” he said.

“He had a full hour - you’ve only got a half hour,” I said.

He pulled a bottle of whiskey out of his desk, offered me a
drink. I refused. “Look, John - hell, I know you’ve done nothing but answer questions on all these shows and newspaper interviews; but will you pull yourself together and really work for me tonight?”

“I’d do that as a matter of conscience anyway,” I said.

“You want me to tell you something,” he said. “I’m scared to death of you - I mean a man who’d do what you’ve done - ”

“Then you don’t know me as well as I thought you did,” I said. “The truth is I’m scared to death of you.”

He burst out laughing. “Well, I guarantee you, you’ve got no reason to be.”

Liveliness returned. Both of us felt certain it would go well.

We walked out onto a stage that contained only two chairs and a smoking stand. The camera technicians and director prepared us, got cables out of sight, strapped mikes on our necks, shouted instructions. Wallace smoked incessantly and smiled at me while yelling oaths in answer to yelled instructions. “Remember,” he said. “We’ve got to do as well in a half hour as you did with Paul in an hour.”

“I’ll talk fast,” I said, peering past the lights into the camera jumble of darkness.

The count started. The red lights came on. Wallace talked and smoked. He poured intelligent questions into me and kept his face close, absorbing my attention, encouraging me. It was a supercharged moment. I answered, forgetting everything except him and his questions. Fatigue disappeared. Fascination took over. The excitement sustained us. I realized, when the time was up, that it had gone well. And when we went off the air, Wallace shouted, “Top notch. Cancel everything and schedule it immediately.”

It was an extraordinary experience. Never have I been handled more superbly by an interviewer.

R
adio-Television Française
flew a crew of five from Paris to do a television show of the person-to-person type at my home in Mansfield. We had three busy days, with Pierre Dumayet, the commentator, and Claude Loursais, the director of the
Cinq Colonnes à la Une
. I put them on the plane out of here yesterday evening, and only then had time to settle down and do some work. But work was difficult. The story had circulated all over the world, and mail, telegrams and telephone calls poured in.

The local situation was odd. I had no contact with anyone in town and no one had contact with me. However, I understood that I was loudly discussed in the stores and on the streets - that the druggist and a couple of others had risen to my defense when the discussions became hot. I avoided going downtown, going into any of the stores for fear my presence would embarrass people who had been my friends.

The local roadside café, a gathering place for the segregationists, had a new sign. For some time it had carried a sign reading WE DON’T SERVE NEGROES. Then it was replaced by a larger sign: WHITES ONLY. Now another had joined it: NO ALBINOS ALLOWED. This sign that so disgusted my parents greatly amused me. I was surprised and pleased to discover that Foy Curry, the café-owner, was, after all, a man of some wit.

The principal point of contention among the women of the town appeared to be whether or not I had done a “Christian” thing. I feel that though few of them liked it, at least a large proportion of them understood that I worked as much for them and their children as I did for the Negroes. Certainly, my mail thus far was overwhelmingly congratulatory. I began to hope that I had been overly pessimistic, that we might be able to live in Mansfield in an atmosphere of peace and understanding after all.

The phone woke me in the morning. I glanced out our front window to a calm spring landscape of fields and woods, then picked up the phone. A long-distance call from the
Star-Telegram
in Fort Worth. What could they want? I wondered, since they had not carried one word about my story. The reporter came on the line. He cautiously asked me how things were.

“All right as far as I know,” I said.

“You don’t sound too excited,” he said. I began to feel uneasy.

“Why should I be?”

“You mean you haven’t heard?”

“What?”

“You were hanged in effigy from the center red-light wire downtown on Main Street this morning.”

“In Mansfield,” I asked.

“That’s right.” He told me that the
Star-Telegram
had received an anonymous call that racists had hanged my effigy on Main Street. The newspaper checked it out with the local constable who confirmed that a dummy, half black, half white, with my name on it and a yellow streak painted down its back, was hanging from the wire.

“What would you like to say about it?” the reporter asked.

“I’m sorry it happened,” I said. “It’ll only give the town a worse name.”

“People seem pretty excited about what you’ve done. There’s a lot of loose talk out in Mansfield. Do you think this represents a real threat?”

“I’d probably be the last to know,” I said.

“Do you think your life’s in danger?”

“I have no idea.”

“What are you going to do about this hanging?”

“Ignore it.”

“You’re not even going downtown to see it?”

“No … this sort of thing is not interesting,” I said.

“Do you think this represents the prevailing sentiment around town?”

“No, I’m sure it doesn’t.”

The reporter thanked me for my answers. He said they had sent a photographer out to take a picture of the effigy.

The reporter called back. He wondered, as I did, how this could have happened on Main Street when we are supposed to have police on duty all night. He told me that a grocer saw the effigy around 5 A.M. when he came to work, called the constable and told him to “get that damned thing down from there.” The constable had taken it down and thrown it onto the town junk heap, but when the reporter and photographer got to Mansfield, someone had retrieved the effigy from the dump and hung it on a sign reading:

$25 FINE FOR DUMPING DEAD ANIMALS

The local people remained utterly silent. I waited for just one, anyone, to call and say: “We may not approve of your views, but we think this hanging is shameful.” Their silence was eloquent and devastating. My disappointment grew as the afternoon passed. Did their silence condone the lynching? My family’s uneasiness approached terror now. My parents and my wife’s mother begged us to take the children and go away somewhere until this thing blew over.

That evening the
Star-Telegram
carried a six-column banner front-page headline announcing the lynching in effigy. Margaret Ann Turner (Mrs. Decherd Turner) had heard the news on TV and called from Dallas to say they were coming after the children. We telephoned the Joneses at Midlothian and then called the Turners back. Decherd said we must come and stay with them as long as there was the slightest danger. The Joneses also invited us, but they felt it might be better if we were in Dallas, since I had much support there, according to them.

At such times, the slightest kindness on the part of anyone becomes a sort of bravery. My dad, who had gone to town, defiantly I imagine, returned almost jubilant. He had gone into the
grocery store where he usually trades and heard the sudden silence. Then one of the owners, in the back at the meat counter, called a greeting.

“I didn’t know whether I was still welcome,” Dad said.

“Hell, you know better than that,” the grocer shouted.

“I don’t know - the way people have been acting. I was afraid if they saw me coming into your store, they might stop trading here.”

“That’s the kind of customer we don’t want in the first place,” the grocer said.

In the context of the day, this was heroism. Someone in town dared to express an opinion.

The time came to take my wife and children to Dallas. Decherd Turner had called again and told me to bring my typewriter and current work. “We’ve fixed you up an office here at the Bridwell Library,” he said, referring to the library of the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University.

“I’m not going to do it. Somebody’s sure to find out and they’ll make a squawk about S.M.U. offering me protection. I’m too unpopular. I don’t want to get you or them into any uncomfortable situation.”

Decherd insisted. He said they would be honored to offer me any hospitality and library or research facilities. They even requested I lecture to the student body.

On my way out of the lane that leads from my parents’ place to my home, the neighbors at the halfway point waved, but those near the highway - people with whom we have been cordial - gave me the most violently hostile stare. I ran the gauntlet driving through town. At the second red light a truck pulled up beside me and a young man in a cowboy hat looked down into the cab of my car. He told me he’d heard talk that “they” were planning to come and castrate me, that the date had been set. He said this coldly, without emotion, neither threatening nor sympathetic, exactly the way one would say: “The weatherman’s promising rain for tomorrow.” I stared up at him, not recognizing him, and felt my face
flush with the embarrassment of being a public spectacle. After he drove on, I felt sure he meant to imply that someone from out of town, not a local group, planned this.

When I got home, the suitcases were packed. My wife’s mother said people in town thought the effigy-hanging was the work of “outsiders.” I told her I had no way of knowing but would certainly like to believe it.

T
he
Star-Teleg ram
carried an excellent and accurate story as a follow-up to the effigy hanging. It made things clear, it clarified motives and it certainly lifted the entire matter above segregation and desegregation.

Yet we learned that they burned a cross just above our house at the Negro school, and that someone remarked they should have burned it on my land. I wish they had, I wish they had - it would have been far better than burning it at the school.

The Turners crowded us into their house. The relief to be there, surrounded by friends, away from the hostility and the threats of the bullies and the castraters, was so great that we were suddenly filled with exhaustion.

W
e returned
to Mansfield, deciding to hide away no longer. The mail poured in, hearteningly favorable and moving. Most people in other areas, including the Deep South, understood, though the situation remained uncomfortable at home. Our townspeople wanted to “keep things peaceful” at all costs. They said I had “stirred things up.” This is laudable and tragic. I, too, say let
us be peaceful; but the only way to do this is first to assure justice. By keeping “peaceful” in this instance, we end up consenting to the destruction of all peace - for so long as we condone injustice by a small but powerful group, we condone the destruction of all social stability, all real peace, all trust in man’s good intentions toward his fellow man.