Juneteenth (49 page)

Hickman is intelligent but untrained in theology. Skilled with words, he reads and mixes his diction as required by his audience. He is also an artist in the deeper sense and has actually been a jazz musician. He has been a ladies’ man, but this ceased when he became a preacher. Devout and serious, he is unable to forget his old, profane way of speaking and of thinking of experience. Vernacular terms and phrases bloom in his mind even as he corrects them with more pious formulations. In other words he is of mixed culture and frequently he formulates the sacred in profane terms—at least within his mind. Orally he checks himself.

Proposition: A great religious leader is a “master of ecstasy.” He evokes emotions that move beyond the rational onto the mystical. A jazz musician does something of the same. By his manipulation of sound and rhythm he releases movements and emotions which allow for the transcendence of everyday reality. As an ex-jazzman minister Hickman combines the two roles, and this is the source of his leadership. He possesses a power which is not directly active—or at least not recognized for what it is in the South’s political arena, but it is there.

Bliss, [Hickman] said, there are facts and there is truth; don’t let the facts ever get in the way of your recognizing and living out the truth. And don’t get the truth confused with the law. The law deals with facts, and down here the facts are that we are weak and inferior. But while it looks like we are what the law says we are, don’t ever forget that we’ve been put in this position by force, by power of numbers, and the readiness of those numbers to use brutality to keep us within the law. Ah, but the truth is something else. We are not what the law, yes and custom, says we are and to protect our truth we have to protect ourselves from the definitions of the law. Because the law’s facts have made us
outlaws
. Yes, that’s the truth, but only part of it; for Bliss, boy, we’re outlaws in Christ and Christ is the higher truth.

Hickman tells Bliss, “Little boy, we have a covenant, but when you ran away you broke it. You fell down, Bliss; you fell down. But that doesn’t change a thing. Not for you, not for me, ever …”

Negroes appear to whites to enjoy themselves more because they have so little of that which is material. They appear to whites to suffer grief, heartbreak, and sadness more because they have, apparently, so much to be unhappy about. And the source of that unhappiness is seen as based in their color and social status rather than in their humanity.

Hickman has tried to teach Bliss not to turn himself into a figure based upon the materialization of himself, i.e., into someone whose identity is based upon color alone. He has tried to teach him to see himself and those close to him in terms of their inner spirit, their human quality, their quiet, understated heroism.

[Hickman] has his own unique way of looking at the U.S. and is much concerned with the
meaning
of history. There is mysticism involved in his hope for the boy, and an attempt to transcend the hopelessness of racism. After the horrors connected with or coincidental with his coming into possession of the child he reverts to religion and in his despair begins to grope toward a plan. This involves bringing up the child in love and dedication in the hope that properly raised and trained the child’s color and features, his inner substance and his appearance would make it possible for him to enter into the wider affairs of the nation and work toward the betterment of his people and the moral health of the nation.

Bliss symbolizes for Hickman an American solution as well as a religious possibility. Hickman thinks of Negroes as the embodiment of American democratic promises, as the last who are fated to become the first, the downtrodden who shall be exalted.

But he is tested in every way by the little boy—and especially after the boy has run away. These are ideas when grasped at their fullest, and they go to the heart of the American dilemma as far as Negroes are concerned. Hickman is tested of his faith in his own people and in his belief in America. A question of fatherhood in one sense, and in terms of his maturity, his spiritual maturity also. H. affirms ultimately for himself, to save his own sanity and soul. He clings to an idea and urges his people to do the same because he sees in this direction an affirmation of his own humanity.

To surrender Bliss, or the hope symbolized by the child, is to accept not only defeat but chaos, human depravity.

Hickman and the old Negroes have learned charity, hope, and faith under the most difficult conditions.

“Bliss, you can count on this: I’ll be there when you finally are forced to remember me!”

“I never want to remember,” Bliss had replied.