The King of Colored Town

by Darryl Wimberley

  With schoolwork completed and food in my stomach I trotted straight from Miss Chandler’s to Kerbo School where I daily prepared for the recital that would determine my future. I loved retreating inside my old school. The building offered a fortress against the outside world, a sanctuary for my labors, a retreat immune to all distraction.

  It felt good to be within the embrace of those cypress walls, inside the penumbra of familiar smells and memories. I had my horn; Pellicore allowed me to take my cased instrument home for these extracurricular sessions. I would give the Florida faculty a full performance of “Oklahoma” in martial regularity, unvaried from the sheet music Pellicore would provide. A metronomic performance I would render, note following note like Mama would play.

  “Oklahoma” was safe.

  But there was something riskier in the wind. I was writing music of my own that I wanted somebody to hear, music for strings and winds and keyboards. I started by working out variations of original scores, pieces for the piano, mostly, of Mozart and a reduction of the Ninth for the piano. It was in my grandmother’s shack and singlehanded that I began my career as a composer.

  For the first time I was doing something that had begun with Alex McBride in Jacksonville; I was allowing myself to experiment, to make mistakes, to alter the music on the sheet. It had started with Beethoven’s ode, just variations on chords and harmonies already penned by a distant composer. I began to jot down sounds in my own head. They were just small riffs at first, a pleasant shift in chord or mood or rhythm. I’d jot them down on scraps of paper at first, but that got too unwieldy, so I got grocery bags from the SafeWay, a grand expanse of paper, and scored my compositions by hand on that rough parchment, trying out small beads of sound at first, then looking for a bracelet to mount them, a theme, a hook, a melody. I’m not sure I even realized that I was composing original music.

  I had no instrument. I wrote my music by the light of a kerosene lantern, nodding to an imagined score in my mind’s ear. I’d stay up hours into the night, long after Grandma was asleep, long after Corrie Jean had begun her recurrent inchoate dreams. Sometimes the sun would rise and there’d be Hard On curled at my feet, a half-deaf dog witness to the dawn of my music.

  My basic notion was to take a classical piece and vary it with riffs I had culled from Joe Billy’s cache of blues and jazz and popular records. I penciled my compositions on the backs of grocery bags saved from SafeWay. Miss Chandler saw my work, but had no idea that these scribblings were intended for Dr. Ransom and his colleagues in Tallahassee. I was told to play it safe. I was warned. But I remembered Jacksonville and Alex McBride and I just decided to swing for the fences.

  As it turned out, so did Miss Chandler.

  The selection of the supervisor of elections for Lafayette County ran on the same schedule as that for the sheriff, but Jim Hicks had been unchallenged for so many years that lots of folks probably thought he was appointed to his position. For years Jim had been charged with certifying candidates and electoral results in county-run contests and for years he had routinely denied black citizens the right to vote.

  Jim Crow provided the legal basis for that discrimination. Poll taxes were common. Registration required street addresses that, in Colored Town, could not be provided. Other tools for disenfranchisement were more subtle. Take literacy tests, for instance. You had to read to vote and you had to read to Mr. Hicks’ satisfaction. Mr. Jim kept a Bible handy, or sometimes a newspaper, to evaluate the occasional colored citizen intrepid enough to seek registration. All applicants of African American descent returned from those examinations unqualified to vote.

  Lyndon Baines Johnson would later railroad legislation through congress to sweep away the last vestiges of what had long been an evisceration of civil rights. But in 1963 there was no local presence to challenge the supervisor of elections. Had not been since Reconstruction. So Mr. Hicks must have been astounded when one October day, around noon, Miss Eunice Chandler placed her purse on the marble counter that dominated the lobby outside his office.

  “You need anything?”

  It was Jim’s sister, Wanda, who handled the routine queries and applications. Wanda Hicks proudly pronounced herself an evangelical Christian. Not just a Christian, mind you, but an evangelical Christian. It seems Jim’s spinster sister had discovered the special potency of that label long before the modern majority did.

  She had a broad, untroubled visage. Wore an unadorned one-piece dress belted with a muslin sash at her thick waist. She kept her hair dishwater blonde and held back so tightly it pulled at the corner of her eyes.

  Mandarin eyes in a hard-shelled face.

  “Yes, please.” Miss Chandler’s loose and folded countenance would have rippled like a walrus with the smile I know she presented. “I’d like to register to vote.”

  “…Vote?”

  Wanda was truly unsure what she had heard. Surely this ugly large black woman was looking to get a driver’s license, or perhaps welfare?

  Miss Chandler abided Wanda’s confusion without comment, and nodded, gazing at the nameplate set in a block of hardwood atop the counter.

  “You’re here to vote?”

  “To register,” Miss Chandler amended sweetly. “I am here to register to vote in Lafayette County.”

  A frown deepened below Wanda’s Mandarin eyes. “Just one moment.” Jim’s sister left her post at the counter to step through the open door of his office. “Jim?”

  “What is it?”

  A muffled consultation had the supervisor reaching for his Bible. Mr. Hicks emerged from his office with a smirk that quickly faded when he recognized the black woman looming at the counter.

  “That a Bible, Mr. Hicks? I wasn’t aware I had to be sworn in.”

  “Miss Eunice—”

  “Miss Chandler,” she interrupted, sweet as pie. “Eunice is my given name. I’ll get right to the point; I am here to register. Want to make sure I’m in time for the May primary.”

  “Uhmmmm,” Hicks laid the useless Bible aside. “Uhm. Law says you got to wait sixty days, Miss Chandler.”

  “The law says? May I see it?”

  “See…?”

  “The law, Mr. Hicks. The statute, in particular, related to a sixty-day wait.”

  “Now, Miss Eunice, Miss Chandler, I don’t think I’m required to clerk the law for you. You want to see Judge Blackmond, or the Sheriff, you’re welcome.”

  “Mr. Hicks, I have already seen Judge Blackmond.”

  “You…you have?”

  “Yes, I have. And there is no mandatory waiting period beyond your authority. All that’s required is that I produce identification, which I have with me. A birth certificate—”

  “Could take a while to verify that, Miss Chandler.”

  Wanda smirked. It was a point of fact that it always took an inordinate length of time to verify the circumstances of any black person’s birth.

  “I also have a letter from the supervisor of elections in Leon County. Harold Sykes, you know Harold? Tommy’s uncle. Anyway, Harold was kind enough to save you some trouble, you and me. See here? He’s already verified the birth certificate and related information. Had it notarized, wasn’t that thoughtful? I have a Florida driver’s license, too, if you need it…” She plopped the license along with the offending letter onto the marble counter. “…and my transcript from Howard University, along with state certification for secondary education. Do you need me to read from your Bible?”

  “No, ma’am,” Jim was no longer smiling. “No, I don’t think we’ll bother with the Bible.”

  “Excellent,” Miss Chandler beamed goodwill. “Then if you’ll just kindly lay out the paperwork, I believe I can be registered in time to get back for lunch.”

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible, Miss Chandler.”

  “‘Afraid’?”

  “I cannot verify these documents,” Jim declared coldly. “You’re welcome to apply again in the spring, if you like.”

  “I do not l
ike,” Miss Chandler declared, and Wanda began to experience something like pulmonary distress.

  “Miss Chandler, are we gonna have a problem here?” Jim seemed to be looking forward to that prospect.

  “You definitely will have,” Miss Chandler assured him. “There are laws, Mr. Hicks, that you are not above.”

  “I don’t see anybody with a gun to my head.”

  “Call the sheriff,” Miss Chandler suggested. “I believe he’s equipped.”

  “Wanda.”

  “Ah hah?”

  “Call the sheriff, please. Get him over here. Use my phone.”

  By the time Collard walked up the stairs from his office to Hicks’, everybody in the courthouse knew that one of them nigger teachers was backtalkin’ to the supervisor of elections.

  Collard would have had no trouble facing a shootout or a fist-fight. Crosses and burned churches were mere aggravations. But he had his hat in his hands that noon by Jim Hicks’ office.

  “Miss Chandler,” he began. “I believe it’s best we leave.”

  “As soon as the Supervisor discharges his sworn duty, Sheriff, I’ll be free to go.”

  “She can go anytime,” Hicks snarled. “I done told her she can’t register.”

  Miss Chandler turned the sheriff’s attention to the documents on the corner. “One of those is from Judge Blackmond, Sheriff.”

  “Judge don’t rule my office.” Hicks became more bellicose in Collard’s presence.

  “The judge will be glad to hear that,” Miss Chandler responded calmly. “In fact, if you’ll put it in writing, I’d be glad to take it to him.”

  “You go do anything you want.”

  “And then I shall inform the FBI .”

  “Ain’t got nuthin’ to do with me.”

  “And then the governor, then the State Attorney General—”

  “Miss Chandler—” Collard tried to interject.

  “And then finally I will go to the Attorney General of the United States. I believe Robert Kennedy takes a dim view of local officials who use their office to deny African American citizens the right to vote.”

  “Get her out of here, Collard,” Jim Hicks ordered the sheriff—which was a big mistake.

  Collard just stood there a moment. Then he put his hat back on his head. Ran a scarred finger round to test the brim.

  “The fuck you think I am, Jim? Your house nigger?”

  “Well, I—” Hicks was taken aback. “Well, Sheriff, I just assumed—”

  “‘Assume’ is right. Makes an ‘ass’ outa ‘u’ and ‘me’. Mostly you, Jim.”

  “Sorry, Sheriff. Didn’t mean to tell you how to do your job.”

  “‘Assuming’ you got the goddamnedest idea what my job is.”

  “Of course. Of course.”

  “So now in the discharge of my duties, Mr. Supervisor, I order you to serve this woman the papers she needs to register to vote.”

  “Lord Jesus!”

  Expressed in local vernacular—Wanda like to have fainted.

  “What? You cain’t do that, Sheriff.”

  “Don’t make me come around that counter, Jim. You already pissed me off. Now get the god-damn paperwork !”

  Hicks turned, pale, to his sister. “Well? You heard the man.”

  “I’ll need a hundred, Mr. Hicks.”

  This from Miss Chandler.

  “WHAT?”

  “Well, what did you imagine, Mr. Supervisor? That I was the only Negro born or literate in Colored Town?”

  Jim’s silent appeal to Collard Jackson went unheeded.

  “You can tell Garner they’s more people gonna wipe their ass with those things than register,” the sheriff waved him off. “It ain’t no more than a fart in a whirlwind. Just give the woman what she wants.”

  Miss Chandler left with a heavy box of registration forms propped on her hip. But it was one thing to tote a box of paper across the tracks to Colored Town, quite another to rally a frightened and feeble population to actually vote. All the legislation in the world would not accomplish that task. Bobby Kennedy and LBJ and Martin Luther King put together could not get that job done.

  Even with but a single radio and a half-ass newspaper we all knew what had followed registrations in Mississippi, in Alabama. Hell, there had been lynchings of civil rights workers as close as Taylor County. What protection could colored people expect in Laureate? There would be no angels guarding Jim Hicks’ voting booths, no salvation sent from above. If we did this thing we would have to bear the lash on our own, we told ourselves. And what did we have to gain? What good could possibly come of such folly? These were the opinions that held sway on Mr. Raymond’s front porch, mouthed by mostly unemployed men.

  And so when word came back to the quarters of Miss Chandler’s audacity there was no cheering, there was no rush of support. To the contrary, Miss Chandler’s initiative quickly divided our community right down the middle.

  “We go up to that town wantin’ the vote, Garner and all them white men gonna pound our heads,” Pudding echoed sentiments heard at home. “She should stick to the classroom, keep outta politics.”

  I agreed with Pudding, for reasons totally selfish. Here I was trying to keep out of sight, after all, trying to keep a low profile just as Miss Chandler had told me to do, so that I could get on with my life, and now here Miss Chandler was going out and bringing all this attention. Me trying to grab a foothold in the dark, and she goes out and grabs the limelight. How was this going to help me go to college? How was this going to help me get out of Colored Town?

  Some voices praised Miss Chandler’s courage. Others acknowledged her courage, but decried any attempt to organize voters. And some people were downright angry at Miss Chandler. Miss Hattie Briar was vocal in her disapproval.

  “Colored people? Voting? You think we been injured so far, just get in the white man’s politics! Lord. Might as well shoot ourselves in the foot. Or the head.”

  Comments even more pointed came from the men.

  Somebody oughta tell that woman mind her own damn business.

  We don’ need no agitatin’.

  Or, this one—

  She watn’t so damn ugly she’d be married, yeah. Would’n have time be messin’ with no election.

  Chapter thirteen

  “ CBS Stirs The Race Pot,” by Jon J. Synon

  — The Clarion

  T he false summer that had settled so close to our Homecoming Week was banished by a cold front that by the time of my recital had brought a hard freeze to Colored Town. It was easy to forget that the first relief from summer’s hell later exacted the winter’s. Nevertheless, and however shortsighted, I welcomed the hard frost that came on the day of my Tallahassee audition, the freezing combinant of atmosphere that placed an icy lace on the Queen Anne crowding our outhouse, that crowned the tall floreted heads of Joe-Pye weed with delicate crystals of frozen dew and drove the rat snake to warmer lairs.

  The night before, while a norther howled its bitter lamentation, I put out my clothes before the sputter of our kerosene heater.

  The clothes would singe the hair on my legs come morning, but that was preferable to slipping from Mama’s warm flank into garments stiff with cold. I only had one coat for winter, a field jacket got from the Salvation Army in Lake City. Grandma gave me a scarf for my head.

  Next morning I danced on tiptoes to our kitchen and shimmied into my things. I had a substantial breakfast; bacon and extra biscuits and mayhaw jelly. I then made sure Mama was up and had food before making one last dash to our privet, washing my hands afterward with cold water and Comet. Time then to brave the brisk wind for the short walk that took me to my Yellowbird bus.

  I lugged my French horn in a fist exposed to the elements, the horn’s cardboard case banging my leg with each step. I had music stowed inside. The prescribed performances, of course. A safe selection. But I had the other material I’d prepared surreptitiously whose purpose I still concealed from Miss Chandler. I flexed my fingers. I
would not be sticking tissue into floats or gluing one-by-twos into make-believe goal posts today. This was the day when I would finally perform for real professors at a real college.

  The bus rolled past West’s Drugstore and my thoughts shifted to Joe Billy. He had been absent from school the entire week; somebody even said he was quitting. The Ford was gone from its usual place behind the upstairs loft; I figured he was off selling guitars. I hoped he’d be back for my birthday. We would both soon be eighteen. I turned on Halloween. His birthday was the week after. But even though I thought about my boyfriend, I can’t say I missed Joe Billy enough to pine. I told myself that I had important business only a bus ride away. I could not afford to be distracted, was what I said.