by Robert Coles
Figures 27 and 28 One house is a grim tenement, and one house, obviously, has a lot to make it pleasant.
Figure 29 A black child shows the teacher with a pointer and on a stool. “She’s always over you and on you to do something, and she gets annoyed too quick. She’s too nervous about us, I think. She always lectures at us.”
Figure 30 A white child says the same teacher is “friendly” and “likes to hug us a lot.”
Figure 31 A black child from a ghetto in a northern city draws the school bus (owned, he says, by “white people”) that takes him and others like him to a suburban school. His face can be seen amid the dabs of black. The white driver literally blends into the bus, which is the same color as the driver’s face.
Figure 32 Another black child draws his bus, and himself and his brother in it, and his (white, suburban, sun-drenched, yellow-colored) school.
Figure 33 “Here I am now. It’s raining, and I have an umbrella, but still I get wet.”
Figure 34 “Here I am when I’m grown up. That’s a cowboy hat. I’m on top of a hill. The school, it’s way down there. I could fly in that plane. The kid, he still has to go to school, but I thought I’d give him a cowboy hat, too. That’s a crow. She’s saying: ‘Why don’t you kids fly away from school and get yourself a deal someplace.’ That’s what she’s saying.”
Figure 35 Betsy’s sunless landscape
Figure 36 Hill with pine trees by Betsy
Figure 37 Betsy’s snowmobile with bird-filled sky
Figure 38 Village in midwinter by Betsy
Figure 39 Landscape in a winter storm by John
Figure 40 John’s landscape with ice floes
Figure 41 Carmen’s drawing of her school, teacher, classmate, and (in the background) herself
Figure 42 Self-portrait by Carmen
Figure 43 Painting by Carmen
Figure 44 Woman and gardening girl by Carmen
Figure 45 Sun and cloud in the sky by Rose
Figure 46 Rose’s landscape
Figure 47 White man by Rose
Figure 48 Indian man by Rose
Figure 49 Sky by Sam
Figure 50 Sam’s evening sky
Figure 51 Miriam’s Hopi reservation
Figure 52 Valley landscape by Miriam
Figure 53 Texan traveler by James
Figure 54 James’s mob
Figure 55 A policeman by James
Figure 56 A mob assaults James’s Garden District home.
Figure 57 Self-portrait by Marjorie
Figure 58 Marjorie’s drawing of her sister Susan
Figure 59 Marjorie’s Daddy, atop an office building, listens to the wind.
Figure 60 The garden outside Marjorie’s house in late summer
Figure 61 Marjorie’s grandfather carrying a gun to protect himself
Figure 62 A bus carrying black children arrives at Gordon’s school.
Figure 63 “Sailor, scientist, explorer, and, not least, man removed from others” — by Gordon
Figure 64 Joan’s drawing of herself at home
Indeed, he doesn’t understand the patience other young men his age show. How can they be so indifferent to the world’s injustices? How can they shrug their shoulders and laugh or shake their heads and then forget, all the time forget? Forget it, they tell him. Forget this and forget that he is urged. Why worry, they ask. What’s the point, they declare rather than inquire. Why sweat it? Why lose your cool? Why get all hot and bothered and worked up and talkative, “full of speech,” his friends will sometimes put it. And more to the point, what can he actually do — that is, besides say all he does, and then repeat himself over and over again? The last question does indeed bother him. He knows that he can right now do very little. He is no Black Muslim, no Black Panther — not yet, anyway. He belongs to no organization, no club, no group or party. He isn’t in his own mind agreed upon a course of action, a plan, a way of doing something, anything. He doesn’t read much. He hears the radio. He watches television. He listens to records. He listens to older people talk. Then it all goes through his mind, the words and sights; and out of the experiences, the listening and seeing, come his idea, his viewpoint, his words: “I speak for myself and no one else. Can’t a black man do that? Can’t they let us be different, each one of us? I hear on the television that the black man thinks this way, and he says this, and here’s what he believes on that score. I say that’s not right; that’s not me and that’s not what I think. They’re always trying to corner us, the white man is. But I do believe that today he’s worried over us, he surely is.
“I think it was the last day I went to school that I heard my teacher lose his temper and say he was sick of us, sick as he could be and fed up, because he couldn’t figure out what it was that we wanted; and we were driving him crazy, he said. I’m mixed up myself. I mean, I don’t know how we can beat him or drive him crazy, Mr. White Man. He’s holding all the strings, Whitey is. And he’s got a lot of us scared. A Negro is a scared black man. I’m scared but I’m not a Negro. You want to know why? It’s because I’m saying it, right here and now: I’m scared, but I’m not going to turn into a Negro over it. I’m going to be black. I’m going to look for ways to outfox Whitey and I’m going to go fight him when I can win. I tell the kids — I say look: don’t go fight with those white teachers. They’ll come down hard on you. They’ll have you over at the police station in five minutes. They have cops right inside the schools now; and those cops are just waiting for the teachers to say go ahead, go ahead and get them. That’s why you have to be careful. I agree with my dad on that; you’ve got to watch your step.”
He does watch his step. He keeps an eye out for the police. They make their rounds, drive up and down the street; and all the while he looks at them and mutters or swaggers and smiles in an angry, mocking way. Or he may simply turn his back on them, go inside, get out of their sight. He loves to run and pretend he’s on a motorcycle and watch the buildings go by and the street lamps and the people and the stores and buses. But when the police are around he never runs. He stands still, or he quietly and unostentatiously retires into the background. He is convinced that if he were seen running by the police he would be arrested immediately on suspicion of stealing something, doing something wrong. He is convinced that they would not stop him and talk with him and ask him questions. They would grab him and maybe beat him but certainly take him away and hold him and not easily let go of him: “They see a guy like me running, and they go click, click, click in their heads, and I come out a crook, a robber. Where’s your knife, they ask. Where’s your razor blade, they ask. I see the manager of the store punching that cash register and I think to myself that the police have a cash register in their heads, and there’s a button called ‘nigger’ on it, and every time they see a black man, they push the button and the same answer comes out — go get him, fast. If I had a motorcycle, I’d like to see them go get me. I’d give them a chase.”
Until that day comes, he gives others a chase. He runs against anyone who wants to challenge him; and so far no one around has done so successfully. He has speed. He has staying power. He runs effortlessly, too. He seems to be enjoying himself as he moves along, not trying hard, not running out of breath, not running down minute by minute, just running. The children watch, and they run, too. They run to catch him, to be near him when he does stop, so that they can listen to him panting, and no doubt thereby prove to themselves that he is, after all, human and he does tire and he does have to stop and he does need rest. So, they hover close and he laughs and jokes with them and they ask him where his motor is (where is it?) and he says he’ll be damned if he’ll let them in on the secret, no sir. Then they fall to talking about other things: what they did and did not do in school, and what they would like to do “later on” when they get big, and what they think he should be doing and what he thinks he should be doing.
They are bittersweet conversations, the ones he and his young admirers have. He is struck by the innocenc
e of younger children, the still undampened hopes they have — for him as well as for themselves. He tries to recall whether he was like that, so buoyant and optimistic, so full of gall almost. Yes, he decided, he probably was. He is too young to remember the trip north from Louisiana, but he does have in mind a time when he told his father he wanted to fly airplanes and even make them — have his own factory, so to speak. His father laughed, and he didn’t like the way his father laughed. He felt both annoyed and curious. Couldn’t he someday own an aircraft company? No, he was told, and don’t get such silly, crazy ideas anymore.
Soon he stopped having those ideas. Now he tells young boys and girls not to waste their time with idle dreams. They’ve got to build themselves up, he says. They’ve got to know how to run, run as fast as they can. They’ve got to be quick of mind, too. True, he himself falters upon occasion, lapses into reveries: he is a junkie; he has a million dollars; he can run for miles, run until he drops into a pool of his own sweat, and by God, the pool is still on his land, on land he owns outright, on land that stretches as far as the eye can see, as far as his body will go. He will go on further, think of the motorcycles, the cars, the Mustangs and Cougars, and think of the suits and shirts and shoes and coats, think of everything a young American thinks of.
I have said so, told him I thought he was more a citizen of this nation than he believed, and in reply he has said I am hopelessly white and he is thoroughly black and that is that. Then I mention television and the radio and how they cultivate common desires in millions of people; I mention the appetites and hopes I feel he shares with many others of his age, not just his race, in this big and rich country. Then he in turn has his say: “Sure I live in this country. They get to me when I see them driving in a car, the junkies do. So do the people on television; they say, go to your nearest dealer and get yourself a big new Buick, and I want to go. Only the trouble is I don’t know that kind of dealer. I know the dealers we have around here: smack, smack, smack — heroin they call it on the TV news. I could be making two hundred a week or more, right now I could. I’m not religious like my grandmother, and I’m not scared like my parents are. I don’t know why I hold back. I do, though; I do. I don’t want to see us killed. You take drugs and you die. I see people sitting around; they’re staring off into space and they aren’t really alive at all. If I push drugs, I’ll be killing them. That’s how I see it. I wouldn’t be able to run away from that — no matter how fast I run I couldn’t.
“You have to believe in yourself. You can’t be a pusher and believe in yourself. They have the cars, but they’re no good. They’re bad people. They’re like a lot of your whites. They make a lot of money, and they don’t care how, and they don’t ask questions. They just go ahead and sell and sell and sell, and spend all they make to live it up. I couldn’t do that. If I was arrested by a cop for selling smack, I’d say I should be, and I’d go along and take the prison sentence. A dealer once asked me what I’d do if I was hungry and didn’t have a cent to my name. I told him I’d die, I’d sooner die than take his smack. I’d sooner die than sell it. A lot of my friends think the same way. You don’t see them all taking drugs, do you? Some do, but a lot don’t. It’s not fair, the way they say we’re all going to go on drugs when we grow up. That’s what a teacher told us. That’s right; that’s what she said. I wanted to shout at her and tell her that I’m a black man, and I’m not going to take drugs, because that’s the way we become weaker and weaker, and then the white man can just keep on doing anything he wants to us, anything.”
Always the runner, also a fast talker once he gets going, bristling with anger at times, uncertain about his “future,” unsure of himself despite all his pointed remarks and cutting observations, he is above all a deeply ethical youth. He is ethical in ways that defy words, his or anyone else’s. As he once said: “I do what I do, and I believe my body pulls on me to stay clean and do the right thing. I don’t know sometimes which is the right thing and which is the wrong thing, but all of a sudden I find out, and it’s because there’s something inside me that lets me know. I think it’s in my chest, my heart maybe.” What is in his heart? Why, the voice of his heart is in his heart, he says impatiently — as if an inheritance like that need be mentioned or discussed or asked after or pinned down by someone! And of course his impatience reveals his ignorance; for the fact is these questioners are indeed people who need to ask all sorts of questions and hear all sorts of wordy explanations before they can, finally, catch sight of the most obvious thing in the world, an ethical young man’s effort to remain precisely that — no matter what and against all the odds.
To Hell with All of You
Curses, threats, diatribes, oaths, warnings, one indecent or coarse word after another, they all come easily to James Lewis, who is only fourteen, someone like me cannot stop thinking to himself. He talks and talks, and if a listener hears him but does not look at the young man’s extraordinarily expressive face, the temptation is to surrender or flee immediately to whatever sanctuary can be found. Nor is James (he will not be called Jim) unaware of all that: “I’m a big guy with words, I know. The black man has been listening to the white man’s words all his time in this country, so it’s good we’re finally coming up with our own words. We’ve got to be rid of Whitey; everything’s he’s done to us has to be washed away, with the strongest soap we can find. It’s the white man who has dirtied up everything: he’s ruined the air and the water; he’s exploded atomic bombs; he’s killed the Indians and made us slaves. He’s been murdering and stealing for hundreds of years — and then when we try to stand up for our rights, he calls us thieves and hoodlums and everything else. The white man lives off the black man and the brown man and the red man. That’s the truth. I don’t hold it against any one white man; it’s all of them — all of you.”
I have to say it again: James Lewis is only fourteen years old, and he goes to school only fitfully. His father is dead. His mother is dead. He has no grandparents alive. He lives with an aunt, his mother’s sister. His aunt tells the story directly and to the point: “James was born and a year later his mother died. She had an infection and it hurt her heart, the doctors said. There wasn’t anything we could do to save her. They said if we’d brought her to the hospital right away she would have lived, but we had no way of getting her there, and I didn’t know then that up here they’ll take you even if you don’t have any money. In Alabama it sure wasn’t like that. They didn’t have a ‘city hospital’ where we lived. James lost his father a year later. He was a young man, but they said he had high blood pressure. He fell dead, yes sir; it happened right in front of the little boy. He was two, yes sir. I lived across the street and the older children came over and told me their father was on the floor asleep, and they couldn’t wake him. So, I took them all in: James and Henry and Lois and Florence. It’s only James I have left of my sister’s children. Henry is married. He can’t find a good job. He didn’t stay in school, like he should have. He was the only one born in Alabama. I told him once that he had that lazy South in him and he’d never amount to anything. Lois and Florence, they’re working. I’m proud of them. Lois works downtown. She works an elevator. Florence works in a candy factory, yes she does. She makes candy all day! Can you imagine that? And she hasn’t put on a pound so far as I can see, not one!”
As for James she worries about him. He is exceptionally smart, she knows that; and in fact he has always been a talkative person, a tough fighter of sorts, a child whom no teacher could ever quite bend to his or her ways: “They tried to tame him in school, oh did they! They smacked him and hit him, I know it. I did too; I had to, I just had to. The teachers called me in, and I did what I could. I tried to explain that I had my own children and my sister’s, and it’s been hard on me. Back South we were close, all of us brothers and sisters, but up here we’ve lost touch. My older sister won’t take any part in helping out. She has no children, mind you. She’s been married, I think, four or five times. I’ve lost track of the
men, and I couldn’t swear it was ever legal, the way she lives with those men. I’ll get to know the guy, and then the next thing I’ll hear there’s a new one. James used to like her when he was very little. Now he hates her; he hates her so strong that I pray to God he never sees her. She lives away over from here, and I only see her when I go to see my brother, who’s down the street from her. I never take James with me. He calls her the worst names. He says she sleeps with white men all the time — and he’s right, I know it. But she’s my sister. We were both born of the same mother and the same father, and we can remember where we grew up — Beatrice, Alabama; yes sir, that was the town, and we lived a mile or so down the road outside.
“I try to tell James about Beatrice and he won’t listen. He only listens to the speakers, the people who want to build an army or something. I don’t know — black, black, that’s all those speakers say. I told James that in Alabama black was a bad, bad word to us; but it doesn’t register on him, what I say. He likes to talk so much himself that he hasn’t got the time for anyone else. I told my minister we’d better pray for that boy. He said yes; he said that the Panthers have got him, or some other people I’ve never heard of. I asked, what can we do? He said there wasn’t anything we can do, except pray, and the harder the better, because there’s a devil around up here, and he’s getting his hands on our children, and turning them into mean, mean ones. So, every morning I hold up my hands and pray. I even tell James what I’m praying for. He laughs, of course.”