by Robert Coles
Marjorie would hate to see that kind of confrontation. She has told that to her grandfather, and he has not argued with her. He has, rather, told her that she is a “girl,” and that he can understand how she would abhor “gun-shooting.” Still, she must know “the facts of life”; and he has supplied them to her — long statements about the “rights of mine operators” and the “violence” that the miners have been visiting upon West Virginia in the name of “progress.” For him it has been a painful decade; yet he is no quitter and only regrets that someone in his family isn’t prepared to take a continuing stand against “them,” the United Mine Workers and their various “sympathizers,” not to mention the “agitators.”
His granddaughter had begun to lose interest in drawings by the time she was thirteen, but she did initiate one out of a certain frustration she felt when asking questions of him: “I love him,” she would say, “but he is a hard man to pin down.” She had in mind the various questions she’d asked of him: for instance, what do the miners look like when they come out of his mines? What do they say to him when he talks with them — or indeed, has he ever talked with them, as opposed to the union officials who are their representatives? Marjorie drew a picture of him standing upright and ready for action, his gun at his side. His eyes were wide and attentive, his ears large and meant to be alert. He was, she pointed out, “just waiting,” but he was also fully prepared to “raise the gun and shoot.” The gun is rather large, almost his size — in real life, a half inch or so under six feet. And beyond him stretch, somewhat shapeless, the surging masses, it would appear, bent on having their say, getting a number of concessions he was unwilling to make. In the background are smoke, shadowy buildings, a chimney or two, a gray, bleak sky with no sun. When the young lady had finished her drawing (Figure 61) she gave it a final look, pushed it aside, spoke one sentence: “Too bad for Granddaddy and too bad for those miners.”
Then she turned her attention elsewhere, began to wonder whether her grandfather would accompany her parents, herself, her sisters, to Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. Her father had to attend a meeting being held there, and he thought it would be a fine occasion for the entire family to go away and glimpse an earlier America, “when life was simpler.” She rather suspected her grandfather would jump at the chance to take this particular trip, would enjoy it enormously, would get on very well in Williamsburg with his family and with everyone else, and might even, she added at the very end, insist upon “paying for everyone, even Daddy.” There would be a fight over that matter, but the girl had no fear that a gun would be used. Her father would yield, she was sure. Her father liked to stand up to his father, but she was sure that “on money” there wouldn’t be “trouble” — because several times she had overheard her parents talking about the money to be left them by the grandfather, and both her mother and her father seemed quite anxious to get the money, rather than keeping it at a remove for the sake of their independence. And as she said: “You can’t blame them.” She even went further. She insisted that there wasn’t anyone she knew who would blame them.
Withdrawal
High up in an office building the boy stands with his father and listens to a political analysis of a city’s turmoil. Black and white children are being bused, black and white parents are up in arms, violence has repeatedly taken place, and the boy’s father has been dismayed, saddened. The boy has wondered why. The father has tried to explain. Then they enjoy the view. It is part of a ritual they have — looking out the window, picking one part of the view for discussion (a building, a neighborhood, the river, one of several parks, a particular street) and then, when the conversation is over, just staring for a moment. The boy is proud of the view, proud of his father, proud of what he has learned from his father. The boy wishes his father were mayor of the city, governor of the state. Then, there might be less trouble. But his father is no politician, the boy knows. And that is the trouble with the United States of America: the power wielded by politicians — as opposed to men like his father or, for that matter, women like his mother.
A day or so later, the newspapers carried a letter the boy’s father had written, urging “reason” and compliance with the federal judge’s school desegregation order. The boy had asked for an extra newspaper; he, too, wanted a copy of the letter to keep. The next day, in school, he wrote his own brief statement as an impromptu composition: “If white people and black people were friends, we would have a better country. I think that there’s nothing bad about going to school in a bus. It’s good that we have black kids in our school.”
He was then nine. His is “a liberal, progressive school,” the boy’s mother says. His name is Gordon. He has always been a bright, committed, forthcoming student. He has rarely descended to B work, yet is not especially bookish. He laughs easily, is good at sports, is called “a natural leader” by his teachers. He likes to give oral compositions, has been speaking up in class rather vigorously since the first grade. The school he attends is a private urban school just outside Boston. Children of doctors, lawyers, businessmen, and professors go there; but so do poor children, a substantial number from the ghetto. Gordon has made a point of befriending those children, has long been encouraged to do so by his parents. When busing got under way in Boston Gordon not only joined his father in supporting the idea but offered to be bused himself. His parents said no. His father, a scientist and college professor, emphasized the importance of staying in a good school — one which was, besides, integrated. His mother, of a quite wealthy family, insisted that he owed it to the black students in the school he was attending to stay and speak or write on their behalf. The boy agreed to remain, but was not able to still the voice of his conscience. He wrote a brief comment for his school’s student newspaper: “I believe it is not fair that if you have money, you can go to a private school, and not be bused. Only the white kids who are poor and don’t like blacks go on the bus. No wonder there is a lot of trouble in Boston’s schools. We should try to help, but I don’t know how. Any suggestions?”
He received none. He went about his business, tried to push Boston’s torment out of his mind, but could not: “If I was eleven or twelve, I’d just tell my mother and father that I was quitting the school I’m going to, and taking a bus over to any school in Boston I got sent to. They might not like what I’d want to do, but they would let me go ahead. My sister is thirteen, and she tells my parents what she’s going to do, and they disagree with her, but they don’t stop her. She told me yesterday that if I got really upset, and stood my ground, they’d give in. I asked her how she gets upset! She said it’s easy — just get upset! So, I tried. I told Dad at supper that I wasn’t happy at school and I wanted to leave. He asked me what I meant. I told him I just wasn’t happy there. He asked why. I said for a lot of reasons. He said to name one. I didn’t. I said I just wanted to leave and go to a public school in Boston. Then he guessed my reason. He said I wanted to be of help.
“But he wouldn’t let me leave. He said no, definitely no. My mother said that if I could persuade them, then I could do what I want, but I had to be a good lawyer! I tried. I told them what I’d written for the school newsletter. I told them why I thought I should be bused to a black school. I told them what a black kid told me in school; he said that he felt like a traitor, because he was going to a fancy private school, while other kids on his street were going on the bus into Hyde Park and South Boston and places like that. He said I should be bused and so should he, because we both live in Boston. Then my mother interrupted and wanted to know what difference it would make if two extra children got bused. I said I didn’t know. My father said I’m going to a good school and I have black friends there, and he wouldn’t take me out, even if I did the best job of arguing in the world! That’s when he and Mom had an argument. She said that if I really wanted to leave school and go to a public school, they should at least discuss it, and leave the door open. My Dad said I wasn’t old enough to decide where I was going to school. He said l
ater, later I could. My mother said he was dictating to me. He said he was just being my father. That’s when my mother turned to me and asked me what I thought. I didn’t know what to say! My sister said I should speak up, but I couldn’t find any words. I kept quiet. My father said: ‘That settles it.’ If I knew how to persuade them. I think they would have let me switch schools.”
Gordon was enough like his sister to stay concerned with the problem of busing for a long time. He continued to alert his fellow students and his teachers to the vexing moral question, as he saw it, of who was being bused and who was not. At the age of ten he drew a picture of a bus, filled with black children, approaching a school, in front of which stood some white children (Figure 62). The whites seem large, strong, unfriendly. One has a club in hand. The blacks are mere faces, peering out of windows. The boy has left half the windows empty. He had a reason for doing so: “I should be on the bus. Other white kids should be there, too. It’s not fair that the blacks are being bused and the whites mostly aren’t. I’d like to be bused, but I won’t be. It’s no fun going in a car pool — the same old people! I told my mother that yesterday, and she laughed. She said she could understand why I feel like I do, but I have to remember that someone else’s problems are not always mine; there’s a limit to how many fights we can get into. I said that I agreed, but this was my fight. She smiled and said she was glad. She told me to tell Dad that I was still in the ring fighting! I did — at suppertime. He said he was proud of me!
“Dad believes Boston is full of racists, and it’s getting worse rather than better, and the whole country is laughing at the city. Even at our school there are kids who say that the blacks aren’t as smart as the whites, and they need special help, and it’s all right to have them in our school, but they’re not the same as we are. I got into a fight with a kid who said that last week. He thinks he’s so nice and tolerant, but he doesn’t really like black kids. When I told my father, he said that was a good reason for me to be right where I am — so I could argue with the kids who are going to be racists later on, if they’re not told to stop talking like they do.”
He more than fulfilled his father’s expectations. At eleven Gordon was a forceful, incisive spokesman for integration, if necessary through busing. He was also worried about other problems; he wrote a composition denouncing our high military budget, our willingness to support certain dictators, our failure to align ourselves more dramatically and enthusiastically with the world’s poorer (mostly African and Asian) nations. The essay was given first prize for the best seventh-grade written exercise. Gordon had supporters among his classmates, but there were those who found him rather more sure of himself than they liked. Gordon was not inhibited by disapproval. He actually enjoyed it. He enjoyed being regarded as a person of strong, uncompromising opinion, as a well-informed boy who didn’t hesitate to speak out, even to the point of criticizing his own situation. Who else in the school had called himself “wrong” for not being on a school bus every morning, on his way to a public school in a black section of Boston? Who else had acknowledged that his parents, as quite well-to-do people, had “good reasons” to want to keep the status quo, or modify it only so much? Who else brought in suggested reading about Cuba and China — books and articles that Gordon’s older sister had found interesting and valuable and which she recommended to him?
At the age of twelve Gordon even mentioned a desire to go to both Cuba and China. Why? Because he felt those nations to be “the wave of the future.” He wanted to see countries where “poverty has been wiped out.” He wanted to meet Castro and Mao, because he believed both of them to be “great men.” He thought that each was like our Abraham Lincoln, the one president he really liked a lot. His father would ask Gordon what he thought Castro ought to do, or this country ought to do with respect to Cuba. The boy would take a position and argue it out over supper. The father would press hard, take issue with the son, point out one or another issue the boy had overlooked. The mother would eventually ask both of them to stop, to get on with the meal, or turn to lighter, less abrasive conversation. When Gordon indicated that he really did want to go to Cuba, rather than a summer camp he’d been attending since the age of eight, his father expressed approval. Why not? The boy would learn a lot, and begin to see how other people live, other governments operate. The mother became nervous: wasn’t the boy too young? But she, too, assented; and both parents tried hard to learn if there was some way for their son’s wish to come true. There wasn’t. Instead he went to the Southwest, stayed with a Navaho family on an exchange program, toured Arizona and New Mexico, came back full of affection for another region of America and full of concern for the Indians he had stayed with and come to know somewhat.
At school he wrote one composition after another about the poverty he saw, the consequent demoralization of a once-proud people. His teachers were quite pleased with him — both for going to the Southwest and for coming back even more troubled than before about others, less fortunate. At the end of a composition the author was told that if only there were more people like him, this would be a better country. But Gordon was not so willing to be thus complimented. He wondered out loud at supper what difference his teacher’s attitude toward him made to the Navaho Indians. Ought he not, in a few years, go out West, live there all the time, work hard on behalf of the Indians? Ought he not to ask his father to send money, a lot of it, to the Indians? Why should he, one twelve-year-old boy, have “almost a hundred thousand dollars, maybe more,” put away in his name for his future use, while thousands of Indian children of his age are penniless and always will be, things being as they are?
His father supplied answers to those questions, and Gordon listened carefully but not always in agreement: “My father says we’ve done a lot of harm to the Indians, and he agrees with me, it’s been bad that we haven’t tried to make up for our mistakes. But it’s got to be the government that will change everything. Even if my family gave all its money to the Indians, they wouldn’t be much better off than they are now. I think that if everyone who worries about the Indians really started trying to help them, it would make a difference. It’s not right that I become a good guy in school, just because I say the right words about ‘the poor Indians.’ That’s what our social studies teacher keeps on telling us — that we’ve got to realize how bad everything is for ‘the poor Indians.’ I agree, it is bad for them; but we’re not helping them by saying so all the time!
“When I asked my mother if she’d mind if I went out West next summer again, she said I was getting ‘overinvolved’ with the Indians. Her friend — her roommate at college — used to be a psychiatric social worker before she got married, and she was the one who put it in my mother’s head that I was ‘overinvolved.’ My mother told me what she thought, and I got very angry. Then she told me, the next day — after she’d called up her friend, I’m sure — that I was overinvolved, and the proof was that I’d become so angry! Isn’t that wild! I told my Dad, and he agreed with me; he said that Mom is really upset because I’m only twelve (I’m almost thirteen!) and she is worried that I’m talking like some college student who wants to be a revolutionary. I told Dad that isn’t true. I don’t want to get into any trouble. But if a lot of people don’t try to help out the Indians, and the black people too, then it won’t do any good for just me to go and sacrifice. I laughed at her, I guess, when she kept on telling me I was ‘overinvolved.’ She just walked out of the room; and later she told Dad that she was upset with me. I guess that’s why he spoke to me. Maybe next summer I’ll go back to my old camp as a junior counselor. I think the director told my Dad I could be a junior counselor if I wanted.”
Gordon did become a junior counselor. He turned thirteen that summer, and he began to hear his voice crack and deepen and see new hair appear on his body. He had always loved swimming, loved playing in the sand, loved the sight and sound of the ocean as well as swimming in it. He began to lose some of the intensity of commitment he had felt a year earlier to
the Indians. He decided that he really wouldn’t be happy living in the Southwest; the ocean is too far away. A lake or two would not suffice. Might he go away to some school located at the edge of the Maine shore? Might he become a sailor one day? How about marine biology for a career? He had an uncle who worked as a marine biologist at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and perhaps that was the best possible occupation for a boy of thirteen whose parents got obviously nervous when future enlistment in the navy or merchant marine was mentioned.
When he was through with his eight weeks of working in a summer camp, Gordon went to Woods Hole, became familiar with the various ways his uncle pursued his work. He went out on a boat, from which he went underwater in a special cage. He examined specimens from the sea that were under study. He talked with his uncle about the future: what to study, where, and with how much hope or certainty of becoming a first-rate scientist? In the autumn Gordon stopped writing about politics for a while, devoted himself almost exclusively to essays on the ocean. He did not, however, lose a strong social conscience. He announced to his teachers (in one essay) and to his parents many times over the dining table that he was going to try to help the Indians and other impoverished people “in a real serious way” one day; he was going to learn how to take organic matter from the sea and make cheap food for the world’s hungry masses.
Let others indulge in empty talk; Gordon was going to be the best kind of idealist and activist — a practical, competent, knowing man who could come up with something of obvious worth: “I’d like to be helpful to others. My mother and father tell me that if you have a lot, then you have to give back to others who don’t have anything. That’s why I study hard, I guess — so that I’ll be able to become a scientist maybe, and then I can really be of help. I might end up being a doctor. I have an uncle who’s a surgeon; he does research. I have another uncle who is a doctor; he delivers babies and he does research too. He’s my mother’s twin. He always tells me that a lot of children never should be born, because they’re going to live a bad life. It would be nice if they could all be born, and then have plenty of food. If only we could discover some cheap food that everyone could eat; then no one would starve to death. I wouldn’t want to be born poor.”