by Randy Alcorn
“Tell us another story, Grampy,” Celeste said.
“Well, let’s see now Here’s a story. Colored folk used to drive through Mississippi, comin’ or goin’ from Louisiana or ‘Bama or Arkansas. One day this preacher was travelin’ and had to go through Ol’ Miss. He prayed loud and hard like black preachers do, ‘O God, help me make it through Mississippi!’
“Well, there was a few moments silence and then the preacher heard a voice from heaven. It was God himself and he says to the preacher, ‘You don’t know what you’re askin’, son. Even I don’t go through Mississippi!’ Now, that’s just a story, chillens. The Almighty’s in Mississippi just like everywhere else, and don’t say your grampy said otherwise, you hear me now?”
“Tell us about the Klan, Granddaddy,” Jonah said.
“Well, my daddy explained the Klan to us one time after they rode up on their horses and put a burnin’ cross in front of our ol’ shanty. Daddy said that when God was makin’ peoples, there was some folk at the very back of the line, and he ran plumb outta brains to give ’em. He felt bad he didn’t have no brains left to pass out, so he decided to give ’em white sheets instead. That way they could cover up their heads and nobody could see their brains was missin’. That’s how the Klan started.”
Laughter and knee slapping and howls filled the room. Then Harley gave a serious explanation of what the Klan was. Clarence liked his daddy’s explanation better. Harley started telling about the freedom rides and the battle against segregation in the South. Imitating their drawls, he made fun of white southerners who couldn’t comprehend why blacks rose up in opposition to segregation:
“I dawn’t unda-stay’en what’s goin’ awn. It’s like some’mm dun jumped inta allda nigras ova’night.” The older family members laughed and laughed, including Clarence, while for the most part the children didn’t get it. It was true, though. White folk could talk so funny.
“What was it like living in your ol’ shotgun house, Grampy?” Keisha asked.
“Well, let’s see now. At night we chillens slept with each other, cuddlin’ up to stay warm.”
“Yuk,” Jonah said.
“No yuk about it. Sometimes my ol’ nose was so frozen, don’t know what I would’ve done if brother Elijah hadn’t been there and let me snuggle it into his back. They was hard days, but good ones.” His eyes teared up. He looked up at the ceiling as if trying to peer beyond it. “I miss eatin’ sowbelly and corn pone and slicin’ up the catfish fresh out o’ the river and sittin’ on the porch those warm nights— Elijah and me and Daddy and Mama and the rest—jus’ listenin’ to those hound dogs bark and lookin’ up at heaven’s stars and seein’ the face of God.”
“I wish Uncle Elijah could come for Christmas this year,” Clarence said.
“Not as much as I wish it, I reckon. But we both slowin’ down, Elijah and me. We both slowin’ down.” He looked at his oldest son. “Harley, you still got that music me and Elijah loved? Count Basie, Lena Horne, Duke Ellington? Now that was music, um, um. Elijah and me, we’d listen to ’em till the cows come home.”
Harley went over and put on the music while Daddy moved on to another story. Clarence watched Harley. He remembered when his brother had won a statewide essay competition for Mississippi high school students. But when they tried to make arrangements for him to stay in a local hotel, they couldn’t because it was segregated. Harley had never forgotten that, just as Clarence had never forgotten the teacher at the integrated school who thought his paper was so good he must have plagiarized it. Clarence could never convince her he hadn’t.
“Where we meeting for Kwanzaa this year?” Harley asked.
“Don’t know where you’re goin’ for Kwanzaa,” Clarence said, “but Christmas is at our place, right Geneva? Maybe we’ll be moved into our new house by then.”
Harley shook his head. “You celebrate an independence day that didn’t consider blacks worthy of independence. You celebrate a Thanksgiving of people who came and stole America from its natives. And you celebrate a Christmas about a white man’s religion that oppressed your ancestors.”
Clarence held his tongue, letting it ride. Everyone seemed grateful.
“Well,” Marny said, “Dani and Felicia sure had nice services, didn’t they?” Her voice quivered. It seemed a strange topic nearly seven weeks after the fact, but this was the first big family gathering.
“Nice if you can overlook Dani’s Uncle Tom preacher,” Harley said.
“Brother,” Clarence said, “to you anyone who makes a living outside of a government agency or a black studies department is an Uncle Tom.”
“I’m an African first, an American second. That’s why I celebrate Kwanzaa, not Christmas.”
“Well, brother, I got news for you. Kwanzaa wasn’t invented in Africa. It was invented in Los Angeles. By Americans!”
“It was invented to commemorate what Africa is about. Which you’ve obviously forgotten.”
“To say our ancestors came from Africa is one thing. To say we’re African is another. If our kids are going to make it in America, we’ve got to quit telling them they don’t belong, they can’t fit in.”
“What chance do they have as long as whitey keeps ’em down? Racism’s the disease. You don’t deal with that and it’s like wipin’ a runny nose—messin’ with the symptoms doesn’t cure the cold. You know Dr. Ibrihim? He’s lived in Africa and he’s lived here—and he sees the racism everywhere in this society.”
“He’s been taught to see it,” Clarence said. “Yeah, I’ve heard Dr. Ibrihim speak. I’ve heard him denounce America as this horrible oppressive racist country. Ironic, isn’t it, that if he was back home in his own country and criticized it like he does America, they’d lock him up and probably torture him. Why’d he come here, tell me that, brother? To get a superior education so he could go back and help his people, right? But he never went back, did he? The standard of living was too high, life was too good, freedom was too precious. Well, if America is so terrible, why doesn’t he just go back to Africa? And if it’s all so great over there, why don’t you just go back with him?”
“Sure, brother, I hear you,” Harley’s voice broke and went high pitched. “Now that the wood’s all split, the water’s all drawn, the cotton’s all picked, and the rails reach coast to coast, now that the ditches are dug and there’s just a few shoes left to be shined, now they tell us they’ll give us just as much opportunity as they got. Well, they’ve been liars all along, and they’re still lyin’! So excuse me if I don’t join you in shufflin’ for ’em anymore, Tom!”
Clarence got up and left the room, seeking sanctuary in the kitchen. Right about now, he knew, Dani would have come in to talk to him, cool him down, remind him how he and Harley used to be so close.
Dani watched her family. She enjoyed the gathering, relished the conversation, felt concern at the conflict. She needed to make periodic adjustments to sort out the principal parties. The dominant images were of great warriors in postures of defense and attack, guardians and enemies hovering over and around various family members. She took special pleasure in seeing the warrior guarding Celeste.
“How could I have been so blind?” she asked. “How could I have not seen these warriors? How could I fail to sense the spiritual battles surrounding me every moment?”
“I often wondered that myself,” Torel said. “Now you see with new eyes. Eyes of eternity.”
She looked now at the angel standing guard around Clarence. “He’s magnificent.”
“Your brother keeps Jartakel busy,” Torel said. “My comrade guards against the attacks of the fallen ones from the outside, but many of your brother’s attacks come from the inside. We do not have the luxury of doing battle on only one front.”
“So, do you know well my brother’s guardian? This Jartakel?”
“Yes. He is a great advocate of justice, far greater than even your brother. I did not know Jartakel until I was sent to guard you. He had been assigned to your brother at
his conception, as I was to you at your beginning. Even as I guarded you in your mother’s womb, Jartakel briefed me on your family. We became very close. I miss serving beside him. Heaven promises reunion not only for the redeemed, but for their guardians. Jartakel and I walked together many Mississippi hillsides and Chicago streets and stood by one another in your Portland home.”
Dani looked through the portal and saw four images walking among the buttercups, one small, one medium size, and two huge. “I thought Clarence and I were alone on that hillside.”
“You were never alone. The Carpenter promised you he would be with you always. And for extra measure he appointed us to stand beside you, never sleeping, always watchful.”
Dani smiled at him. “Thank you, my friend. Thank you for all you did for me.”
“To serve Elyon and to serve you was my pleasure, for I was made to serve.”
She hugged him. He was struck by the warmth of her skin, she by the strength of his embrace. “Thank you for helping me understand,” Dani said. She looked at her family in that living room, so very near. “I pray each of them may come to understand.”
Still hiding out in the kitchen, Clarence reflected on his turbulent history with Harley. His brother had gone on the freedom rides and marches of Martin Luther King Jr., following his teachings of nonviolence and moral transformation. In time, though, hearing the voice of Malcolm X, Harley saw integration as acquiescing to white power and surrendering what it meant to be black. Eventually he followed the Black Power of Stokely Carmichael and was moved by the rhetoric of H. Rap Brown. Adopting the belief that police were an occupying force invading the black community, Harley became part of the Black Panther movement of Bobby Seale, Huey P. Newton, and Eldridge Cleaver. Clarence didn’t know all his brother had done, but he knew he’d carried heavy hardware and he’d used it. In time Harley moved from the streets to the classroom, graduating with honors from the University of California at Berkeley and coming to teach at Portland State. He’d never lost his militancy. And while Clarence disagreed with him, he respected his brother’s courage of conviction.
In his early twenties Clarence had admired Harley and for years echoed much of his thinking. He remembered with both sweetness and bitterness their late night intellectual discussions, reading first W.E.B. DuBois, then later Alain LeRoy Locke and other architects of the Harlem Renaissance. They discussed the writings of Marcus Garvey, who believed blacks could never find justice in white America and engineered a wave of immigration to form a black nation in Africa. With Harley, Clarence studied a host of black thinkers and social activists.
In the mid-seventies, brand new at the Journal, Clarence hung with Harley’s crowd, most of them professors and students from Portland State. They’d smoke their spliffs, listen to tunes, and rap into the early hours of the morning about the evils of “Babylon,” the white man’s corrupt civilization. They spoke of their pilgrimages to the Gambia, Ghana, and Nigeria. The discussions about Babylon and the endless conspiracy theories fueled Clarence’s anger and increased his suspicions. But he found it demotivated him, made him feel no matter how hard he worked, he couldn’t change Babylon. He found himself torn apart, and after a few years decided he had to either leave his career or leave this group of friends. He left the friends, including Harley. He realized this would label him a black court jester, a puppet, a pawn of Babylon. But then, all of them got their financial aid and salaries from Babylon.
When Harley converted to Nation of Islam and changed his name to Ishmael, neither his parents nor his siblings bought into it. He would always be Harley to them. On the other hand, Clarence saw some positive changes in Harley. He admired his brother’s discipline of memorizing the words of Malcolm X and Elijah Mohammed and the Qur’an. Harley acknowledged that it had helped him off drugs. He stressed education and studied the Qur’an, learning to speak Arabic. He prayed five times a day and made regular trips to the masjid. Black Muslims were committed to self-help, and at least that part jived with Clarence’s conservatism.
Clarence came back in the room, just in time to see his father shake his head and say to Harley, “Nossah, Son, that’s poppycock, pure and simple. Not all white people is like that. Many of them’s good folk. Yes, some racists—white and black— gots it so bad they’ll never change, and you just got to let them go. Like my daddy used to say, ‘Don’t ever try to teach a pig to sing.’”
“What?” Geneva asked.
Obadiah grinned. “It wastes your time and it annoys the pig.” Everybody laughed, including Harley and Clarence.
“We’re in the second slavery, Daddy,” Harley said, not one to give up an argument. “It’s a myth that things have gotten better.”
“Don’t tell me about myths, boy.” Obadiah spoke sternly, with more strength than Clarence had heard in months. “I was there when it was worse than you ever dreamed of, and my daddy was there when it was worse than I ever dreamed of. So don’t tell me it isn’t better now.”
“Daddy,” Harley implored his father, “Malcolm said you don’t stick a knife in a man’s back nine inches and then pull it out six inches and say you’re making progress. Look around. The only way you can avoid being a slave is to sell out to white businesses. All the black businesses in America combined are less than Bill Gates’s empire. One white man bigger than all black men combined. You think that’s fair?”
“Equality don’t mean it’s the same for everyone, Son,” Obadiah said. “Black folk got a late start—I knows that better than anybody. But this is America, and all men are created equal.”
“You say that as if it meant something. When they wrote that they didn’t even consider black men to be men. The whites loved to quote the Bible—‘Slaves submit to your masters.’ And what about you, brother?” He looked at Clarence. “Have you told your children the same Supreme Court that said Dred Scott had no rights opened their session with prayer and had a Bible sitting on their bench? That’s how Christianity treats the black man. Always has, always will.” Harley looked back at his father. “I wish you’d change your mind, Daddy. I wish you’d come to the true faith of the black man. It’s not too late.”
Obadiah sucked in air and sat up straight. “Hear me on this, Son, and hear me good.” The voice was clear and firm. “I knows the true faith of the black man, the brown man, the red man, the yellow man, the white man. Every man. It’s a faith in Jesus, who said, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life; no man comes to the Father but by me.’ I won’t sit here while you attack the faith that’s been the foundation for this family, for your mama and my mama and my daddy, and their mamas and daddies before them. You hear your daddy talkin’, Harley?”
“It became their faith only because white slaveowners indoctrinated them with their Christianity And my name is Ishmael Salid.”
“Don’t tell me what yo’ name is, boy.” Obadiah stood up, shaking his finger. Clarence hadn’t seen such fire in his eyes for longer than he could remember. He felt like Daddy was about to bring out a hickory switch from the back room. “I’m the one that gave you yo’ name. Me and yo’ sweet mama. I love you, Son, but you’ll always be Harley. Now, somebody else can call you Kareem Abdul Jabbar or the Ayatolah Khomeni or Sister Souljah or whatever they wants to, but I gave you yo’ name and I’s gonna call you Harley till the day I die and then some, and nothin’ you say’s gonna change that. You hear me, boy?”
“Yes, Daddy,” Harley said quietly. “But no matter what you say, there’s only one true religion of the black nation—Islam. The Christian missionaries tried to impose their white culture on Africa. And what did they do to stop the slave trade? Malcolm said, ‘Christianity is the religion of oppressors.’ Christianity teaches passivity. It’s an opiate to put black people in their place. Can you tell me with a straight face that isn’t true?”
“Sure,” Clarence said, “some whites perverted Christianity, but that’s not what it’s really about. Read about Christ in the New Testament and tell me he was passive. Or John the Baptist or
Paul or Peter. They didn’t have a passive bone in their bodies. And don’t forget David Livingstone and lots of other Christian missionaries spoke out against black slavery.”
“There’s a sura in the Holy Qur’an that says brothers everywhere must unite. We are warriors, not to kill each other, but we are in a jihad till death against our oppressors. We have to help our young men learn the ways of Elijah Mohammed. We must tell them, ‘As you kill each other, the real enemy kills you. You kill each other and you do his job for him, and meanwhile you’re less of a threat to him.’”
“So you don’t tell our kids to stop killing,” Clarence said. “Just to point the gun toward someone else?”
“Islam doesn’t make black men passive or weak. It makes them strong and wise. When you’ve been emasculated by white Christians for four hundred years, you want to do something that affirms your black manhood. Islam is Afrocentric; Christianity is Eurocentric.”
“Baloney,” Clarence countered. “Both of them started in the Middle East, and there were black Christians in Africa six centuries before Mohammed. You can wear your bow ties and quote the Honorable Elijah Mohammed and Louis Farrakhan all day, just like you used to quote Mao and Ho Chi Minh and Castro and all your other liberators. But none of it changes the facts of history.”