by Barry Wolfe
With my efforts to numb myself of all feeling for Desirie obliterated, I give vent to such howling over the course of the next few weeks that I feel like a hound dog baying at the moon. What finally terminates my ululations is a conversation I have one day with Winston McKenzie. “Hey White!” McKenzie calls after me in his irresistible Jamaican accent. He is looking particularly sharp this day in his dark-colored turtleneck sweater and tan slacks. “A word with you, if you please, “ he pompously proposes. The wisps of his goatee quiver with every word. “In fact, do you have time for coffee? There is something of great urgency I wish to discuss with you. “
“I guess so.” As we walk toward the Union, he begins his inquiry. “White, are you aware of what college students are doing in the South?” Since I can’t read what he’s driving at, I treat his question with a great deal of caution. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“The ‘sit-ins’! Don’t you know about the sit-ins?” Now I’m completely befuddled. Why is he asking me about the sit-ins? “I vaguely remember hearing something back in February. Some Negro students sat down at a segregated lunch counter and were harassed and beaten.”
“Yeah, Mon, that was February 1st. Four Black men from North Carolina A&T sat down at the lunch counter at Woolworths in Greensboro, North Carolina. Instead of getting their food, they got a whole lot of shit, mon. A whole lot of shit! A bunch of angry white people poured ketchup on their heads and hot coffee. Some of these mean bastards started beating the four men. They were not arrested as they expected, so they stayed until the store closed. Do you know what has happened since then?”
“No, what happened?” Now I am genuinely interested.
“Two days later there were 60 students from NC A&T and from Bennett College for Women. Then the Klan came in with their Neanderthal followers and gave these students a very hard time. But these brave Africans were undeterred. In the next few days, sit-ins spread to Hampton, Virginia, Rock Hill, South Carolina, and Nashville, Tennessee. Now there are sit-ins in virtually every southern state. The South is on fire Mon! On fire!” I am surprised by how animated McKenzie has become. He has always struck me as cool and cerebral; and when he answers questions in class or offers a comment, he sounds more professorial than our current professor, a gentle German Quaker who has taken over teaching duties from Dr. Snowden for the second semester of Humanities. Here McKenzie is flailing his arms, raising his voice, and his cultured Jamaican accent devolving into the Jamaican patois of his youth. We climb the wooden steps of Miner Hall and McKenzie soon finds us his usual table in a quiet corner of the student union. A couple of McKenzie’s friends are sitting there waiting for us. “Gentlemen, this is Izzy White. Izzy, these intelligent brothers are Bob Kinnard and Phil Workman.” We exchange greetings. Phil Workman catches my wide-eyed look of shock as we shake hands and says, “Yes, Izzy, I’m white too. You’re not the only one.” I knew there were other white students at Howard. In fact, I had seen a couple, but they are few and very far between. Before I could play “racial geography” with Phil, McKenzie interrupts, “Izzy, have you ever heard of NAG?”
“Isn’t that what you’re doing to me now?” I cracked. I look over at Bob and Phil and see that they are both trying to suppress a grin. McKenzie is not amused. “No mon, NAG, the Non-Violent Action Group. We are a group of politically savvy Howard students and some non-students who believe that we no longer can wait for our elders to get off their bourgeois asses and correct the pervasive injustice experienced by Black people. We want to organize the student body to engage in social action. We are mostly Black students, but you can see by Phil’s presence here that not everyone interested in helping to bring about justice is Black. In the short time that I have known you, Izzy, I can tell that your heart is in the right place even if you are politically naïve.”
“I appreciate the compliment, but what is NAG planning to do?” McKenzie strokes his wispy goatee thoughtfully and then suddenly thrusts his head toward my face. “We are planning a number of non-violent demonstrations of segregated facilities in D.C. and surrounding areas. I’m talkin’ sit-ins, stand-ins, lie-ins and any other kind of “ins” we can think of to embarrass the proprietors of said stores and facilities.” When McKenzie finished his thought, his head recedes back toward the top of his turtleneck sweater. This alternating thrusting and receding of McKenzie’s head resembles nothing more than a turtle thrusting his head forward in search of food. When he repeats his thrust, I begin to feel like a particularly tasty morsel. “We want you to become a part of NAG and help us organize these demonstrations.” McKenzie’s head remains outstretched and inches away from my face. “Why me?” I ask. His pompous tone once again evident, McKenzie answers, “As I mentioned before, I know your heart is in the right place. Besides, you are a Jew, are you not?”
“Yes, but how did you know? And what does that have to do with anything?” I add as the snake of defensive fear begins to coil and recoil inside my chest.
“Oh my intuition about people is beyond compare. Your people are renowned for your commitment to social justice; and in the earlier iterations of our struggle, Jews have been our greatest allies.”
“Really?” I say, unable to keep the skepticism out of my voice. My reference point is my family and my Jewish peers who collectively seem to me to be as big a fan of white supremacy as any southern bigot.
“Ain’t this a shame!” Bob Kinnard finally weighs in. “Izzy, you truly are in need of an education, but not just about my people but about your own as well.” Bob had come to Howard from Gainesville, Georgia, known as the chicken capital of the USA, and was well scarred by a life spent in the shaming “prison without walls” that is segregation. The separate drinking fountains, the consignment to only the balcony seats in the local theater, the necessity of lowering one’s eyes so that a Black person never makes eye contact whenever he comes upon white people; the thousand and one indignities that he and his people suffered. As valedictorian of Carver High School, he had given a stirring speech about the responsibility of his generation to finally make the American Creed apply to Black people. Although his original plan was to come to Howard and eventually become a physician, he took his own valedictory words seriously; and since the first day he arrived at Howard has searched for ways to get involved in the struggle for civil rights. He had lately been inspired by Martin Luther King’s latest book, Stride for Freedom, an account of the Montgomery Alabama bus boycott.
“Don’t you know,” Bob continues, “that some of the founders of the NAACP were Jewish and that liberal Jews have supported our cause since the turn of the century?” I turn crimson and sheepishly answer, “No, I did not.”
“Come on, Izzy, be a good Jew.” Now I thought this was a low blow. Bob is appealing to a side of me that is blissfully dormant, a side that has the power to pick at the scab of my shame. A good Jew? I’m not sure what that means having spent my youth suppressing any evidence, any manifestation of Jewness. Even here I’m unclear. All I know is that I fear whatever goes on in the fetid imaginations of anti-Semites when they conjure up their caricature of a Jew. It’s only when I can relish my sense of being an outsider that I feel pride in being Jewish.
With my eyes cast downward, I mumble, “I think I’ll pass.”
“You say what?” Bob asked, “I didn’t hear you.”
“I THINK I’LL PASS!” I yell, surprised by the resentment in my voice. McKenzie composes his face into his characteristic sneer. Bob, however, has a big grin on his face and says sharply, “I thought you were passing. But that’s all right, Izzy, I’m not gonna give up on you. Cause if you’re White, you’re alright.” Bob, Phil and McKenzie collapse in a harmonic chorus of guffaws at Bob’s play on words.
A week later, I’m sitting on the bench by the sundial, the same bench where I first met Be Bop. It is a gloriously warm day in late April. All the trees in the Yard are graced with pale green buds, a sight that always fills me with optimism. Early spring is suffused with an aroma that I alway
s find intoxicating. I fall into a deep reverie about my life thus far at Howard University, so deep in fact that I neither hear nor feel Phil Workman sitting down next to me. My startle reflex kicks into high gear when I turn my head and see a white face very close to mine. It is shockingly out of context to be jarred from my reverie by the close proximity of a white man.
“Izzy, I need to talk to you.” Phil seems agitated. I prepare myself for some intimate personal revelation that he is about to share. “What is it?” I ask in a solicitous voice. Phil lights a cigarette and looks around the Yard to see if anyone might be eavesdropping on our conversation.
“Listen, Izzy, NAG needs you. Needs us, I should say. There aren’t that many white students at Howard and NAG should have a strong presence from the few white students who are here.”
“Why?” I ask. I am truly perplexed because it’s beginning to be clear to me that it is the obsession with race that is behind so much of the hatred and mistreatment of Negroes. Why do we need to over-emphasize racial differences?
“I thought NAG’s concern is simple human justice.”
“It is about simple justice. But justice has never been simple in this country. Listen Izzy, despite what you were told in your high school history classes, the United States is not a paragon of democratic freedoms. And every freedom that we do have, we have to fight for every day. The cruel treatment of Negroes is probably the most obvious and blatant example of the denial of freedom and justice. But labor unions have fought for decades for their rights and their existence. The workingman has been denied his rights in this country for almost as long as Negroes. And Black laborers suffer the most. To me it seems so obvious that there should be a natural alliance between Negroes and whites of the working class. But even as big business sticks it to the white working man, we still have segregated unions. Company bosses maintain control by dividing black and white laborers from one another. The Negro without a vote or a union card has little to say about his wages; and whatever job he’s offered, it is ‘take it or leave it’. At the same time, the bosses can threaten poor whites who want to better their economic position by throwing them out of their jobs and offering them to Negroes, who, desperate for money, will work for less. I joined NAG to do my part to break down the walls of segregation, but my larger hope is that the push for Negro rights will merge with progressive voices in the labor movement. We need a liberal labor party committed to the fight of the Negro for equality, of the workingman for improved living conditions, and of the farmer for the fair share of his produce. Izzy, I just finished a pamphlet on the history of the movement for civil rights and I want you to have a copy. Please read it, Izzy, and give serious thought to joining NAG.” I look at the pamphlet and rapidly thumb through it. I make a mental note to read it. But I’m pondering Phil’s motives. He seems to be on the same page as McKenzie about Negro civil rights, but there is a new wrinkle in his thinking. Labor unions? The workingman? McKenzie never mentioned either. Since my father had been a butcher for much of his working life and changed careers only when he hurt his back, I resonate with this new emphasis on the workingman. But it troubles me that only Phil has mentioned this concern. And why is he coming on to me like a hard-sell car salesman? Why is it so important for me to sign on the dotted line, as it were, right this moment and commit to joining NAG? I must have had a deep frown on my face because Phil anxiously asks me, “What’s the matter, Izzy?” His earnest stare emanates from a face that was much too close to mine. I instinctively arch my body back away from him. I notice for the first time how much he looks like the young (and slim) Orson Welles. He has the same intense but femininely pretty eyes.
“Nothing,” I answer. “All this attention and interest in my political opinions is new to me. I feel like I’m rushing a fraternity.”
“You are,” Phil replies. “NAG is a fraternity engaged in social and political change.” I’m both troubled and gratified by the trace of a seductive smile that I see on his face. What does Phil really want from me? Yet it is indeed a rush to feel so wanted. I’m less clear, however, about why they want me and what they want me for.
With my nose filled with the intoxicating smells of early spring and my head filled with the new ideas I have absorbed from Phil Workman’s impassioned plea, I make my leisurely way to my usual hitchhiking spot on Georgia Avenue. Before long, a familiar green Impala comes by and a grinning Miles Taylor gestures for me to get in. As we drive off, Miles continues to grin at the radio. He seems to be in such a good mood. I have never seen him this up. He’s in a head-shaking, shoulder-boogieing groove as the pulsing radio played Little Anthony and the Imperials’ Shimmy Shimmy Ko Ko Bop. “Ooo wee, I DO like that song,” Miles offers. When it’s over, he turns down the radio and asks, “And how is my favorite pale male?” “I’m okay, but I have a question for you.” Still grinning at me, Miles replies “Ah Negro-ology, lesson 3. Lay it on me, my fine young scholar.”
“Before I do, I want to know why you’re so happy today?”
“That’s an easy question to which there is a simple answer. My girlfriend, Yvonne, and I ‘got next to one another,’ if ya dig.” As he says this, Miles performs a dead-on impression of the eyelash batting and wide grinning Fats Waller.
“Is she your main squeeze?” I ask.
Miles seems put off by my question as if I have violated some unspoken understanding that we have. His expression of offense quickly shifts back to his imitation of Fats Waller. “One never knows, do one?” He turns right on New Hampshire Avenue and heads toward the Eastern Avenue District line. In the small yards that we quickly pass by, we both take in the promising new growths of spring. We can see shoots of crocuses, daffodils, and forsythia. After a long pause, Miles turns his head towards me and asks, “What was your question?”
“Have you ever heard of NAG?” I ask. Looking perplexed Miles’ face takes on a bug-eyed expression and he answers with a question, “Nag? You mean like being a pain in the ass and asking me questions all the time?” With that, Miles bursts out laughing. “I’m only playing witcha, Izzy. Yeah, I know about NAG, the Nonviolent Action Group. They’re a group of radical young bucks on your campus who believe they can change the world. I applaud their idealism, but fear their political naiveté.”
“Do you know anyone in NAG personally?” I ask.
“Not really, but I have a nephew who was contacted by some NAGGERS and who has flirted with joining. He told me about the only meeting he attended. Maybe 15 to 20 people showed up. There were several women and a few whites. As far as my nephew could make out, NAG wants to employ a two-pronged approach to the struggle for Negro rights in America. They want to organize the Howard student body to get them actively involved in the national struggle, but to do that they know that they have to begin by focusing on student rights on campus. Howard University is run by a frightened bunch of bureaucrats. Fear makes the administration authoritarian in their approach to students. So they become the perfect foil for NAG to attack in order to entice students into the larger struggle. The struggle for campus rights is clearly a means to an end, which is to shake the foundations of segregation and white supremacy. These cats do not dream small dreams.” My experience with Howard administrators thus far revealed no signs of fear so I was genuinely perplexed by Miles’ statement. “Why are they so afraid?” Miles looks at me like I was a less than adequate student in the realities of life, which of course I am.
“Well, its kind of long and complicated story, but I’ll try and give you the Reader’s Digest version. The first thing you need to know is that Washington, DC has no representation in Congress, that is the city has no senators or congressmen to represent the views of Washington residents. And DC has no real control over the running of the city. Furthermore, what’s true for the city is true for Howard University. Since it opened in 1867, Howard has mostly depended on the good will of Congress for its financial well-being. But starting in 1928, Howard administrators got money to run the place from an annual appropriation
set by Congress. The problem is the House Committee for District Affairs is controlled by racist southern Congressmen who do not want black people to thrive. And they’re the ones that decide how much money the Department of Health, Education and Welfare gets. Howard’s annual appropriation comes out of the budget of the education wing of HEW. The Howard administrators always have to walk a fine line between supporting Negro advancement and not offending the white racists in Congress who control Howard’s purse strings. So Howard prospers when their bureaucrats err on the side of caution. Ya dig?” Finally getting the drift, I spontaneously add to Miles’ monologue.