Izzy White?

by Barry Wolfe

  “Izzy, these buses weren’t chartered. They were regularly scheduled Greyhound and Trailway buses; so there were other people on it besides Freedom Riders.” I look at her in horror and ask, “You mean these people didn’t know what they were getting into?” “That’s right, Izzy, many of them didn’t know.”

  I look at her for a moment trying to grasp the situation. “Then what happened, Desirie?”

  “As I said, we all thought we were gonna be safe. But just outside of town, a car got in front of the bus and was weaving back and forth and slowing down, clearly trying to get us to stop. We finally had to stop. There must have been 30 cars and trucks following us out of town. When the bus stopped, the mob came running to the bus screaming. One man smashed another window with a crowbar while several other men were rocking the bus, trying to turn it over on its side. This went on for about 15 minutes. And then...and then…” Desirie now starts to sob, and I move closer to her and hold her. “Someone threw a burning object into the bus. There was a fire and horrible black smoke and all I could hear was the sound of enraged voices screaming, ‘Burn them niggers! Burn ‘em to hell.’ Some of us were finally able to crawl through an open window. One of the fuel tanks blew up and the mob started running away thinking the bus was gonna explode. The front door of the bus was finally pried open, and the rest of the passengers staggered outside to escape the smoke and flames. Hank Thomas, from Howard, was the first one to manage to crawl out of the burning bus. A member of the white mob said to him, ‘Boy, are you OK?’ And before he could answer, the white man proceeded to smash him in the head with a baseball bat. That’s when I got hit on the back of my head with a lead pipe. I was out for a few minutes. When I awoke, my face felt very sore and I didn’t know why. It was much later before I noticed I had been punched several times in the face. I looked around, and I saw several Riders crawling on the grass, coughing and bleeding. As the mob moved toward the Riders to attack them, I noticed that some of them were dressed up in their Sunday clothes. They obviously had just come from church. Only the sound of a pistol fired by a highway patrolman stopped the mob from killing us all. I heard him say, ‘OK, you’ve had your fun, now let’s move back.’ The self-appointed executioners then walked away disappointed. Oh Izzy, I can still feel the smoke in my chest. I can still see those white faces ugly with rage. It was horrible, horrible.” Desirie collapses in my arms sobbing louder than I have ever heard anyone sob. I just hold her and stroke her face gently. I have never felt such tenderness for anyone. I keep stroking her, and then I kiss her cheek. I find her lips and kiss them softly. Her lips are like every set of lips I have known and yet like no other. These are Desirie’s lips—sweet, sensual, and soft. She kisses me back with real passion; and as my feelings rise, I know I want her in every way. I’m in love with Desirie and with life. For the first time, I feel like it is my great good fortune to have chosen to attend Howard. Desirie kisses me again and just as suddenly pulls away. “I’m sorry, Izzy, I just can’t do this.” I thought she had stopped because she is afraid she will lose control and go further then she had intended. “That’s OK Desirie, I probably shouldn’t have moved so fast with you. It’s just that I desire you so much it’s difficult to stop once I start kissing you.” Desirie looks at me with an incomprehensible scowl on her face. “You don’t understand, Izzy. I can’t do this because you’re white. I look at you and I see those angry white faces wanting to burn me alive...I, I just can’t.” Desirie gets up and quickly disappears.

  I watch her walk away until I can no longer see her. I can’t comprehend what has just happened. What can I do? I can’t help the way I look. Maybe if I put a paper bag over my head, she’ll love me. How ridiculous is that. I finally meet a girl that I love, and who seems to love me as long as she doesn’t have to look at me. I slowly get up and stagger to my car stunned, crushed, angry, and hopelessly in love.

  Chapter

  16.

  Integration or Separation

  On a warm, lazy day in the middle of August 1961, nothing much is happening at the Playground. Most of the kids who usually show up are away with their well-to-do parents at their well-to-do beach houses. The few who show up stay inside the school to work on their craft projects. One of the older teenagers agrees to supervise the small cadre of sun-avoiding younger teens and tweens. I take the opportunity to find a grassy spot off to the side of the tarmac, place a blanket on the grass, lay my troubled self down, and allow my mind free reign to wander aimlessly through the meandering pathways of one of my frequent reveries. The smell of the newly mown grass gladdens my heart. It always does. My mind floats right to a shaming memory—I’m walking with my cousin, Jason Davidoff, to the basketball courts on the grounds of Paul Jr. High School. He’s 12 and I’m ten. We pass an open field that has just been mowed. The smell enchants me and I joyously exclaim, “It smells like Walter Johnson League grass.” I am referring to the 12 and under baseball league in which we both are playing. One of the few joys of my being stuck out in right field every game is the smell of the grass. Jason thinks this comment is hilarious, and he mocks me with a singsong parody of my joyous metaphor the rest of the way to the basketball court. Jason and I are more like brothers than cousins. During our childhood, his behavior toward me alternated between Chief Protector and Chief Tormentor. He too went to Howard University, preceding me by two years. In fact, he just graduated from the Pharmacy program in June. I rarely saw him because most of my liberal arts classes were on the upper quadrangle while his pharmacy courses were held entirely in the “Valley”. Jason had integrated the football team two years before I had done the same for the basketball team. Because he was the only white player on the football team, he had to order food for the entire team in the segregated restaurants of south. Two years later, I did the same for the basketball team. My reverie effortlessly shifts into the story of his one big play. Jason was a middle linebacker and reserve fullback who never got a chance to run the ball. He often begged the coach to let him carry the ball just once. The coach always refused, until, that is, the last game of his last season. “OK, Jason, here’s your chance.” Jason entered the game filled with nervous anticipation. The center snapped the ball and the offensive line opened a gigantic whole for Jason to run through. He ran as fast as he could straight for the goal line that was fifty yards away. But Jason was not speedy. Any other running back on the team would have easily scored a touchdown, but Jason gained about 20 yards before the two cornerbacks converged on him and brought his career as a running back to an end. As Jason jogged back to the sideline, the coach said with a smirk on his face, “Hey, Jason, I know you said you wanted to carry the piano, but I didn’t think you’d stop and play it.” Jason turned crimson at the sound of his teammates’ laughter. I laugh at the memory.

  The reverie now shifts back to basketball, and I can clearly see myself playing against Hampton University, scoring 11 points in seven minutes; my best game ever. I think I can be a star, but as the season wears on, I discover I have to work my ass off every day just to be competent. Most players I face are bigger, stronger, and faster, and I have to give 120% every game in order not to embarrass myself. I know I have to make a decision about whether to keep playing. I also know that I’m not NBA material. I replay Jason’s last play in my mind’s eye and it makes me think that my career in basketball is coming to an end. But I love the game. I love that I am playing at the college level, and to be perfectly honest, I love that I am the only white player who ever played varsity basketball at Howard University. Maybe one more year!

  The sun feels hotter as my reverie moves on. I feel needles of grass pricking me through the blanket as if to remind me of yet another worry. I have to choose a new major. Chemistry perished inside a dank and smelly laboratory. I had routinely boiled away my test solutions and with it my dreams of becoming a successful chemist. My experiment with sociology ended in laughable humiliation. After taking two sociology courses and getting “As” in both, I presented myself to Dr. Marjo
rie Wilson, the Acting Chair of the Sociology Department, proud as a peacock, preening to be praised and informed of the great opportunities awaiting me as a full fledged sociologist. Her response is terse and crushing. “Mr. White,” she says. “If I were you, I would get out of sociology. Unless you want to teach or don’t mind becoming a cog in the wheel of a large research organization, there are no opportunities for you.” I’m flabbergasted, deflated, and demoralized. My reverie now turns its fearful eye onto psychology. I’m listening to Sigmund Freud as he unravels the secrets of the human mind. I tremble at the thought of associating myself with this genius. How can I become a psychologist when next to Freud I’m clearly intellectually inadequate? I tell Freud I want to try and become a psychologist and ask him if he thinks that is possible? He laughs and in Yiddish says “What am I, a mind-reader?” The image of Freud darkens until all I can see are his teeth. The teeth grow whiter and the dark background assumes the contours of Desirie’s face. Now she is laughing, but her laughter is not the laughter of ridicule. “Of course it’s possible!” I imagine her saying. Her laughter is a gentle reproach to my tendency to doubt my abilities and myself. I’m so grateful for the support I hear in her laugh that I see myself hugging her. Soon we are in her bedroom, kissing and removing each other’s clothes. We begin—Loving! …Merging! ...Coming! At the moment of climax, I hear a loud thunderclap. “Just like in the movies,” I muse. But as the rain comes flooding down on top of me, I realize that the thunderclap is real. The cloud burst has brought my reverie to an end. I grab my blanket and sprint for the schoolroom door.

  Toward the end of September, I’m walking along the upper quadrangle of the campus in a rare state of wellbeing. I’m now a junior in college, a fact that gives rise in me both incredulity and self-congratulations. It’s a golden autumn day and the leaves are just beginning to change color. The gentle warmth of the sun on my face seems to dissolve all of my worries. Nature has bestowed a gift upon us all. Every student that I can see appears to be walking with a light and lively step. One student in particular catches my attention. He’s walking right toward me with a wide grin on his face. He approaches me with such confidence that I believe he must originally be from one of the islands in the Caribbean. “You are Izzy White, are you not?” he asks, continuing to grin at me as if I am a long lost friend. He is literally tall, dark, and handsome. He has very expressive eyes, an infectious smile, and an odd combination in his speech of a Bajan lilt and a New York accent that is irresistible.

  “Yes, that’s me. And you’re Brandon Blackwell.”

  “Ah, so you have heard of me.”

  “Yes I have. I know you’re originally from Barbados, went to Bronx High School. You love soccer and have already become a prominent voice in NAG.”

  “And you have done your homework, I see,” he says with a welcoming grin.

  “What I don’t know is what you want with me.”

  “Winston McKenzie tells me you would be a good person to know.”

  “That surprises me because I thought McKenzie had nothing but contempt for me.”

  “Not true, Izzy,” Brandon rebuts loosening the collar of his starched white shirt.

  “And you can’t believe that about Winston because I know he tried to recruit you for NAG last year. How ‘bout we step into the Union so we can talk?” Brandon’s movements belie his garb. He moves with an easy smoothness, the direct opposite of the tight rigidity of his sharply creased Navy blue pants and starched shirt. After getting some coffee, we sit at a corner table. Before he can get a word in, I start. “Why would McKenzie recommend me to you?” My guard is up as my paranoia begins to bloom. “All he did was put down my education and slam white supremacy. The irony is that I agreed with him on both counts.” Warming up to our conversation, Brandon becomes more enthusiastic and informal. “He knew that, Jack. He knew that. He was so impressed with that, Jack, so impressed. He was also impressed by the fact that you are this white cat in liberal arts. They are few and far between, Jack. Most whites that come to Howard are in the professional programs—pharmacy, the med and dental schools. Then you have all these white girls from the suburbs that come to Howard to be dental hygienists. Not to work on black people’s teeth, of course. They graduate and run back to their lily-white suburbs to work. But you; you’re in the liberal arts program and you seem to be interested in social justice.”

  “So?”

  “So, NAG needs people like you.”

  “I assume you too have done your homework. So what do you know about me?”

  “I know you’re a good-hearted Jew and Jews have been some of our best allies in the struggle for civil rights. Your father is a butcher, which means he is a solid member of the working class and therefore must lean toward the Democratic Party. I also know that you are excelling in the Honors Program here at Howard and that you played on the Howard varsity basketball team. And I know that you participated in a picket line at Glen Echo and you tried to become a Freedom Rider. Quite a feat for a little white, Jewish cat.”

  “You’re scary. How did you learn all that?”

  “Like you said, I do my homework.” Brandon pauses, gives me a searching look, and then continues. “I don’t know if you’re aware that NAG has become the student affiliate group at Howard for SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.”

  “I’ve heard of SNCC, but don’t know too much about the group. I know just a little bit more about CORE because CORE was behind the Freedom Rides.”

  ‘That’s right, but CORE, SNCC, NAG; we all have the same goal. We want to remove the humiliation of segregation and destroy white supremacy.”

  “That, I can dig!”

  “So you do share NAG’s goals.”

  “Well, yes, the little I know of them.”

  “Come join us then!

  “What specifically is NAG trying to do? I mean, I know that NAG’s primary task is to try to organize and influence the Howard student body so that as many students as possible will join the struggle for human rights. I also know that the bait is to help students to organize for improvements in student rights and living conditions on campus.”

  “That’s right, Izzy. Student life issues are important, but our ultimate goal is to wake students up from their somnolent apathy, their materialistic obsessions, and take responsibility to help our people secure the rights that belong to them as Americans. For example, we’ve recruited a lot of students to participate in the Route 40 project. Are you familiar with that?

  “Something to do with segregated restaurants on Route 40?”

  “That’s right, from Wilmington, Delaware to DC. Now this is some crazy shit. Restaurants, gas stations and other facilities all along Route 40 only serve white people. As you know, a large number of African countries have thrown off their colonial chains and have become independent. And they have become bona fide members of the UN, Jack. That means there are many African diplomats routinely traveling from the UN in New York to their embassies in DC. Route 40 is the primary means of travel. So none of these restaurants, gas stations and whatever is serving these diplomats, and it’s become a national embarrassment to the Kennedy administration. Would you believe that Kennedy published an announcement of a new policy that would punish any place that refused service to dark skinned diplomats? Not Negroes in general, mind you, just dark-skinned diplomats. We’re not gonna stand for that, no we’re not! Members of NAG joined CORE in demonstrations and sit-ins all along Route 40. We even had students dress up in African garb and they were served. That policy was eventually cancelled, Jack, you bet it was.”