Coffee Will Make You Black

by April Sinclair

  “Plantation Day looks like it’s gonna be a big success!”

  “Yeah,” I agreed, noticing that most of the students in the hallway were dressed like slaves.

  “Stevie, the natives are restless. It’s time to tell the truth about our history. We weren’t a bunch of happy darkies down on the plantation.”

  “No, we weren’t,” I agreed.

  “Well, what did you think of the Afro-American Club?”

  “That was only my first meeting, Roland. You see I’m supporting Plantation Day, don’t you?”

  “Stevie, the Afro-American Club is really talking about changing things. We’re on the move!”

  “What if you don’t get the things you want?”

  “The head brother, Brother Jamar, says we’ll use ‘any means necessary’!”

  “Wow!”

  “That’s a quote from Malcolm X.”

  “Oh.”

  “Stevie, you should check out the Autobiography of Malcolm X. I’m reading it now.”

  “I never even heard of that book.”

  “You’ve heard of Malcolm X, haven’t you?”

  “Of course, I know he was a black Muslim. I remember when he died. My mother said she’d miss hearing him speak on the radio. She didn’t agree with anything he said, but she liked the way he pronounced his words.”

  “Well, you need to get hip to his message.”

  “Dr. King is my hero.”

  “You can have more than one hero, you know.”

  “Maybe so. Well, lend me the Autobiography of Malcolm X when you finish with it.”

  “Right on, Stevie! Brother Jamar says, ‘It’s time for a new generation of black men to rise up and seize control!’”

  “That was the second bell! Where do you two belong this period?” the short matronly hall monitor demanded.

  The day after Plantation Day, we were sitting in Art class. “I saw a segment on the news last night about people doing some really groovy ice sculptures up in Minnesota,” Miss Humphrey announced. “Did anyone else see it?”

  Some people groaned at hearing her say “groovy.” Me and a couple of other students raised our hands.

  “Wasn’t it neat?” Miss Humphrey asked.

  “Neat,” a girl named Kawanda mimicked Miss Humphrey.

  “Hey, Wally, where’s the Beaver?” Desmond rubbed it in even more.

  Poor Miss Humphrey, I thought. She wanted to be cool so badly.

  Everett raised his hand. “Miss Humphrey, how do peoples know how to do sculpture?”

  “Everett, someone asked Michelangelo how he knew how to sculpt David.”

  “What he say?”

  “I cut away at everything that wasn’t David. Wasn’t that a neat answer?” Miss Humphrey said as the bell rang. “Wait, Jean and Carla, I have something for you.”

  Kawanda and Peaches turned around to see what Miss Humphrey was talking about. They stood in the doorway and watched her drag out a cardboard box from underneath her desk.

  “What is it?” I asked, not sure whether to be excited or not.

  “Yeah, what you got?” Carla looked suspicious.

  Miss Humphrey held up a plaid pleated skirt.

  “I can’t wear these clothes anymore, they’re too small. I would normally donate them to Goodwill. But I asked myself, why do that, when I have a couple of students in my classroom who can’t even afford lunch?”

  “Tell her y’all don’t need her funky old clothes,” Kawanda groaned, as she walked into the hallway. “For real,” Peaches agreed as they left me and Carla alone with Miss Humphrey and the box of old clothes.

  Carla appeared speechless for once. “Miss Humphrey,” I swallowed, “I know you mean well, but we don’t need your clothes.”

  “Look, there are some really nice things in here. Some of them have hardly been worn.”

  “Is you deaf? She told you we ain’t need ’em.”

  “Carla, I find that hard to believe. Especially since the two of you can’t even afford lunch.”

  “That was Carla’s idea of ‘getting over.’ I tried to pay you back, didn’t I?”

  “And I told you that I didn’t want to be paid back, didn’t I?”

  “Look, we ain’t piss poor, or nothin’. We got money,” Carla insisted.

  “Miss Humphrey, the only reason we don’t buy a hot lunch on Fridays is so that we can buy a forty-five or fingernail polish or a magazine, stuff like that,” I explained.

  “Don’t you get allowances?”

  “Yes,” I said, “but our lunch money has to come out of it.”

  “My younger sister gets lunch money and an allowance.”

  “Bully for your younger sister.” Carla frowned.

  “Frankly, I think you two are letting your pride get in the way here.”

  “Pride ain’t got nothin’ to do with it,” Carla shouted. “We just don’t need charity.”

  “Okay … if you say so.”

  The second bell rang and we headed for the door.

  “See, Carla, I told you there was no such thing as a free sloppy joe.”

  We were at our desks, reading our Early World History books. Our minds weren’t on the feudal system though. Dr. King had been killed yesterday in Memphis, Tennessee!

  I’d been sitting in the lunchroom earlier when several students picked up chairs and crashed them through the windows. Now, most people seemed to think something was about to jump off. You could feel it in the air. You could see it in the way people looked at Mrs. Christopher, the way two people had “accidently” bumped into her. And neither of them had said “Excuse me.”

  I wished I’d brought my radio to school like Gerald. He held a transistor radio to his ear.

  “Look what I wrote on the front of my notebook,” Patrice said, turning around.

  “What?” I whispered.

  “Black Power,” she answered loudly.

  “Right on!” I heard myself say.

  “Quiet, girls,” Mrs. Christopher said, looking up from her desk.

  “They turning it out on the West Side,” Gerald shouted. “They done started rioting!”

  The room rippled with excitement, people turned away from their classwork.

  Mrs. Christopher sighed and ran her fingers through her gray hair. How could this white woman on the brink of retirement possibly control us now, I wondered.

  I wasn’t ready to start burning and looting, yet I believed I was just as angry as those who were. We as a people had been dogged for too long.

  I prayed that nobody would burn down my grandmother’s chicken stand. She and my uncle had worked so hard; they took so much pride in Mother Dickens’ Fried Chicken.

  The door burst open, and a group of students rushed in. “It’s Nation Time!” they shouted. A brother in a dashiki, with a teke around his neck and a big fro stepped forward. It was Roland!

  Mrs. Christopher stood up and faced the group. “You can’t just barge into a classroom like this! Where are your passes?” she demanded.

  All eyes were on Roland. I wondered what would happen next.

  “It’s time for a new generation of black men to rise up and seize control!” he shouted, raising his fist.

  “Fuck this white-history shit,” a boy named Carl yelled, slamming his book against his desk. “Let’s turn this mother out!”

  “Control yourselves!” Mrs. Christopher shouted. “That is not what Dr. King stood for. How dare you people disgrace his memory!”

  The fire alarms went off and the class rushed to the door. Mrs. Christopher plastered herself against the wall to keep from getting run over. Carl slammed the green metal wastebasket against the window. We heard glass splatter on the pavement below.

  “The revolution has started!” Roland yelled as we ran out into the smoky hallway.

  Smoke was everywhere; the trash cans in the washrooms and the hallways had been set on fire. I stood with a huge group of students outside the redbrick school building. The principal had stepped out earlier wit
h a bullhorn, telling us to go home. A few students had thrown rocks, one had hit his pink bald head. I’d seen blood on Mr. Finklestein’s face before he ran back into the building.

  We faced a line of policemen in riot gear, who rubbed their nightsticks and yelled for us to disperse. The firemen unrolled their hoses while some students chanted “Let the motherfucker burn! Let the motherfucker burn!”

  My heart pounded. I wondered if the police would shoot rubber bullets into the air.

  “Patrice, we better go. Somebody could get hurt.”

  “There’s way more of us than there is of them,” Patrice pointed out.

  “Sister, if anybody gets hurt, it’s gonna be the pigs!” A brother I’d seen selling Black Panther newspapers shouted.

  Suddenly, my eyes felt like they were being ripped out of their sockets. My throat burned. The spring air had a white tint to it. People were running and moaning.

  “We’ve been tear-gassed!” somebody shouted.

  I’d read about it and I’d heard about it. But I never thought it would happen to me.

  After washing the tear-gas out of my eyes, I rode two buses to get to Mother Dickens’ Fried Chicken Stand and into Grandma’s arms.

  An old man on the first bus, whose face reminded me of brown leather, had shouted that he was “tired of marching” and “the hell with nonviolence!” It was like the whole bus full of us black folks felt his anger, frustration, and pain.

  Outside on the street, I’d seen older people standing around as if dazed. Young men were pacing around restlessly, like the lions at Brookfield Zoo.

  “Where’s Kevin and David? Are they okay?”

  I nodded. “They’re at home. I stopped there first. Our school was on fire!”

  “I heard, I already called over there. They said the fire was under control.”

  “Grandma, I’m scared. I heard on the radio that they’ve already started rioting on the West Side. It could spread to the South Side. This neighborhood could be next. Everything you and Uncle Franklin and Aunt Connie worked for could go up in smoke.”

  “All black people are going to do is tear up our own neighborhoods. We never get angry enough to strike out at the white man.” Grandma sighed.

  Uncle Franklin was calling for a chicken sandwich and a chicken dinner.

  “I’ll take the orders out, Grandma.”

  “Here, Uncle Franklin.” He didn’t greet me with his usual smile. I looked at the knot of black faces around the little store. People looked as though they were mad enough to bite nails. The tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife. To add insult to injury, a man walked in with a white girl! All eyes were on them. The sisters’ eyes narrowed like darts. I ducked into the back to fill another order.

  “Grandma, a man just walked in with a white girl! She even has the nerve to be blonde.”

  “Those fools may as well be throwing gasoline on a fire!” Grandma shouted.

  I shook my head and returned with two chicken orders and a couple of little sweet-potato pies.

  Things had gone from bad to worse. The couple was wedged into a corner between the Coke machine and the plate-glass window.

  “Was yo mama white? That’s what I want to know!” A big dark-skinned sister with a short afro demanded.

  Before the man could answer, another sister said, “Tell me he couldn’t find one black woman. The bitch ain’t even cute.”

  The white girl was shaking.

  “Where y’all from?” a tall, light-skinned brother demanded.

  “We live in Hyde Park. We’re students at the University of Chicago. But I grew up here in Englewood though.” He swallowed.

  “Your behind grew up in Englewood?”

  The man nodded. “I graduated from Englewood High.”

  “Well, nigger, I’d say you forgot where you came from. Think cause you in somebody’s college you too good for your own people, huh? Y’all call y’all self slumming?”

  “No, not at all. I just wanted Linda to taste Mother Dickens’ fried chicken,” he answered weakly.

  “You spit on me while you were talking,” a sister shouted.

  “You spit on my lady!” the tall light-skinned brother insisted.

  “I didn’t mean to.”

  “What you mean you ain’t mean to? You spit in the black woman’s face when you come in here with your white hoe!”

  “Keith, please, let’s just go,” the white girl pleaded.

  Keith ignored Linda. “Man, you didn’t have to call her a hoe.”

  “I’ll call her a hoe anytime I get ready!” The brother grabbed a Coke bottle from the counter and raised it over Keith’s head. “I wish you would tell me you don’t like me calling that white bitch a hoe again, ’cause I’m a minute off your ass!”

  Uncle Franklin looked up from the cash register. His face was tense, but he didn’t say anything. I sucked in my breath. Keith’s face was sweating and Linda looked white as a ghost. Everybody waited to see what would happen.

  “Say!” It was Grandma’s voice.

  “Hello, Mother Dickens,” a few people mumbled respectfully, turning and looking at Grandma.

  “Let’s have a moment of silence for Dr. King,” Grandma said, holding up her hand. The man with the Coke bottle lowered his arm and looked at Grandma. People bowed their heads. A brother removed his cap. You could’ve heard a pin drop. I was amazed that Grandma could command so much respect at a time like this.

  “Chicken sandwiches and dinners are on the house,” she announced, after a minute. The tension had been broken for now.

  Grandma pointed to the interracial couple. “Get her out of here while you still can.”

  “Mother Dickens, I wanted Linda to taste your secret recipe. Your fried chicken is the greatest!”

  “Thank you, son, but this ain’t the time or the place. Now don’t make me chew my chitlins twice.”

  The couple scurried away. Some people don’t have the sense they were born with, I thought.

  I followed Grandma back into the kitchen.

  “I sho hope that Dr. King was right, chile.”

  “What do you mean, Grandma?”

  “He said he might not get there with us. But we as a people will get to the Promised Land.’”

  A few days after Dr. King was killed, the sun shone brightly through the stained-glass windows of Faith African Methodist Episcopal Church. The choir stood solemnly in their blue-and-white robes.

  “Let us pray,” Reverend Sawyer said to the congregation.

  I stood with Mama and my brothers with my head bowed.

  “Let us pray for this nation and for those who’ve lost so much in the rioting on the West Side of this city, and cities across the entire country. And let’s thank God Almighty that despite our outrage, despite our anger, despite our suffering, the citizens of the great South Side of Chicago did not despair; did not destroy our own communities. For violence only begets violence. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.”

  There was a chorus of Amens, louder than usual for Faith. We almost sounded like Baptists.

  chapter 15

  A lot happened the summer after my freshman year. Bobby Kennedy had been killed two months after Dr. King’s assassination; the Chicago police had beaten the hell out of the demonstrators outside the Democratic Convention while they’d chanted, “The whole world’s watching.” Mama had said over and over, “I can’t believe they’re beating white kids like that.” I wouldn’t have believed it either if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes on TV.

  The country was in turmoil, but right now I was irritated that there was never enough time to deal with my hair after my sophomore swimming class. I hurried down the hallway, trying to beat the second bell.

  “Stevie, I want you to sign the Manifesto.”

  I recognized Roland’s voice in the hallway.

  “What manifesto?” I asked as he caught up with me.

  “It’s a list of demands.”

  “What are they asking for, Roland?
”

  “Sister, they’re not asking, we’re demanding!”

  “Well, excuse me. So, what are we demanding?”

  “We’re demanding a black principal, a black vice principal, all black guidance counselors, a black school nurse and that we not sing the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ in assemblies.”

  “Wow.”

  “We’re demanding that we sing ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing,’ instead.”

  “The Black National Anthem?”

  “You got it, sister.”

  I couldn’t help but notice how much Roland had changed. He was dressed in jeans and a green army jacket and combat boots. Plus he carried himself differently, with much more self-confidence.

  Roland held out a clipboard. “You ready to sign?”

  “Let me think about it. There goes the second bell. Right now, I’ve got to go dissect a frog. I’ll get back to you, though.”

  “What’s there to think about? Stevie, you’re either part of the solution or you’re part of the problem,” Roland yelled behind me as I ran toward Advanced Biology class.

  The next day was a cool Saturday but the sun was peeping through the hospital windows anyhow. Daddy had forgotten his lunch, and I’d told Mama I’d take it to him since I didn’t have anything better to do before my hair appointment. The housekeeping receptionist had said, “Just follow the arrow, your father is right around that corner.”

  I could hear hollering, so I peeped down the long hallway.

  I saw Daddy in his gray uniform mopping the floor. A short white man in a light blue shirt and black pants was standing near him, yelling. I stopped dead in my tracks.

  “My ten-year-old kid could’ve figured it out, it’s that simple.”

  “But, Mr. Donaldson, sir, it’s always been one part solution to four parts water.”

  “I don’t give a goddamn what it’s always been, Ray!” The white boss shouted. “Things change and you’d better learn to change with them. That’s what’s wrong with you people, you refuse to read. You have to learn to think independently. Otherwise you’ll be taking orders for the rest of your life.”

  I stood patiently waiting for Daddy to go upside his boss’s head with his fist. Who did this white man think he was? But Daddy was quiet, he just kept on mopping, didn’t even look up.