by Maya Angelou
At ten minutes to nine our taxi turned off 42nd Street onto First Avenue. Sarah and I screamed at the same time. The driver put on brakes and we all crashed forward.
“What the hell is going on here?” The cabbie’s alarm matched our own. People stood packed together on the sidewalk and spilled out into the street. Placards stating FREEDOM NOW, BACK TO AFRICA, AFRICA FOR THE AFRICANS, ONE MAN, ONE VOTE waved on sticks above the crowd.
We looked out the windows. Thousands of people circled in the street and all of them were black. We paid and made our way to the crowd.
“Here she is. Here’s one of them.”
“Sister, we told you we’d be here. Where you been?”
“How do we get inside? The police said …”
“They won’t let us in.”
The shouts and questions were directed at me. I began a chant and used it moving through the anxious crowd: “I’ll see about it. I’ll take care of it. I’ll take care of it. I’ll see about it.” Not knowing whom to see, or really how I would take care of anything.
Rosa was waiting for me in front of the severely modern building by the large glass doors.
“Can you imagine this crowd? So many people. So many.” She was excited and her Caribbean was particularly noticeable. “And the guards have refused entrance.”
“Rosa, you said you’d get tickets from the African delegations.”
“I know, but only the Senegalese and my friend from Upper Volta have shown up.” She had to shout, because the crowd had begun to chant.
She leaned toward me, frowning, “I’ve only got seven tickets.” The people on the sidewalk shouted. “Freedom!”
“Freedom!”
“Lumumba! Lumumba!”
She said, “Little Carlos is here. The Cuban, you know. He took the tickets and went in with Abbey, Max, Amece and others. He’ll bring the tickets back and take in six more. It’s the only way.” Carlos Moore was an angry young man who moved through Harlem’s political sky like a luminous meteor.
I looked over at the black throng. Many had never been in midtown Manhattan, thinking the blocks south of Harlem as dangerous as enemy territory and no man’s land. On our casual encouragement, they had braved the perilous journey.
Carlos came trotting through the double doors. “Sister, you have arrived.” He grinned, his little chocolate face gleeful. “I am ready for the next group. Let’s go! Now!”
I turned, and without thinking about it, plucked the first people in the crowd.
“Give me your placards. You’re going in.” I held the ungainly weighted sticks and Carlos shouted to the chosen men and women. “Follow me, brothers and sisters. Stay close to me.” They disappeared into the dim foyer, and I redistributed the placards.
Rosa had walked away into the crowd. I took her example and moved through the people near the building.
“What’s going on, sister?”
“The crackers don’t want to let us in, huh?”
“We could break the motherfucker wide open.”
“Shit, all we got to do is die. And we gonna do that any goddam way.”
I stopped with that group. “Nothing could please the whites more than to have a reason to shoot down innocent black folks. Don’t give them the pleasure.”
An old woman grabbed my sleeve. “God will bless you, honey. If you keep the children alive.”
She sounded wise and was about the age of my grandmother. “Yes, ma’am. Thank you.” I took her hand and pulled her away from the seething mass. She would go in with the next group. We walked to the steps together. I turned and raised my voice to explain what had obviously happened.
Informers had alerted the police that Harlem was coming to the U.N. So security had been increased. In order to get into the building we had to exercise restraint. The cops were nervous, so to prevent some trigger-happy idiot from shooting into the crowd, we had to remain cool.
The people assented with a grace I found assuring. The old woman and I reached the top steps as Carlos came through the doors. “Six more. And we move. Now!”
Carlos gathered the next five people along with the old lady and led them into the building.
For the next thirty minutes, as Carlos siphoned off groups of six and led them into the building, more cadres of police arrived to stand armed and confused on the sidewalks and across the street, while plain-clothed white men took photographs of the action.
A marcher grabbed my sleeve. “What you folks think you’re doing? You told us to come down here and now you can’t get us in.” The man was furious. He continued, “Yeah, that’s black folks for you. Running around half shaved and grinning.”
I wanted to explain how some fink had put us in the cross, but Rosa appeared, taking my other sleeve.
“Come on, Maya. Come on now.” Her urgency would not be denied. I looked at the angry man and lied. “I’ll be right back.”
Inside the gleaming hall, unarmed security guards stood anxiously at their posts. Near the wide stairs leading to the second floor, Carlos was hemmed in by another group of guards.
“I’ve got my ticket. This is mine.” Frayed stubs protruded from his black fist. “They were given to me by a delegate.”
Rosa and I pushed into the circle, forcing the guards away. Rosa took his arm. “Come on, Carlos, we’ve got to go.”
We walked together straight and moderately slowly, controlling the desire to break and run, keening into the General Assembly.
Although we were beyond the guards’ hearing, Carlos whispered, “The Assembly has started. Stevenson is going to speak soon.”
Upstairs, more guards stood silent as we passed. Two black men were waiting by the entry to the hall, anxiety flushing their faces.
“Carlos! We thought they had you, man.”
“They’ll never have me, mon. I am Carlos, mon.”
His assurance had returned. Rosa smiled at me and we entered the dark, quiet auditorium. Miles away, down a steep incline, delegates sat before microphones in a square of light, but the upper balcony was too dim for me to distinguish anything clearly.
After a few seconds, the gloom gave way, and the audience became visible. About seventy-five black people were mixed among the whites. Some women had already pinned veils over their faces.
Amece, Jean and the teacher sat together. Max and Abbey were across the aisle near Sarah and the model. An accented voice droned unintelligibly.
“Uh, uhm, mm, um.”
The little white man so far away leaned toward his microphone, his bald forehead shining-white. Dark-rimmed glasses stood out on the well-known face.
A scream shattered his first word. The sound was bloody and broad and piercing. In a second other voices joined it.
“Murderers.”
“Lumumba. Lumumba.”
“Killers.”
“Bigoted sons of bitches.”
The scream still rode high over the heads of astounded people who were rising, clutching each other or pushing out toward the aisle.
The houselights came on. Stevenson took off his glasses and looked to the balcony. The shock opened his mouth and made his chin drop.
A man near me screamed, “You Ku Klux Klan motherfuckers.”
Another yelled, “Murderers.”
African diplomats were as alarmed as their white counterparts. I was also shaken. We had not anticipated a riot. We had been expected to stand, veiled and mournful, in a dramatic but silent protest.
“Baby killers.”
“Slave drivers.”
Terrorized whites in the audience tried to hustle away from the yelling blacks. Security guards rushed through the doors on the upper and lower levels.
The garish lights, the stampede of bodies and the continuing high-pitched scream were overpowering. My knees weakened and I sat down in the nearest seat.
A woman in the aisle beside me screamed at the guards, “Don’t dare touch me. Don’t put your hands on me, you white bastard!”
The guards were s
houting, “Get out. Get out.”
The woman said, “Don’t touch me, you Belgian bastard.”
Below, the diplomats rose and formed an orderly file toward an exit.
When the piercing scream stopped I heard my own voice shouting, “Murderers. Killers. Assassins.”
Two women grappled with a guard in the aisle. Carlos had leaped onto a white man’s back and was riding him to the floor. A stout black woman held the lapels of a white man in civilian clothes.
“Who you trying to kill? Who you trying to kill? You don’t know me, you dog. You don’t know who you messing with.”
The man was hypnotized and beyond fear, and the woman shook him like a dishrag.
The diplomats had vanished and except for the guards the whites had disappeared. The balcony was ours. Just as in the Southern segregated movie houses, we were in the buzzards’ roost again.
Rosa found me and I got up and followed her. We urged the people back to the safety of the street. The black folks strode proudly past the guards, through the hall and out the doors into sunshine.
The waiting crowd, enlarged by latecomers and more police, had changed its mood. Insiders had told outsiders that we had rioted, and now an extravagant disorder was what the blacks wanted, while the law officers yearned for vindication.
“Let’s go back in.”
“Let’s go in and show them bastards we mean business.”
“This ain’t no United Nations. This is just united white folks. Let’s go back in.”
A cadre of police stood on the steps, their eyes glittering. By law, they were forbidden inside the U.N. building, but they were eager to prevent our reentry.
Some folks screamed at the silent seething police.
“You killed Lumumba too. You shit.”
“I wish I had your ass on 125th Street.”
“Take off your pistol. I’ll whip your ass.”
Carlos rushed to me.
“We’re going to the Belgian Consulate. Walk together.” Rosa’s voice was loud. “Forty-sixth Street. The Associated Press Building. Let us go. Let’s go.”
The crowd began to move between a corridor of police which stretched to the street. Up front, someone had started to sing.
“And before I’ll be a slave, I’ll be buried in my grave …”
The song rippled, now high, now low. Picked up by voices and dropped but never discarded.
“And go home to my God and be free.”
Mounted police, sitting tall on hot horses, looked down as we crossed First Avenue, singing.
Rosa and I were walking side by side in the last group as we turned into 43rd Street. I said, “That scream started it. Wonder who screamed.”
She frowned and laughed at the same time. “Amece, and she almost killed Jean.”
The marchers around us were singing
“No more slavery,
No more slavery,
No more slavery over me.”
Rosa continued, “Amece said she looked down and saw Stevenson and thought about Lumumba. She reached to caress her daughter, but Jean jumped and Amece screamed. Unfortunately, she had her arm around Jean’s neck. So when Jean jerked, Amece tightened her grip and kept screaming. Nobody was going to hurt her baby. So she screamed.” Rosa laughed. “Nobody but Amece. She nearly choked Jean to death.”
The crowd was trooping and chanting.
Six mounted police climbed the sidewalk and rode through the stragglers. People jumped out of the way as the horses bore down on them.
A wiry black man unable to escape was being pressed against the wall of a building. I flung myself toward him slapping horses, jutting my elbows into their flanks.
“Get away. Move, dammit.”
The man was flat against the wall, ignoring the horses, staring up at the policemen. I reached him and took his hand.
“Come on, brother. Come on, brother.”
We walked between the shifting horses and back to Rosa, who had halted the group.
Rosa was grinning, her face filled with disbelief. “Maya Angelou, I thought you were scared of animals. You went into those horses, kicking ass!”
She was right. I had never owned a pet. I didn’t understand the intelligent idiocy of dogs or cats; in fact, all animals terrorized me. The day’s action had taken away my usual self and made me uncommon. I was literally intoxicated with adventure.
We approached the corner of 46th and Sixth Avenue, and the intersection reminded me of a South American news telecast. For the moment, heavily armed police and angry people seemed to neutralize the scene. Bright sunlight left no face in shadow and the two groups watched each other warily, moving dreamily this way and then that. That way and this. Policemen’s hands were never far from their pistols, and plain-clothed officers spoke into the static of walkie-talkies. Black demonstrators edged along the sidewalk, rumbling and carrying battered and torn placards.
Police cars were parked double in the street and a captain walked among his men, talking and looking obliquely at the crowd, trying to evaluate its mood and its intention.
When Rosa dashed away from me and into the shuffling crowd, a beribboned officer came over.
“You’re one of the leaders?” His pink face was splotched with red anger.
Following the Southern black advice “If a white man asks you where you’re going, you tell him where you’ve been,” I answered, “I’m with the people.”
“Where is your permit? You people have to have a permit to demonstrate.”
Three black men suddenly appeared, placing themselves between the policemen and me.
“What do you want with this black lady?”
“Watch yourself, Charlie. Don’t mess with her.”
Instantly more police surrounded my protectors, and black people from the dragging line, seeing the swift action, ran over to encircle the newly arrived police.
I had to make a show of confidence. I looked into the officer’s face and said, “Permit? If we left it to you whites we’d be in the same shape as our folks in South Africa. We’d have to have a permit to breathe.”
A man standing by my side added, “Naw. We ain’t got no damn permit. So you better pull out your pistols and start shooting. Shoot us down now, ’cause we ain’t moving.”
The policemen, eager to accept the man’s invitation, snorted and fidgeted like enraged horses. The officer reigned them in with his voice. He shouted, “It’s all right, men. I said, it’s all right. Back to your stations.”
There was a brief period of hateful staring before the cops returned to the street and we rejoined the larger group of black people shuffling along the pavement.
Rosa found me. “Carlos is inside.” Her eyes were narrowed. “Somebody said he’s been in there over a half-hour. The Belgian Consulate is on the eleventh floor. Maybe the cops have got him.”
The knowledge of what police do to black men rose wraithlike before my eyes. Carlos was little and pretty and reminded me of my brother. The cops did have Bailey and maybe he was being clubbed or raped at that very minute. I saw a horrifying picture of Bailey in the hands of madmen but there was nothing I could do about it.
I could do something about Carlos.
I said, “I’m going in. You keep the people marching.”
I searched the faces nearest me.
Vus once told me, “If you’re ever in trouble, don’t under any circumstances ask black middle-class people for help. They always think they have a stake in the system. Look for a tsotsi, that’s Xhosa for a street hoodlum. A roughneck. A convict. He’ll already be angry and he will know that he has nothing to lose.”
I continued looking until I saw the man. He was taller than I, rail-thin and the color of bitter chocolate. One deep scar ran from the flange of his left nostril to his ear lobe and another lay between his hairline and his left eyebrow.
I beckoned to him and he came toward me.
“Brother, my name is Maya. I think Carlos Moore is in this building somewhere. He’s the lead
er of this march. The cops may have him and you know what that means.”
“Yeah, sister, yeah.” He nodded wisely.
“I want to go in and see about him and I need somebody to go with me.”
He nodded again and waited.
“It’ll be dangerous, but will you go?”
“Sure.” The planes on his face didn’t change. “Sure, Sister Maya. Let’s go.” He took my elbow and began to propel me to the steps.
I asked, “What’s your name?” He said, “Call me Buddy.”
Rosa’s voice came to me as we went through the revolving doors. “Be careful, Maya.”
The lobby was busy with police, guards and milling white men. Although my escort was pushing me quickly toward the bank of elevators, I had time to look at the building’s directory. Above the eleventh-floor listing of the Belgian Consulate were the words AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY, 10TH FLOOR. A flat, florid police officer stepped in front of me and my companion.
“Where are you going?”
The tsotsi spoke. “None of your goddam business.”
I poked his side and said sweetly, “I’m going to the American Book Company.”
The cop and the tsotsi stared knowingly at each other. Loathing ran between the two men like an electrical current.
“And you. Where do you think you’re going?”
“I’m going with her. Every step of the way.”
The cop heard the challenge and narrowed his eyes and I heard the protection and felt like a little girl. The pudgy cop followed us to the elevators and I pushed the tenth-floor button, holding on to the black man’s hand. The ride was tense and quick. We walked out into the hall and turned to watch the officer’s face until the doors closed.
I said, “Let’s find the stairs.”
Around the corner we saw the exit sign.
“Buddy, you go through and let the door close, then see if you can open it again.”