“You mean right here?” Benny stared at his father.
“Right here,” said Luke, nodding. “So I asked him if I was a fish two million years ago. And he said no, I was a crustacean. And he showed me the little ridges on this fossil.”
Benny tapped his father on the shoulder. “It does look a little like you, daddy,” and Alex yelled, “It sure does!”
Once the rocks were secured in the bed of the Ford, Luke made his careful way back to the highway. It was raining hard now. “Tomorrow we’ll drop these historical monuments at the catfish farm. They’re part of our history.”
“Those rocks really go back two million years, daddy?”
“Yeah. They do. So in a certain way, we go back two million years, too.” He looked at Alex. “Something to be said about looking back. It’s not all bad. I do quite a lot of that. Your ma is big on looking ahead.”
He turned into the driveway and parked next to Willy’s Chevy.
Acknowledgments
Learning to navigate the rocks, shoals and shallows that came with my desire to pursue the life of an artist has led me into a turbulent stream that has been both daunting and wondrous. The perspective has constantly shifted as I have moved from capturing the visual image to seeking words to define my vision. My perception of the people and landscapes along the way has been heightened by the demands of my many years as a working illustrator. Learning to really see has been a challenging and unending quest, and I think now of myself as a journalist whose task is to perceive what is true in my life and time. Now, at an advanced age, I find myself once again in flux, impatient with the “what is” and eager to explore the “what ifs” in my vision. I continue in the search for the reality beneath the journalism that has always intrigued me. If I am an elderly Don Quixote, then my journey has needed the strength and wisdom of many Sancho Panzas.
Without the compassionate guidance and encouragement of my journalist wife, Gloria Cole Sugarman, I would never have found the confidence to venture further in the unknown landscape of fiction. Her hand was always on my back as I was writing Nobody Said Amen.
The generosity and vast editorial experience of Sally Ateseros helped me in so many ways to navigate the entanglements of time and place that occur when one is creating a narrative. She was a teacher I cherish.
Sybil Steinberg, whose professional life has been devoted to educating the reading public about the innovative creators of today’s often challenging fiction, has helped me to seek out and find the paths forward which have made me a surer traveler.
Martha Aasen, whose own life has been shaped by a youth spent in a politically vigorous and enlightened family in Mississippi, and by her professional years in the international community of the United Nations, has lent insight and authenticity in seeking the truth about Mississippi culture and traditions.
Mary Selden Evans has been stalwart in shepherding my journey from art to literature. Her understanding of the delicate balance necessary to wed the two into one compelling voice resulted in the publication of two books of important reportage, We Had Sneakers, They Had Guns, and Drawing Conclusions, One Man’s Discovery of America. I will miss her enthusiasm and support.
Why I wrote NOBODY SAID AMEN
As an artist and journalist, I have borne intimate witness to two seminal events that have changed the political and moral landscape of our world.
The struggle of World War II was to triumph over the military might of the fascism that had taken all of democratic Europe hostage, and to overcome the Japanese after their attack on America and dominance of Asia.
A generation later, the emergence of a non-violent civil rights revolution in the United States was a challenge to the very premise of e pluribus unum, rupturing the course of millions of lives in the South as it tore asunder expectations and habits of civil and communal behavior that had held sway since the Civil War.
As a reportorial artist, I was a participant and keen observer during both struggles, seeking to be honestly critical and truthful in the imagery I created to tell the story I saw. After a number of years of living in and visiting Mississippi, I came to recognize that this state was a Petri dish that revealed much more than the DNA of a poor, post–Civil War rebel state. It was a dramatic caldron of American passions, contradictions, and aspirations—and a uniquely American story.
Later, as an artist for the movement, I drew and painted more than a hundred pictures of Freedom Summer in the Mississippi Delta, wrote two books about the blacks and whites who were involved, and co-authored, with my wife, Gloria, Look Away, Dixieland, a play about the changing roles of men and women as a consequence of the movement.
The urgency of the continuing revolution I first saw in 1964 remains a living presence in my life. The images of bravery and idealism, the human fallibilities, the defeats, the frustrations, the changing moral landscapes were all colorblind. As a result, Nobody Said Amen was born to tell that uniquely American story.
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