A Moment in the Sun

by John Sayles

  “Post office,” says Simon Green, nodding. “Wear that uniform. Or on the police like old Toomer.”

  “That’s right,” says Jubal, feeling better about it. “Give and take. That’s politics, right? Or maybe the white folks got something planned, take one of our schools away, and we got a black man up there he can stop them.”

  “So you get there?” asks Gus.

  “Got close. But there was a line of peckerwoods outside, showin off their hardware.”

  “Guns—”

  “Pistols, rifles, shotguns—”

  The bunch from the corner has drifted over, listening in.

  “You got to pick your ground,” says Jubal. “Like they taught my brother in the 25th. The ground aint right, you back off and fight another day.”

  “So you didn’t get in?”

  Jubal feels them watching him. “It made me think. If the vote don’t mean nothin—how come they so set on taking it away from us?”

  “How many was there?”

  It is Pharaoh Ballard, leaning his back against the counter so his coat falls open to show everybody the pistol in his belt.

  “Oh—nine, ten of em.”

  There had been six, but two had shotguns and they looked desperate to shoot somebody.

  “Don’t no white man deny me entrance, I wants to go in,” says Ballard.

  Gus laughs. “You can’t vote, Pharaoh. You a convicted assaulter.”

  “Maybe I just want to walk in the door, see how things is comin along—”

  “You gonna mess with a posse of rednecks, you only got that old—what is it—”

  “.45.”

  “Man got a Colt was old when they buried Custer and he wants to start a war.”

  “The point is how they get to strut about our section of town, wavin their iron? What happen if we march down Market Street all loaded up and ready to shoot?”

  “That would be a war.”

  “This is ours,” says Pharaoh, indicating the empty dance floor, but Jubal knows he means the whole of Brooklyn. “They want to block off the Fourth Street Bridge like they done today, keep us from crossin in, fine. But stay the fuck out of where we live, man. That aint nothin to ask. You may own the world,” says Pharaoh, pointing his finger toward the door, “but you don’t come in my house.”

  Gus and Simon applaud, and there is no mockery on their faces.

  “Can’t have a proper Election Day,” says Gus, “without a speech.”

  The numbers make no sense. Even the big number—two years ago the Republicans outpolled the Democrats by five thousand, and now he’s supposed to set into the morning edition that the Democrats took this one by six thousand. Of course there should be a sizeable swing, everything they’ve printed in the last year has been pushing folks that way, to come back to responsible, white government, but if the colored were discouraged from the ballot how can they be showing up in the Democrat boxes? Milsap climbs down from his stool and goes looking for Mr. Clawson. The editor had just handed him the slip of paper with the election returns though the polls aren’t due to close for another hour. The big number is confusing enough, but these ward returns—

  Mr. Clawson is in his office entertaining Mr. MacRae and the younger Taylor brother, pouring out liquor into the glasses he keeps in his bottom drawer. He raises his eyebrows at the interruption.

  “Do we have a problem, Drew?”

  “It’s these figures, Mr. Clawson,” says Milsap, holding up the slip of paper. “I think maybe somebody pulling your leg.”

  Clawson smiles and winks to his guests. “And what makes you think that?”

  “Every one of these precinct tallies is just way over—look here, the Third Ward, there’s not more than six hundred forty or fifty men registered to vote, but here just for the Democrats we got over eight hundred and—”

  “I trust my source.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Lots of new people been moving into the city,” says Mr. MacRae. “And this business with the colored editor got people motivated to come out and vote.”

  “But I know the registration numbers,” says Milsap, frustrated. “It just doesn’t add up.”

  “Got all those figures in your head?” asks Allen Taylor.

  “Yes, sir, I make sure and bone up before Election Day, keep an eye on our reporters. We are the paper of record here in Wilmington.”

  “Well I am impressed. City government could use a man with a head for figures and that kind of diligence.”

  “Thank you, sir,” says Milsap, and now he realizes what this is, that the numbers are—what—symbolic of the will of the people, not actual counts. He feels like an idiot. “But I’m a newspaper man.”

  “And an outstanding one,” adds Mr. Clawson. “Drew serves as my watchdog here—misspelling, grammatical infractions both grievous and minor, errors of punctuation. But facts,” and here the editor’s eyes lose their twinkle and his voice takes on an edge, “facts he leaves to the men in the field. Isn’t that right, Drew?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “The numbers may be a tad extreme, but these are extreme circumstances we are faced with, aren’t they Drew?”

  “Yes sir.”

  He indicates the paper in Milsap’s hand. “My source for these figures is unimpeachable.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  “I’m confident that you do. So you go ahead and set that front page. And this here—” he holds up another slip of paper, “goes in a box, bottom center. Bold.”

  Milsap steps in to take the paper from him. “I get right on it.”

  Milsap is not so far down the hallway to avoid hearing Mr. Clawson’s summation of the incident to his guests. “That is the most infuriatingly literal sumbitch,” says his employer, “that ever trod the earth.”

  The other men laugh and Milsap feels his ears grow hot. He glances at the paper. It is an announcement not written in the editor’s hand, perhaps the work of one of his visitors. At the top, in thick capitals, it says

  ATTENTION WHITE MEN!

  The Judge understands why they’ve chosen to do it in the courtroom, but it makes him uneasy. There was no legality in the summons, an admonition on the front page of the Messenger for “every good white citizen” to meet here this evening, and though every man in the throng is white, he knows for a fact that several are not good. Merchants, lawyers, doctors, ministers, men of property—a large proportion of those who make the city function. No trial he ever judged here at a decent hour attracted as many spectators, the jury box filled, and the gallery, and men standing shoulder to shoulder in the aisles and on the floor watching MacRae and Sol Fishblate and the few others who, thankfully, have chosen to stand in front of the bench rather than rule behind it.

  MacRae is holding some sort of document and Fishblate, who’s been mayor and clearly wants to be again, shouts for order.

  “We’re going to make history here today,” he says, and calls up Colonel Waddell to read a statement.

  There are cheers as the old man steps out of the crowd, looking pleased but puzzled. MacRae hands him the few typewritten pages and whispers something in his ear.

  “I am as uninformed as the rest of you as to the purpose of this meeting, or the content of this document,” he says, holding the pages at arm’s length and cocking his head as if trying to make sense of a foreign script, “but I shall endeavor to do it justice.”

  The Judge looks around the room. A handful of the men, all up by the bench, are clearly the impresarios here, standing with folded arms, confidently studying the faces of their public, while others seem either eager to be led or, like the Judge himself, annoyed to have been excluded from the decision-making.

  “The White Declaration of Independence,” the Colonel intones, and there is wild cheering.

  The election is not in question, the advantage gained will tip the scales and the city charter can be amended to negate the sway of pure numbers in local government. What they hope to gain with this display—<
br />
  “ Believing,” the Colonel sings out, “that the Constitution of the United States contemplated a government to be carried on by an enlightened people; Believing that its framers did not anticipate the enfranchisement of an ignorant population of African origin, and believing that those men of the State of North Carolina, who joining in forming the Union, did not contemplate for their descendants’ subjection to an inferior race—”

  This is all true, no doubt, but legally insignificant given the Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in their own state legislature. The Judge recognizes the argument, has written statements not dissimilar, but that was when he was young and they were justifying the Secession. If this is indeed a declaration of independence they had better be damned clear about who they plan to be independent of—

  “We the undersigned citizens of the City of Wilmington and County of New Hanover,” the Colonel continues, one hand holding the proclamation and the other held over his heart now like some touring Shakespearian, “do hereby declare that we will no longer be ruled, and will never again be ruled, by men of African origin.”

  Cheers and stomping. The Judge is stirred, what white man would not be, but the arbitrator in him hovers above the clamor, awaiting the specifics—

  “While we recognize the authority of the United States, and will yield to it if exerted—”

  The Judge smiles. The lawyer’s hand reveals itself. Iradelle Meares is standing up there between the Taylor brothers, and this bears evidence of his precision. They will recognize and yield to preclude any whiff of sedition, but only if exerted, to maintain the boldness of the assertion—

  “—we would not for a moment believe that it is the purpose of more than sixty million of our own race to subject us permanently to a fate to which no Anglo-Saxon has ever been forced to submit.”

  Playing to the jury here, and not the judge, appealing to what even the most hard-hearted white yankee must admit—

  “We hereby proclaim—”

  It is the same appeal the great Calhoun made to the Senate when he was at Death’s door, his last plea to settle the differences of North and South or part amicably. That the original intent had been perverted, the original balance irrevocably lost, and that it was only the North with its numbers and control who could save the day, unless “her love of power and aggrandizement is far greater than her love of the Union.” The sine qua non here is not Union but the deeper, more holy sense of what it means to be a white man and a Christian—

  “First—That the time has passed for the intelligent citizens of the community, owning ninety percent of the property and paying taxes in like proportion, to be ruled by negroes.”

  It is common sense, but common sense and statutory law are distant cousins. The Colonel continues down the list of resolutions to much noisy approbation, that whites who manipulate the black vote to dominate the public sphere will no longer be tolerated; that the negro is incapable of understanding where his best interests lie; that the practice of hiring blacks to fill the predominance of positions in the workplace has encouraged their present impertinence and must be curtailed; that the responsible white citizens of the city are prepared and determined to protect themselves and their loved ones—

  “We are prepared,” Waddell continues, with none of the vacillation of the unrehearsed, “to treat the negroes with justice and consideration in all matters that do not involve sacrifices of the interest of the intelligent and progressive portion of the community—”

  The flattery is brilliant, for who will not desire to be included among the intelligent and progressive? Who will argue that the interests of such exalted citizens should not be paramount? And then, without ever mentioning his name, the Colonel comes to the fate of Alexander Manly.

  “This vile publication, the Record, shall cease to be published and its editor banished from our environs within twenty-four hours.”

  Men are standing on chairs to applaud now, pounding the walls in a frenzy. Were this a trial he would clear the courtroom, but it is no legal proceeding but an exercise in posse comitatus that he hopes will preclude a lynching, or, if that act be done, indemnify the citizens in this room from responsibility.

  Sol Fishblate thanks the Colonel profusely and thanks the press, looking pointedly at Tom Clawson, for serving as secretaries for this historic gathering and for their vital efforts to inform and inflame the public preceding the election. Then the wily Jew recommends a few amendments to the Declaration, requiring the resignation of the mayor and the chief of police and the Board of Aldermen, and there is more celebration and the Judge feels the gear click into place, the machinery of it all too clear to him now. A coup has been planned, no waiting for the slow evolution of political reform, for the months of proposal and legislation to effect the needed changes—it is a coup d’etat, despite all the eloquent verbiage, and when his name is called to be on a Committee of twenty-five to enforce the provisions of the document he steps forward and agrees to join it.

  MacRae is on the Committee, no surprise there, and Allen Taylor, and Meares and Frank Steadman and a pair of ministers and Dr. Galloway and a quorum of the intelligent and the progressive, of good white men, and he is proud to be included but relieved that there is no swearing in, no palms pressed to Scripture to legitimize the moment. His emotions are just as divided as he lines up with over four hundred others to put their names on the Declaration.

  “This is how the Founders must have felt,” says John Bellamy, who will be their new congressman, “waiting to sign the parchment.”

  Perhaps. But to the Judge it feels more like the uneasy night in the Masonic Hall, when, surrounded by his fellows in the Craft, he knelt bare-kneed beneath the blue ceiling, cable tow wrapped three times around his body and swore, upon no less a penalty than having his body severed in twain and his bowels taken hence, never to violate the Obligation—an emotion both solemn and false.

  It takes the citizen behind him in the line, Junius Hargeaves, who butchers swine on Front Street, to cut to the bone of the matter.

  “If it stick the niggers back where they belong,” he twangs, “I’ll sign any damn thing.”

  Dr. Lunceford has never been in the Cape Fear Club before. The two white men in red shirts who came to get him with their pistols showing bring him in through the front door and lead him to a large meeting room. Inside are Hugh MacRae and two dozen white men neatly arranged on one side of a long table and a greater number of black citizens who have been summoned like himself crowded haphazardly on the other. His fellow alderman Elijah Green is here, and Dr. Alston and Henderson and Moore and Scott the attorneys and Tom Miller and his own son-in-law Dorsey and some other barbers and even Mr. Sadgwar, the old gentleman looking confused and upset to be awake at this hour.

  “That should be enough,” says Mr. MacRae on the other side of the table. “Let’s get this thing started.”

  The next surprise is that it is old Colonel Waddell who seems to be presiding over whatever this gathering is supposed to be.

  “I’m going to read you a statement,” he says, “and you’re going to listen.”

  Dr. Lunceford studies the faces of the white men as Waddell reads. A few meet his gaze with glares or stoic indifference, but none shows the slightest hint of the shame they should feel to be associated with the racialist tripe the old man is flatly reading. White Man’s Declaration of Independence indeed. It is a clever strategy, he admits, to adopt the language of patriotism and liberation to cloak their designs on absolute power, but it is also as vile and cowardly a course of action as he can imagine. He looks to his fellow “leaders,” whom MacRae has taken it upon himself to dub the Colored Citizens’ Committee. They have no doubt been escorted here at gunpoint as he was, and sit with a kind of stunned resignation as one preposterous resolution follows another. The election results have been tampered with beyond the credulity of even the most prejudiced observer, the Democrats apparently not content to merely threaten their competitors away from the ballot box, and thi
s farce of a proclamation seems a pointless reiteration of their contempt—

  “It is further resolved,” reads the old Secessionist, “to demand the immediate resignation of Mayor Silas Wright, Chief of Police John R. Melton, and the entire standing Board of Aldermen—”

  Elijah Green makes a small groan beside him. This isn’t a declaration of independence, it is a demand for submission.

  The Colonel finishes, lays the typewritten sheets of paper back on the table. “This is not a proposal,” he says. “There will be no discussion.”

  Nobody on his side of the table speaks, so the Doctor clears his throat. “In regards to Editor Manly,” he says softly, “he has acted entirely on his own. His newspaper has ceased publication, and, I have it on good authority, he has already absented himself from the city.”

  “We will require a written response as to your acceptance of these demands,” says Waddell without acknowledging him. “It shall be delivered to me personally at my residence by half past seven tomorrow morning. This meeting is adjourned.”

  With that the white men remain seated, staring at the colored committee they have invented, insulted, and now dismissed. Tom Miller is the first to comprehend, standing without a word and walking quickly for the door. Dr. Lunceford takes a final glance at the faces across the table and finds no hint of bluff or reservation, only the florid glow of righteousness.

  “I’d had my .44,” says Tom Miller when Dr. Lunceford catches up to him on Dock Street, “I’d have blown his cotton head off.”

  Dorsey has never actually sat in David Jacobs’s shop before. He’s looked through the window in passing, David or one of his boys snipping over the white men who come in, a three-chair tunnel of a room. It is packed to the walls now as most of the men from what they’re calling the Committee and some others who have caught wind of this new threat have all crowded in. Dr. Lunceford stands in front of the middle chair and tries to pull them together.