Devil's Night

by Ze'ev Chafets

  I had offered to bring some wine for dinner, but Ms. Buck told me she doesn’t drink wine. When I remarked that most Americans don’t, she was quick to correct me.

  “I am not an American,” she said, stiffly.

  “Then what are you?” I asked.

  “A colored person,” she replied, a note of challenge in her voice.

  “Let me ask you something. Did you ever think what it would be like to be white?”

  “No, I never thought about it and I never want to,” she said. “The idea horrifies me, if you want to know. White people will steal the taste right out of your mouth.”

  Ms. Buck went into her bedroom and emerged with a photograph of her maternal grandfather, who was white. “I never liked that man,” she said. “He scared me when I was a little girl.”

  “But you’ve got his picture. That must mean something.”

  “That’s right, I do. Well, the truth is that nobody else in the family would take it, so I did.”

  She was so obviously enjoying the chance to shock a visitor that I persisted. “You can’t tell me that you never wondered what it would be like to be white. You’re a writer—aren’t you at least curious about what white people’s lives are like, what they think about, talk about …”

  “I know what they talk about,” she said. “They talk about niggers.” She laughed and asked for my plate. “I fixed you some colored people’s spaghetti,” she said.

  “Okay, what’s colored people’s spaghetti?”

  “That is spaghetti that ain’t cooked right,” she said with a loud laugh, dishing a mound of it onto my plate.

  Bea Buck was born and raised in Detroit. As a young girl she worked as a switchboard operator at the Gotham Hotel, the city’s fanciest black establishment, where she became friendly with the entertainers, politicians and other celebrities who patronized the clubs and cabarets of nearby Paradise Valley. Despite poverty and segregation, Ms. Buck regards the late forties and early fifties as a golden era, a time when black Detroit had safe streets, glamorous nightlife and obedient children.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” she said. “We had plenty of problems back then, too. But we certainly didn’t have the opportunities that these children have today. The only thing they’ve been deprived of is a functioning brain. They’ve been raised without any values. There’s only one answer: Somebody needs to cut the little fuckers’ heads off with a sword.”

  Fred Williams, spokesman for the Detroit Police Department, was both appalled and diverted by Bea Buck’s sanguine solution to the city’s crime problem. She and Williams are old friends, and he is well acquainted with her hyperbolic style. When I asked him if the department was laying in a stock of swords, he shook his head and said fondly, “Bea Buck is crazy.”

  “She cooked me colored people’s spaghetti,” I told him. “You know, spaghetti that ain’t cooked right.”

  The conceit did not amuse Inspector Williams. “You come by my place and I’ll cook you a real dinner,” he said. “And bring Ms. Bea Buck with you. I’ll show you what colored people’s cooking is all about.”

  “Freddie Williams is crazy,” said Bea Buck fondly, as we rose to the twenty-first floor of the Jeffersonian, a luxury high rise on the Detroit River, on the way to dinner. “But I’ll admit one something—that man does know how to cook.”

  In Williams’s apartment, which might be more accurately described as a bachelor pad, hundreds of videotapes lined the walls and elaborate stereo equipment was stacked neatly next to an electric organ in the tasteful living room. Art books lay primly on the coffee table, in marked contrast to the sybaritic king-size bed in the bedroom. As Williams led me to the balcony to gaze at the lights of the city and his fishing boat bobbing below in the marina, the aroma of New Orleans gumbo wafted out of his small, immaculate kitchen.

  The gumbo was as good as it smelled. Williams is a perfectionist, and as we ate he discoursed on the intricacies of Cajun cooking, one of his many hobbies. He produced literature—cookbooks and guides to New Orleans restaurants—and explained every aspect of preparing the complicated dish.

  An ex-amateur boxer and high school football star, Fred Williams became a cop in the fifties. “In those days, the only time you saw a picture of a black man in a white newspaper, it had ‘wanted’ printed over it,” he said. “Black policemen were locked into three precincts. We couldn’t even patrol Woodward Avenue. That was in preliberation times. Hell, they used to have a black holdup squad with all white officers. People talk about the good old days? Well, what was so good about them?”

  During those years, before the Young administration, Fred Williams was known as a militant. He led protests against discrimination in the department, and was considered a troublemaker by many of the white officers. He went into his bedroom and emerged with several photos of a younger officer Williams, with a formidable Afro, dressed in a dashiki.

  Along with the photos, Williams brought out a police scanner. It crackled with reports from the street below. A man was cut in a knife fight on Chicago Boulevard. “We’ve got to rid ourselves of drugs and guns,” he said. “We’ve been waiting for a knight on a white horse ever since Martin Luther King died. These kids today, now that the civil rights bills are in, they think they have a free ticket. Young parents don’t realize that the fight isn’t over. Hell, we haven’t even begun. We’re going backwards. Blacks can’t sit around and wait for whites to do for us. The trouble with us is us.”

  “Freddie, did you ever think about what it would be like to be white?” Bea asked, a mischievous twinkle in her eye. Williams snorted. “I wouldn’t be white for nothin’,” he said. “I would have missed a lot of living. The heritage we have is so rich and so proud, we’ve done so much with so many handicaps.”

  “What I can’t stand is these siditty folks who move out of town, them little bourgeois-ass niggers,” said Bea Buck. “They go out there and just tear up. They don’t know anything about lawns, anyway. The only thing a black person wants to do with something green is put it in a pot and boil it with some ham hocks.” She laughed happily.

  “I go out to the suburbs for a drive, and police cars follow me,” said Williams. “Now, what in hell is suspicious about me? When I get into an elevator with a white woman, she looks at me like I’m going to mug her. Because that’s what she’s been conditioned to think about black men.

  “Basically this is a problem of image. We got a problem with the media. And it’s not just the way they make us look to other people; the media make you feel bad about Detroit, bad about yourself. They call it a hellhole. Is Detroit worse than other cities? Hell no. Are the Dallas Cowboys ‘America’s Team’? Same thing, it just PR.”

  The radio crackled again—a fatal shooting on the east side.

  Williams cast his gaze toward the glistening lights of the city below. “Things are building up out there,” he said in a low voice. “Could we have another riot like 1967? Shit, yeah. The police were the catalyst last time, but it would have happened anyway. The lack of jobs, the despair, the bullshit by the politicians—read the Kerner Report, you could adjust it to today. It’s building up, and if something isn’t done, it could happen again.”

  “I’ll tell you something,” he continued. “Detroit was the first city to get a lot of these problems, and it’s going to be the first city to find solutions to them. We’re going to solve these urban problems and blacks are going to do it. The real answer is moral—the family and especially the church. We need moral rearmament; this is basically a very moral city.”

  Ms. Buck, serious for once, nodded in agreement. “The church is a sleeping giant,” she said. “And it’s about time it woke its tired self up.”

  Williams rose from the table, dimmed the lights and sat down at his small electric organ. He is a self-taught musician who, with typical thoroughness, learned to read music as well as play by ear. He ran his fingers over the keyboard with a professional flourish and began to play “Tenderly.” Bea Buck closed her eyes and
sang along quietly. Twenty-one floors below the lights twinkled merrily while the police radio crackled, bringing news from another planet.

  Wherever I went that fall, people talked about the need for what Fred Williams called “moral rearmament,” a return to a perhaps mythical time of traditional values and accepted authority. And, not surprisingly, they tended to look for leadership to the city’s most powerful institution—the church.

  “In this city, people stay on their knees,” a woman told me, and it was true. In Detroit, Christianity—specifically black Protestant fundamentalism—approaches the status of state doctrine. It touches every aspect of public life—politics, government, art, culture, education—in a way unknown in other American cities. Public school choirs sing gospel songs and classrooms are decorated with pictures of prominent religious personalities. Political meetings begin with prayers and hymns. Clergymen write columns in the newspapers and serve as precinct captains for the Coleman Young machine. In 1988, four of the nine members of the Common Council were ordained ministers.

  One day I came across a copy of a form letter sent by a city department to thousands of citizens. It was signed “Yours in Christ.”

  “How can you send something like this?” I asked the official. “Haven’t you heard that there is separation of church and state in America?”

  “Maybe in America,” the official said with a grin. “But not here.”

  Nobody knows for sure just how many churches there are in Detroit (the usual estimate is upwards of 2,500, one for every 400 people); with the commercial exodus from the city, banks, grocery stores and theaters have been transformed into houses of worship, and there are some blocks with a church on every corner. In most of them, the majority of worshipers are women, often accompanied by small children or grandchildren, and elderly men. A generation ago, several ministers told me, there was a more even balance between the sexes. “Used to be, the women came to pray with their menfolk,” a deacon told me. “Today, they come to pray for them.”

  I attended a different church almost every Sunday for months, and I was usually the only white in attendance. My reception was always warm and welcoming. Ushers smiled and nodded when I arrived; members of the congregation supplied me with prayer books and stenciled church bulletins, and made it a point to shake my hand at the end of worship. Often I was acknowledged from the pulpit and asked to stand and introduce myself. Invariably, when I did so, I received a round of encouraging applause.

  Predictably, these congregations came in all sizes, shapes and shades of black. They ranged from the flinty respectability of the elite black churches, such as Hartford Memorial, to frenzied storefronts and cultist shrines. Taken together, they are an institution that might someday spearhead the moral rearmament that Fred Williams talked about.

  Despite their denominational diversity, the ministers in the city can be divided into two primary groups—those who emphasize works, and those who preach faith. Jim Holley, a short, powerfully built, light-skinned preacher from North Carolina, is a works man.

  Holley is the pastor of Little Rock Baptist Church, one of the largest and most prominent in Detroit. Its chapel seats around one thousand, and it is usually full on Sunday mornings, when Reverend Holley preaches. Thousands more listen to his sermons on the radio, see his billboards advertising Little Rock Baptist’s philosophy (“Don’t Worry, Be Happy”) as they drive along the freeways, or read about his various political campaigns and social programs in the newspapers. Since he came to town fifteen years ago, Jim Holley’s activism and outspoken eloquence have made him one of Detroit’s most visible clergymen.

  His credentials are impressive—a B.A. from Tennessee State University, M.A.s from Tennessee State and the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in education from Wayne State. Despite his degrees, however, Holley affects a down-home style and calls himself “a country preacher,” a title he appropriated from his friend and political mentor, the Reverend Jesse Jackson. Most of Little Rock’s 3,500 members are working class people, and a good many come from the South. Holley wants them to feel at home.

  Little Rock is an impressive mock gothic building on Woodward Avenue, next to Northern High School. On an August Sunday morning, sunshine filtered through the stained-glass windows of its high-ceilinged chapel, and the polished wood pews were crowded with worshipers dressed in accordance with the church’s informal summer dress code—jeans, sport shirts, jogging outfits and even work clothes.

  After some gospel music by an excellent choir, Reverend Holley, dressed in a sparkling white robe, rose from his seat on the pulpit, prayed briefly, and then began the service by reading his personal want ads from a stack of three-by-five note cards. “Channel Two is looking for a television technician and a secretary,” he said, and shuffled the cards. “A lady’s clothing store downtown is looking for a stock boy.” Shuffle. “The federal government is hiring air controllers. Say amen!” The congregation dutifully responded. “Now, you can get that job, church,” he said. “There are jobs out there, but it’s a job finding a job. So while you’re looking, touch up your skills. Out of eighty-five thousand pilots in this country, only two hundred are black. You can be a pilot. But you gotta get trained. Say amen. Now say amen again. If any of y’all are interested in applying for these jobs, you come and see me. I’m not letting anybody go out on any job interviews without getting past me first.” A laugh rose from the pews. When I asked him later what he had meant, he smiled and said, “Oh, it’s just a charisma line.”

  Satisfied, Holley moved on. “This winter we’ll be giving out ten thousand pair of shoes,” he said. The announcement was greeted with silence. “Now, that’s ten thousand pairs of shoes, church,” he reminded them. “Y’all ought to clap or faint or somethin’.” The congregation laughed and applauded.

  Riding the applause, Holley expounded his self-help vision for the black community. “We got to teach our children to read. Open up the school of Little Angels, teach our kids foreign languages, computers. We don’t want them dancing da butt all day long. There’s more to life than da butt. There’s more to life than drinking, selling drugs and getting buried. We’ve got to teach them to appreciate the Detroit Symphony Orchestra [applause], the ballet [louder applause], the ah, ah, opera.” The congregation cheered at the prospect of their children’s trading da butt for Debussy.

  In an effortless transition, Holley went from the secular to the sacred, preaching on the story of Hosea, which he transformed into a dialogue between the prophet and God, with himself playing both parts. When the Lord (Holley) tells Hosea (Holley) to marry a faithless woman, Hosea protests: “God, you’re tellin’ me to marry a prostitute!” (“And I know a lot of y’all can relate to that,”) he added, to loud laughter.

  The congregation grew silent again as Holley led to his dramatic conclusion. “God,” he screamed in anguish. “This woman has broken my heart. But she hasn’t broken my love.”

  “And that’s the way it is with us, here in Detroit,” he said quietly. “God says, ‘I took black people off the plantation and gave them houses and cities, mayors and leaders. And now they’re killing each other, hating each other. They broke my heart, but they haven’t broken my love.”

  There was a chorus of amens, and suddenly everyone joined hands. A young black man standing next to me took mine, fixed me with a sincere stare and said, ‘Brother, God loves you and so do I.” Surprised, I managed to murmur “Me too,” feeling foolish. He released my hand, the choir began to sing “The Old Ship of Zion” and the angels of Little Rock Baptist filed out into the street, where the sinners were just starting to wake up from another Motown Saturday night.

  Jim Holley is one of Detroit’s best preachers (the Free Press once ranked them, like college football teams), but his real interest is politics and community organization. He regards Martin Luther King as his “spiritual father,” and four years ago he headed the Jackson campaign in Michigan. He has obvious political ambitions himself, not an unreasonable thing in a city
with so many divines in public life, and he uses his church as a base.

  Like many fledgling politicos, Jim Holley is not averse to publicity, which is why he invited me to accompany him on his rounds one day. “We’re glad to have you with us this morning, Reverend,” he said when we met at his church. Although I was flattered by the honorific title, I didn’t want to mislead my host. “I’m not really a reverend,” I told him modestly. “In fact, I’m not even a Christian. I’m Jewish.”

  Holley took the news with good humor. “I’m a rabbi myself,” he said. “A black rabbi. A Jewish rabbi serves only Jews, right? Well, my calling is only to serve blacks. We need to help ourselves.”

  And yet, our first destination that morning was Temple Baptist Church, a wealthy white suburban congregation. Holley planned to ask its pastor for assistance in setting up several outreach programs. “They send missionaries to Africa, Reverend,” he said to me. “I want to get them to send a few to Detroit.”

  Despite his prominence and his Ph.D., Holley seemed ill at ease when we arrived. We parked near the church, walked past its gleaming white pillars and entered the building. No sooner were we inside than we were startled by the loud ringing of a school bell. “That’s the alarm for when niggers are in the church,” he told his driver, only half joking.

  The church secretary, a crisp, smiling woman, greeted us with polite confusion. According to her calendar, the meeting was scheduled for the following day. She ushered us into an audiovisual room while she went to call the pastor, who was taking the morning off. As we waited, Holley spread out his papers on the desk. “I’m sure that meeting was for today,” he said, “but maybe I misunderstood. I been in the battle for sixteen years and I still don’t understand white people. No offense, Reverend.”