The Grace of Silence

by Michele Norris

  Copyright © 2010 by Michele Norris

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Pantheon Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Birmingham Public Library for permission to reprint an August 6, 1942, letter from Eugene “Bull” Connor to Franklin Roosevelt (Birmingham, Alabama Law Department Legal Files, Birmingham, Alabama Public Library Archives). Reprinted by permission of the Birmingham Public Library.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Norris, Michele.

  The grace of silence / Michele Norris.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-37946-7

  1. Norris, Michele. 2. Norris, Michele—Family. 3. African American journalists—Biography. 4. African American women—Biography. 5. United States—Race relations.

  I. Title.

  PN4874.N64A3 2010 070.92—dc22 [B] 2010019285

  www.pantheonbooks.com

  v3.1

  For my parents, Belvin & Betty,

  You gave me wings

  It is a unique art and special skill, this business of being a Negro in America.

  —WILLIAM H. HASTIE

  Lawyer, Judge, Civil Rights Advocate,

  Civilian Aide to the Secretary of War

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Introduction

  1. Daddy

  2. Block Busters

  3. Aunt Jemimas

  4. The Garden

  5. Alabama

  6. A Secret

  7. The Docket

  8. Service

  9. The Shooting

  10. The War at Home

  11. A Date with Justice

  12. Home

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Notes

  About the Author

  INTRODUCTION

  I BEGAN THIS PROJECT in 2009 because I became convinced that an unprecedented, hidden, and robust conversation about race was taking place across the country in the wake of Barack Obama’s historic presidential campaign and his ascension to office. Americans seemed to be spending more time talking about race, but even so, I had the feeling that something was always left unsaid. Filters would automatically engage, preventing us from saying things that might cause us embarrassment or get us into trouble or, even worse, reveal us for who we really are. We weren’t so much talking about race as talking around it.

  In my work at National Public Radio, I tried to dig deep into race in America in a multipart NPR series of no-holds-barred conversations with a diverse group of voters in York, Pennsylvania. Over the course of three visits we spent more than fifteen hours with fifteen Americans: whites, blacks, Latinos, and South Asians. We were surprised by their enthusiasm for the project. We eased the conversation with good meals. (Amazing how carbohydrates can lubricate a conversation.) And we asked simple and direct questions. What are the occasions, if any, when you become aware of your race? Do white Americans underestimate discrimination? Do black people make too much of it? How would the country be different if led by a black man?

  There was candor, discomfort, and a certain amount of conflict among those gathered in the room. They rolled their eyes and crossed their arms and conveyed their unease in myriad ways. They did so many of the things that people do before unease turns to exasperation and the possibility of conversation vanishes. But they didn’t back down, even when things got dicey. All stayed and listened, even as each revealed fears, biases, hopes, and insecurities—all those things so often left unsaid when people try to talk about race. In the end, we were confident we had pushed past a barrier to frankness and had probed the consequence of silence on matters of race.

  What happened in York is by no means unique. It is happening right now in beauty parlors and truck stops, in college dormitories and courthouses, in office parks, at construction sites, and at dinner tables, where parents are often confronted by children with more tolerant views on race. The conversation is flowing through bodegas and along interstate highways and rural roads. It is filling computer screens and creeping into country clubs.

  Yet for the most part, it remains segregated. Blacks and other people of color often seem to talk about race more openly, while many whites appear to yearn for a postracial world where such discussions are unnecessary. People may be talking about race more, but they’re not necessarily talking to one another. My intention was to eavesdrop on their conversations and write a book that might enrich our collective dialogue on the thorny subject.

  Well, the truth can set you free, but it can also be profoundly disconcerting. I realized that pretty quickly when I began listening carefully to conversations in my own family. I had hoped that other people would speak candidly about race for my book, but I soon came to understand that my reporting had to begin with me. The discussion about race within my own family was not completely honest.

  My racial identity has largely been forged by the sum of experiences in my lifetime, and my most formative memories flow through my parents’ lives—from their struggles and tribulations, their triumphs and celebrations, their dignity found through a hard day’s work, the devotion of our worship, the places we lived, and, above all, the constant expectation captured by one word: rise. Rise and shine. Rise to the occasion. Rise above it all. No matter what, move forward, never backward, always onward and upward. And if you ever feel like you’re at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on until you can start climbing again.

  For all of our lives, we were told, “Keep your eye on the prize.” Stay strong. Keep committed. Focus on the fight for justice and equality. Set your sights on excellence and opportunity. Don’t let up. Don’t look back. Don’t slow down. Ignore the slights and the slurs—and the laws—that try to keep you from achieving your goals. Always keep the prize in mind. See it. Smell it. Feel it. Our parents armed us with what they thought we needed: strength, courage, and a touch of indignation. But just a touch.

  I was shaped by the advice and admonitions that rained down on me. I’ve always known that. What I did not know until I began this project is that I was also shaped by the weight of my parents’ silence. I originally wanted to write about how “other people” talked about race, but that presumption was swiftly disabused when I learned about secrets in my own family that had purposely been kept from me.

  Among those secrets was this: as a young man, my father had been shot by a white policeman. He never spoke about the incident after leaving Alabama and moving north. He never told even my mother. He took the story to his grave. But she, too, was hiding something. My mother never talked about the time her mother spent working as a traveling Aunt Jemima, swooping through small midwestern towns in a hoop skirt and head scarf to perform pancake-making demonstrations for farm women. The memory had caused her shame, so she’d locked it away. These revelations suggest to me that in certain ways I’ve never had a full understanding of my parents or of the formation of my own racial identity.

  How many of us know the whole truth about our families? For most of my adult life, I thought I did, but my confidence has been shaken. One of the unforeseen consequences of the rise of Barack Obama has been a grudging willingness to shed painful memories. The rise of a black man to the nation’s highest office has lowered the barrier for painful conversations among Americans of all colors, especially those who lived through the trials and tumult of forced segregation.

  Every household is different; in my childhood home, the window to that pain
ful past was never widely opened. Instead, stories were meted out judiciously, in morsels and tidbits. Occasionally, there would be a tale of a hardscrabble life or some unguarded talk. A visiting relative—fueled by that third glass of Pink Champale—would steer the conversation toward a place called melancholy and then a bit yonder, to the rough intersection where disappointment meets rage. But it would never last long. The story would always come to an abrupt end. My mother would shoot one of her “don’t go there” looks, and the discussion would snap back to the here and now. Even so, something in that relative’s face—a sudden gloss in the eyes, a catch in the throat—suggested a mind still wandering through some distant, aching memory.

  Our parents felt we needed to know only so much. No time for tears. No yearning for sympathy. You see, you can’t keep your eye on the prize if your sight is clouded by tears. How can you soar if you’re freighted down by the anger of your ancestors?

  1

  Daddy

  MY FATHER WAS ONE OF those people who are most comfortable at the fringes, away from the action center stage. He did not need or crave attention. Instead, he was driven by the need to reassure others that everything was going to be all right. Belvin Norris Jr. was a fixer. An eternal optimist to the core. You could see it in his smile. As a grown man he still grinned like a schoolboy, and you could not help but grin along with him. His vibe was contagious. Kindness is usually seen as altruistic. But it can also be an act of desperation, satisfying a deep-seated need to avoid the mind’s darker places. Benevolence, for some, is a survival tactic.

  Even in his last hours my father practiced benevolence, always looking out for everybody else. Moments after the doctor delivered devastating news about his health, my father, still smiling, pointed to an infected cut on my left hand. It was his way of prodding the emergency room physician to turn his attention to me. The victim opting to be the benefactor.

  Dad took ill in June 1988, while visiting his brother Simpson in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The minute he called me I knew something awful had happened. His voice was graveled, his words rubbery. He couldn’t put a sentence together, and the failed effort only added to his frustration. He had lost control of his speech, but he managed to hold on to his sunny disposition. Although his words were incomprehensible, I sensed a false cheer, with each attempt at speech ending on an elevated note—the kind of verbal leap parents of very young children use to mask irritation or fear.

  I was working as a newspaper reporter in Chicago at the time. Dad had stopped by to visit me on his way to Uncle Simpson’s house. We had spent a few days going to baseball games and trying to get my kitchen in order. He was relieved to see that I’d finally learned to enjoy spending time at the stove. I showed off for him with jambalaya and pineapple upside-down cake. It worked. He set small talk aside, went back for seconds, and still had room for a huge piece of cake. When he was finished he dabbed his mouth and said, “Maybe now you’ll find someone who will put up with you.”

  To another person, this might have sounded like a dig, but I knew what he meant. I could use my kitchen skills to cook at home and save money and to help “close the deal” when I found the right man. I was twenty-six and living on my own in Chicago. No husband. No roommate. Just me in a second-story duplex apartment with high ceilings, a large kitchen, and actual furniture. For years my father had visited me at various apartments where the most comfortable chair had been either a wooden crate or something recovered from the curb on trash day. He never let me forget an embarrassing episode when I was living in southern California. A neighbor stopped by my Manhattan Beach apartment to borrow a coffee filter one Saturday morning. She couldn’t stop staring at the wingback armchair in which my father sat reading the Los Angeles Times. “You know, Michele,” she said, “that looks like the chair I threw out for bulk trash pickup a few weeks ago.”

  My neighbor left with her borrowed coffee filter and a piece of my dignity. Lucky for me, my father had a sense of humor and a strong commitment to thrift. He always believed that the prettiest car on the road was the one that was paid in full, and in his book the most attractive chair in my cramped living room that day was the one that had arrived without a price tag. We had a good laugh, and when he left, he snuck an envelope into my jewelry box with “sofa fund” written on the outside.

  My father preached that he would always help me as long as I helped myself by working hard and spending smart. I was better at the former than the latter. When he visited me in Chicago in June 1988, he saw that I had earned high marks on both fronts. He appeared healthy during that visit. A week later, when I got the call from Indiana, it seemed I was talking to a man I didn’t know. As soon as I put the phone down, I started packing a bag. I had to get to Fort Wayne fast. By the time I arrived, Dad had already checked into the hospital. The doctors there didn’t know exactly what was wrong, but they knew that something was very wrong and that most likely it had to do with his brain or his central nervous system. The doctors spoke among themselves about anaplastic astrocytomas and radiation therapy. It was a code that could mean only one thing: cancer.

  Even in the most terrifying moments at a sterile hospital, there is some comfort in knowing that a world you recognize is just outside and beyond the parking garage. You can fixate on a familiar image as a doctor shaves years off your life with each sentence. He can talk all he wants about therapies and operations, but you’re thinking of the parking lot where you taught your daughter to drive, or the gas station that uses red reflective press-on letters to spell out a different Bible verse each week, like “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” While the doctor yammers on, you’re thinking of the grizzled gas station attendant who climbs the ladder to change the sign, and wondering what pearl of wisdom he might offer in light of the news you just got.

  In Fort Wayne, in a large hospital in an unfamiliar city, we were confronting an unknown illness that had swiftly robbed my father of his ability to carry out the most basic functions. We were looking at complicated surgery and, at best, a long and complex recovery, so the doctors suggested that we quickly move Dad back to Minnesota, where he could be treated closer to home.

  We wanted to get Dad on the first flight to the Twin Cities, but his gait was unsteady and he seemed increasingly disoriented. He clutched my arm as we walked through the airport; he kept shooting me tight little smiles: reassurance. I wasn’t buying it. By now his speech was so slurred that only I could understand him, and so labored that he wasn’t able even to whisper. It took him so much effort and focus to spit out a sound that it was slightly explosive when it arrived, like a sputtering engine in a hushed area.

  At the airport we sat across from two stout middle-aged blond women with wet-set curls and matching pink satin jackets. They must have been on their way to a convention or a sorority gathering; they were electric with excitement and frosted up like high-calorie confections, constantly rifling through their pocketbooks for mirrored compacts, then checking their makeup or blotting their lipstick. I remember them so well because they were sitting next to a large Amish or Mennonite family.

  The men had long beards and wore suspenders. The women had long braids and long dresses, and their heads were covered by little white hats that looked like fancy French fry baskets. They seemed uncomfortable with the constant chatter of the satin dolls. They, too, noticed the women’s prying eyes and “get a load of this” gestures, though the taciturn demeanor of the Amish rendered them perhaps slightly less interesting specimens than Dad and me.

  When my dad tried to lean toward me to ask a question, his words sputtered forth like bricks tumbling from a shelf. The satin dolls found it hard to mind their own business. They stared and pointed every time Dad attempted to speak. They didn’t try to hide their disparagement, one of them harrumphing loud enough for anyone to hear, “Goodness sakes, it’s not even noon yet!”

  After spending a lifetime trying to be a model minority—one of the few black men in his neighborhood, at his workplace, or
on his daughters’ school committees—my father now sat facing the condemnation of the two blond scolds. They had apparently concluded that he was an early morning lush instead of a gray-haired man fighting a losing battle with a devastating disease.

  Here is the conundrum of racism. You know it’s there, but you can’t prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, how it colors a particular situation. Those pink satin ladies were strangers to me, so I have no idea if they would have been as quick to judge a gray-haired white man with impaired speech. However, I do know this: the fact that they were white women added mightily to my father’s humiliation. I knew my father felt the sting of their judgment. I knew it because he kept pushing up his cardigan sleeve and futzing with his wrist, as if he’d left home without his Timex. But it was not the wrist on which he wore his windup watch. It was the wrist where the plastic bracelet had been affixed at the hospital. His awkward gestures were a silent plea to the satin dolls to notice the hospital bracelet. My heart breaks every time I think of the look on his face that day.

  The jut of his chin showed indignation, but the sag of his shoulders and the crease in his brow conveyed something different. Something hovering between anger and shame. There was also, however, a hint of grace. I see that now that I have come to understand my father better, as a man who was always in tight control of his emotions. I believe now that he was trying not just to salvage his dignity but also to absolve the two women from dishonor. A less controlled, more impulsive man might have responded by giving those women the finger to shut them up. My father drew strength from reaching past anger.

  The aphorism “Kill them with kindness” might have been penned with a man like Belvin Norris Jr. in mind. By fiddling with his wrist he was saying, “If only they knew,” rather than “Shame on you.”

  Dad boarded the plane early because the flight crew knew he would need extra time to settle into his seat and because they wanted to check his medical release from the hospital. He was flying alone that morning. I planned to drive his Oldsmobile back to Minneapolis and meet him there the next morning, a decision I have spent a lifetime regretting. Before walking down the jetway, he motioned for the nurse and the flight crew to wait a second. He leaned toward me as if he wanted to tell me something, but he couldn’t get words out. He kept looking over his shoulder, aware of the flight crew watching and waiting, and perhaps wondering whether the satin dolls were also taking it all in. He kissed me on the cheek, a loving but clumsy gesture. His balance was off, so it was almost as if we were bumping heads. I didn’t mind, and I certainly didn’t care who was watching as we locked in a long embrace. My eyes were closed, fighting back tears, so I barely noticed when the flight attendant crept into our circle of grief to gently remind us that they had to stay on schedule. The attendant lightly cupped my father’s elbow and led him away. It is disturbing to see your parent treated like a schoolchild, yet amusing to watch a man grin like a lucky teenager when a pretty woman takes his arm.