by Pat Conroy
But this lay in the distant future, and my brain teemed with ideas for the present. I wanted the final year to be a great carnival to the children filled with the magic and beauty of their own island. The year before I had concentrated too much on opening a window to the outside world and had failed to illuminate and sanctify the island around them.
So in the first weeks of school we began a zoo in the classroom, scoured the forest for various types of flora and fauna, planted a garden that would eventually be a cooperative, and took a deliriously happy walk through the woods to the beach, where we gathered sea animals washed ashore and swam fully clothed in the afternoon surf. We made plans to raise pigs and chickens in an ambitious extension of our fledgling cooperative. We would draw, paint, laugh, and read like hell. The first few weeks of school passed joyously, as in a dream.
Mrs. Brown seemed more subdued. She was quieter, more brooding and reflective than she had been the year before. She seemed to have conditioned herself to a laissez-faire policy concerning me and my ill-disciplined class. And in the second week she disappeared without a trace or a single word of farewell. She was in class on a Friday morning, then, without a word, she got in her car and left school. She did not return to the island for ten days. She did not offer an explanation for this absence, nor did I demand one. Her absence had provoked the most stimulating week of teaching I had ever enjoyed.
And the kids were responding well to the presence of Jim and Vivian Strand. Jim and Vivian were VISTA volunteers who had been assigned to Yamacraw Island. They were both from Detroit, Michigan, and both of them got along with kids exceptionally well. Jim was a skilled guitarist who had once earned plaudits singing in the smoke-filled environs of coffee houses at the University of Michigan. I envisioned him being an afternoon troubadour in the school, telling the history of America and the black experience through songs, ballads, and spirituals. I could also see him putting the multiplication tables to music and giving guitar lessons to interested students.
Vivian was a sprightly, attractive Italian girl who had majored in special education at Michigan This made her about ten times more qualified to teach the Yamacraw students than I was. She bubbled with ideas to help the twins read and Jasper add. In fact, their coming to the island instilled a hope that many of the children’s problems could be solved by a saturation of fresh ideas and faces.
I had also made plans for three long trips. The first would begin in the middle of October. Dale Hryharrow, a childhood friend, was attending Emory University in Atlanta. She had solicited room and board for the kids for a week from Emory professors. She had planned to enlist a noted instructor in survival swimming to teach the kids this pragmatic art in the early part of the morning. We had talked about the trip all summer and Dale had already made the preliminary arrangements by the middle of September.
In the spring Bernie and I had planned to take the kids to Boston. Bernie had left Beaufort and the principality in Port Royal in order to obtain an advanced and blue-blooded degree from the holy of holies, Harvard University. He phoned several times during his first week in Cambridge to tell me he thought we could get a federal grant for a trip to Boston. He even thought we could combine it with a visit to New York, if I could convince the authorities to go along with the plans.
The last trip was by far the most ambitious. When school was out I wanted to load a couple of Volkswagen buses full of Yamacraw kids and head for California. The California boys promised to meet the caravan when we arrived on the West Coast and take charge of showing the kids their state: camping trips in the Sierras, visits to Disneyland, classes at Santa Cruz, wine vineyards, Hollywood, and Death Valley. I did not know how I would finance this expedition, but I did know that I could and would finance it. If I could carry the kids 600 miles, then I could carry them 3000. It was all a matter of geography, good automobiles, and greenback dollars. Nothing more. And Cowell College people had promised to help with the money.
My first major problem of the year was to find money to finance the trip to Atlanta. The school board would not pay for it, nor would Dr. Piedmont be inclined to siphon funds from another project for the trip. Indeed, it started to look as though the Conroy bank account would be a bit pale and wan when November rolled around. Then Bill Dufford called.
Bill was my high-school principal, a handsome, athletic man who was an extremely capable administrator and one of the finest men I had ever met. I probably chose teaching as a career because of him. To him education was as holy a profession as the priesthood. It was one of his greatest gifts that he could convey his sense of mission about education to the kids who came under his jurisdiction. A whole tribe of us went into teaching because of his influence. Some, like Bernie Schein, even became principals.
Yet Bill was required to undergo the same transitions we faced during the 1960s. He had once made the statement that he would never be principal at a school that had a nigger in it. When he was a segregationist, he was a rabid defender of white supremacy and all it stood for. He had been my principal during the years of total segregation, those mindlessly happy years of my dead youth when Beaufort High School was a beleaguered Camelot, still white but troubled by rumblings from the Supreme Court. Those were joyous years, though. Bill walked the halls laughing, speaking to every kid he saw, and creating a sense of community and belonging that I had never known before. Two years later, Roland Washington, a slender black, walked into Beaufort High School in an act of singular bravery. He probably did not hear the walls of Jericho crumble behind him.
Bill left the year after Roland integrated the high school. He went to the University of Florida to pursue his doctorate. I wrote him frequently while he was there and visited him several times during the summer months. Though forty years old, Bill Dufford was undergoing a miraculous change. The change was similar to what was happening to tens of thousands of other people around the South, but with Bill the change was not enough. It became a religion and the religion had ultimately to lead to action. He eventually became the principal of a high school in Sumter, South Carolina. In a single year he transformed a plodding school rife with racial tension to the finest school in the state. His sideburns were a little long, though, and he was known to be openly sympathetic to the problems of the black students. The board of education pressured him constantly and decided it would be best if he pursued his career elsewhere. Bill accepted this setback as a wound in a holy war.
He then took a job with the Desegregation Center of South Carolina. This rather controversial group was composed of South Carolinians dedicated to easing the strain of total integration in the state. They would go to a school district, talk to the teachers reluctant to accept change, talk to students, and initiate programs to aid the district in the transition to the unitary school system. It was in his capacity as assistant director of the Desegregation Center that he called and offered me a job at Ridgeland, South Carolina, as a consultant. The job paid sixty-five dollars a day, lasted five days, and would provide enough money to get my kids to Atlanta. I jumped at the chance.
I could not tell Dr. Piedmont about the job, since he associated the Desegregation Center with the bubonic plague. He had made his feelings known during the preschool teacher conferences, when he blasted the center as a bunch of “outside agitators.” I planned to teach until noon, make an excuse to Mrs. Brown, turn my class over to Vivian, and get to Ridgeland by three o’clock. Mrs. Brown would become apoplectic if she discovered what I was doing, but I was determined to follow this schedule. If I could not follow it, I planned to take five days of personal leave to earn the money. In Beaufort County teachers are entitled to ten days of leave a year.
But before I could initiate this plan of action, Vivian went to see Dr. Piedmont and Mr. Bennington to talk about her own plans for the school on the island. When she got back to my house, she told me that Piedmont and Bennington did not hide the fact that they despised me and were out to get me. She was afraid that I would be fired if I left school at noon to go to Ridgeland. She
was worried that the administrators would find out.
This was a serious blow to my plans. I did not wish to fight Piedmont again. Nor did I wish to give him an excuse to drive his foot up my behind. So I decided to take the second plan of action. I drove Vivian and Jim to the dock where I had put the boat in Bluffton. I gave Vivian lesson plans for the week, told Jim how to run the boat, and told Vivian to tell Mrs. Brown that I was taking personal leave. I would be back the following Monday. “Tell the kids we are going to Atlanta,” I shouted to them, as they pulled away from the dock.
The week proved fascinating. The Desegregation Center was the first I had ever seen of a coalition of blacks and whites operating together for the same purpose. The group was southern, well educated, and articulate. The town of Ridgeland had considerable trouble acclimating itself to total integration. A few boycotts of white students soon led to a boycott of black students. Parents of both races were screaming that the school system could not survive unless desperate measures were initiated. Thus, the invitation to the Desegregation Center.
The week was full of meetings, sensitivity groups, films, and conversation. Many of the white teachers parted with the old ways reluctantly, but there was a certain magnificence in seeing white-haired old ladies sincerely attempt to understand the coming of the new age. Black teachers told the whites of the old days, when a glance at a white girl meant the flow of blood. The week was a poignant ceremony of opposing forces trying to find common ground for the good of the community’s youth. In all it was an emotional week, not a miraculous one but one in which I was glad to have been a part. And including expenses and travel, I had earned over $400 for the trip to Atlanta.
That Sunday night I recounted several scenes of the week in Ridgeland to Barbara. I had just finished taking a bath with Jessica and Melissa, when the phone rang.
A familiar voice on the other end of the phone said, “Hello, Pat, this is Doctor Piedmont. Where have you been this week?”
“Working for the Desegregation Center of South Carolina,” I answered.
“Well, I don’t want you goin’ back to the island. You hear me? I don’t want you to go back there.”
Then the receiver clicked on the other end of the phone. My first reaction was to reflect momentarily on Piedmont’s tone of voice. I had never heard such raw, physical hatred emanate from a human voice before. His tone was malignant. It shocked me that I could inspire such hatred from another human being. Only a little later did I realize that I had been fired.
Then it was war. My days of walking the streets as the golden-haired jock returned to the community to teach were officially over with that phone call. Piedmont was not just making idle threats on a Sunday night; he meant to destroy my teaching career and drive me out of town. The day after the phone call I received a letter from Piedmont. In the letter he specified the reasons I had been fired: disobeying instructions, insubordination, conduct unbecoming a professional educator, and gross neglect of duty. Along with the letter was a severance check, which would be my final remuneration from Beaufort County. The cold precision and organization of the death blow were extremely impressive. On the following night, the board met and enthusiastically concurred with Piedmont’s decision. In a span of forty-eight hours, I had been exorcised from Yamacraw Island.
I do not react well to crisis. My first thought was to race over to Piedmont’s house, knock at his door, and put a fist against his jaw. I never function with dignity when a crisis confronts me, but rather with a terrible emotionalism that is childish and soon regretted. But after my initial volcanic sputtering and railing against the demons who plotted my downfall, I took stock of the weapons I had at my command.
I had been in Beaufort longer than Piedmont, seven years longer, and I considered that a great psychological advantage. Friends that I had gone to school with now ran gas stations, fixed air conditioners, sold dresses, and cut hair around the county. I could turn to them, ask them for their help, and be assured that their bitching would be loud enough to reach the sensitive ears of the board members. I could turn to old students and ask for their help. I could go to local politicians. And finally, I could go to the newspapers. Before I could be officially fired, I had a chance to appeal before the board. It took no towering intelligence to conclude that this appeal would be crucial to my career as a teacher. I wanted public opinion to be stirred up, whether for me or against me.
There was an excellent chance that it would be against. In this eleventh hour, there was but one fact that stacked the deck against me, and I knew it well. In the previous spring Barbara had received a letter from Mary’s mother. The letter was barely literate, but its message was clearly elaborated and needed no translation. She asked if Mary could live with Barbara and me the next year when she had to leave the island for high school. Mrs. Toomer said that Mary loved our home, felt comfortable there, and wanted to live with us. Evidently Mrs. Toomer had managed to live in twentieth-century America and retain a startling innocence about the relationship between blacks and whites. Or perhaps she thought that since Barbara had frequently invited the children over for weekends, that it was only a natural extension of these visits for Mary to stay the entire year. Whatever her thoughts, she put the dilemma into Barbara’s hands.
We discussed the request in depth. Both of us feared the reaction of the neighbors. We were sure The Point would not exactly embrace the idea of an integrated household. Yet we both felt that Mary had a fighting chance to make it in the world if she received the proper encouragement. The pregnancy rate was quite high among girls leaving the island and the supervision of their parents. So Barbara wrote back to Mrs. Toomer and said we would be delighted to welcome Mary into our home and family the following year.
Of course we immediately received letters from the mothers of Frank and Top Cat asking if their sons could live with us the next year too. When the smoke had finally cleared away and the school term began, we had three black ninth graders living in our spacious white home on the historic Point. I had a theory that if you did something quietly and without fanfare, you could get away with it, but the presence of three black kids irritated some people with far more power and influence than I wielded. Some ugly talk circulated behind our backs and some felt this ugly talk encouraged Piedmont to place my head on the chopping block. Indeed I had trouble choosing my most heinous crime. I had embarrassed Piedmont in front of his board, and I had brought niggers into my home. It looked as though the Old South was still alive and well, a little more subtle, without the sheets and night riders, but a force that still tolerated little deviation from the norm.
On Tuesday I went to see one of the local politicians to enlist his help. I recited the entire story to him from the beginning, let him know I had voted for him in the last election, and finally, received a valuable lesson in survival from him. I learned that politicians are not supposed to help people. They simply listen to people, nod their heads painfully, commiserate at proper intervals, promise to do all they can, and then do nothing. It was very instructive. I could probably have enlisted more action from a bleached jellyfish washed ashore in a seasonal storm.
The great powers of Beaufort would not help me. So, in desperation, I turned over my only trump card. I went to the people of Yamacraw. I called a meeting at the community house on Wednesday afternoon. I sent word that I wanted to talk to all of the people about my dismissal. Richie Matta, my singing friend, offered his boat and we went to the island for the meeting. Edna Graves met us at the dock in her ox cart, looking far younger than her seventy years. Her eyes were afire when she saw us. As I walked up the dock, she shouted, “We gonna strike the school. We gonna strike the school.”
It was an odd meeting that day. The Yamacraw people were not a political people. They tended to be passive during crises and concurred with the unwritten law that the bad times would pass after a while. Throughout their history, they had found it easier and safe to ride the waves no matter how savage or dangerous it became to do so. The wh
ite man made the decisions and enforced the rules; the black man paid lip service to these rules then lived according to his own tradition. The purpose of the meeting was to let the islanders know what exactly happened and why it happened. I wanted them to know that white men sometimes played dirty with white men, too.
About fifty people had assembled in the community house. All my students were there looking puzzled and disquieted by the recent chain of events. I began talking rapidly and angrily. It was not a speech I gave that day, but a harangue. Conrack discovered that afternoon, much to his dismay, that he had a bit of demagogue in him. I told them exactly what I thought about the administration, the island school, and the education their children were receiving. In the middle of my delivery, one lady shouted, “Let’s get a petition.”
“Petitions were fine this summer, but they ain’t worth a damn now,” I answered. “The time for petitions is over.”
Then Edna the Beautiful said majestically, “Only one thing to do. We gonna strike the school. Ain’t no chillun gonna go to that schoolhouse door.”
Then all the mothers were shouting, “We gonna strike the school. Strike it startin’ tomorrow.”
I issued a warning about the danger of a boycott. “If you strike the school, you are going to have men coming out here threatening to put you in jail. Bennington’s gonna come to your doors with a earful of white men and say you’ve gotta get your kids back in school. The sheriff will come out here and say it’s against the law. It is gonna take more guts to strike the school than anything you’ve ever done.”
“Man, that ol’ empty school bus gonna look so sweet ridin’ by my house with no chillun in it,” said Cindy Lou’s grandmother.
“Anybody send their chillun to school, they git beat up bad by the other parents,” Edna said.
“Beat ’em with sticks,” cried another voice.
I turned to my students right before they left the room. Richard and Saul were crying. The other kids still looked puzzled.