Black Like Me

by John Howard Griffin

  At six thirty we went into the chapel for the last prayers of the day. I knelt in the chapel balcony, looking down on ninety white-robed monks. When Compline was finished, they turned out most of the lights and chanted the solemn Salve Regina so beautifully, so tenderly, we felt the crusts of our lives fall away and we rested in the deep hush of eternity. When the last echoes died to silence the monks filed out. Another day had ended for them. They went to bed at seven and would get up to begin a new day in the morning at two. The same thing has happened in Trappist monasteries throughout the centuries. I felt the timelessness of it and I remained a long time alone in the darkened chapel - not praying, simply resting in the warmth where all senses are ordered into harmony, where hatred cannot penetrate. After my weeks of travel, when I had seen constantly the rawness of man’s contempt for man, the mere act of resting in this atmosphere was healing.

  I went down the hall to take a shower and wash my clothes in the sink. As I returned to my cell, I found a monk, the guest-master, who had come to see if I needed anything. We talked for a time and I explained my research project to him.

  “Do Negroes often come here as guests, to spend a few days, Father?” I asked.

  “Oh yes,” he said. “Though I don’t suppose many really know about this place.”

  “This is the Deep South,” I said. “When you have Negro guests, do you have any trouble with your white guests?”

  “No … no … the type of white man who would come to the Trappists - well, he comes here to be in an atmosphere of dedication to God. Such a man would hardly keep one eye on God and the other on the color of his neighbor’s skin.”

  We discussed the religiosity of the racists. I told him how often I had heard them invoke God, and then some passage from the Bible, and urge all who might be faltering in their racial prejudice to “Pray, brother, with all your heart before you decide to let them niggers into our schools and cafés.”

  The monk laughed. “Didn’t Shakespeare say something about ‘every fool in error can find a passage of Scripture to back him up’? He knew his religious bigots.”

  I showed the priest the booklet on racial justice, For Men of Good Will, written by the New Orleans priest Robert Guste, in which most of the questions and clichés about the Negro are discounted, particularly that God made the Negro dark as a curse. Father Guste says, “No modern biblical scholar would subscribe to any such theory.”

  The monk nodded. I insisted on the point. “Is there anyplace in the Bible that justifies it - even by a stretch of the imagination, Father?”

  “Biblical scholars don’t stretch their imaginations - at least reputable ones don’t,” he said. “Will you wait a moment? I have something you must read.”

  He returned almost immediately with the book Scholasticism and Politics, by Jacques Maritain.

  “Maritain has some profound things to say about the religion of racists,” he said, leafing the book. “You might review this page.” He placed a cardboard marker at the page and handed the book to me.

  The monk bowed and left. I listened to the rustle of his thick robes as he walked down the hall in the tremendous silence. I then had a visit from a young college instructor of English - a born Southerner of great breadth of understanding. He told me that his more liberated views of the Negro were in such contradiction to those of his elders, his parents and uncles, that he no longer went home to visit them. We talked until midnight. He invited me to go with him to visit Flannery O’Connor the next day, but I told him that since I had only a few hours, I felt I must spend them in the monastery.

  He left. The cell was cold. The Georgia countryside slept outside. Since I would not be getting up at two to begin the day, I decided not to sleep. I felt the steam radiator on my hand. It was without a hint of warmth. The Maritain lay on the cot. I got into bed and opened the page the monk had marked.

  Speaking of the religiosity of racists, Maritain observes:

  God is invoked … and He is invoked against the God of the spirit, of intelligence and love - excluding and hating this God. What an extraordinary spiritual phenomenon this is: people believe in God and yet do not know God. The idea of God is affirmed and at the same time disfigured and perverted.

  He goes on to say that this kind of religion, which declines wisdom, even though it may call itself Christian, is in reality as anti-Christian as atheism.

  I was startled that the French philosopher could so perfectly characterize the racists of our Southern states. Then I realized that he was describing racists everywhere and from all times - that this is the religious trait of men who twist their minds to consider racial prejudice as a virtue - whether it be a White Citizens Council or Klan member, a Nazi gauleiter, a South African white supremacist or merely someone’s aunt who says, “Nobody’s worse than those Italians (or Spaniards, or Englishmen, or Danes, etc.).”

  I slept and woke up shouting from the old familiar nightmare of men and women closing in on me, shuffling toward me. I lay there fully dressed under the cell’s bare globe, trembling. I felt myself flush with embarrassment at having disturbed the Trappist silence. Surely monks sleeping in other cells, their bodies exhausted from work in the fields and hours of prayers, heard me and lay awake wondering.

  December 4 Atlanta

  This morning the young professor drove me back to Atlanta. Along the roadside, oaks were spectacularly red against the green of pines. In town I registered at the Georgia Hotel, a luxury hotel, where I was treated with the utmost suspicion and discourtesy. Did the staff have doubts about my “racial purity”? Though I had bags and was well enough dressed, they made me pay in advance and I could not make a phone call without their insisting I come down immediately to the desk and pay the dime. I had never encountered such obtuseness in a first-class hotel, and I told them so, but this only increased their inhospitality. I decided not to stay.

  The Black Star photographer, Don Rutledge, arrived in his little Renault from Rockvale, Tennessee, around noon. We were to do a story together on Atlanta’s Negro business and civic leaders, and perhaps some others. I liked him immediately. He is a tall, somewhat skinny young fellow, married and has a child - a gentleman in every way.

  December 7

  Three days of hard work, from morning until late at night. My interview notebooks were filled up, but at night I was too tired to write in my journal and went immediately to bed. We had had the most splendid help and cooperation from such Negro leaders as attorney A.T. Walden, businessman T.M. Alexander, the Reverend Samuel Williams, and the immensely impressive Dr. Benjamin Mays, president of Morehouse … also many others.

  I had arrived in Atlanta feeling that the situation for the Negro in the South was utterly hopeless - due to the racists’ powerful hold on the purse strings of whites and Negroes alike; and due to the lack of unanimity among the Negroes.

  But Atlanta changed my mind. Atlanta has gone far in proving that “the Problem” can be solved and in showing us the way to do it. Though segregation and discrimination still prevail and still work a hardship, great strides have been made - strides that must give hope to every observer of the South.

  At least three factors are responsible:

  First and most important, the Negroes have united in a common goal and purpose; and Atlanta has more men of leadership quality than any other city in the South - men of high education, long vision and great dynamism.

  Second, as one of the leaders, Mr. T.M. Alexander, explained to me, though the State of Georgia has never had an administration sympathetic to the Negro cause, the city of Atlanta has long been favored with an enlightened administration, under the leadership of Mayor William B. Hartsfield.

  Third, the city has been blessed by a newspaper, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, that is not afraid to make a stand for right and justice. Its most noted columnist (and now publisher), Ralph McGill, Pulitzer Prize winner, is significantly referred to as “Rastus” by the White Citizens Councils.

  In the South, where most newspapers
, even the great metropolitan dailies, have shown themselves shortsighted and uncourageous, or - worse - have propagandized as though they were organs of the Councils and Klans, the importance of those newspapers that live up to their journalistic responsibilities cannot be sufficiently emphasized. A handful of the latter, headed by such men as Mark Ethridge, Hodding Carter, Easton King, Harry Golden, P.D. East and Ralph McGill, plus a few others, have stood up for the freedoms of all men.

  McGill and his colleagues gamble their fortunes and their reputations on the proposition that it is journalism’s sacred trust to find and publish the truth and that the majority, if properly informed, will act for the good of the community and the country. The great danger in the South comes precisely from the fact that the public is not informed. Newspapers shirk notoriously their editorial responsibilities and print what they think their readers want. They lean with the prevailing winds and employ every fallacy of logic in order to editorialize harmoniously with popular prejudices. They also keep a close eye on possible economic reprisals from the Councils and the Klans, plus other superpatriotic groups who bring pressure to bear on the newspapers’ advertisers. In addition, most adhere to the long-standing conspiracy of silence about anything remotely favorable to the Negro. His achievements are carefully excluded or, when they demand attention, are handled with the greatest care to avoid the impression that anything good the individual Negro does is typical of his race.

  We spent our time, significantly, between the three-block section on Auburn Street where Negro financing and industry controls some eighty million dollars, and the section of the six Negro colleges. A close parallel exists between the two, for most of the business leaders are connected with the schools of higher learning, either as teachers or directors. In addition, all of these men are religious leaders in the community. As Alexander stated: “If we know anything, it is that if virtues do not equal powers, the powers will be misused.”

  About twenty-five years ago two men came to Atlanta to teach in the university system. Both were economists. They found Atlanta a thriving intellectual center for the Negro. In the slave years any attempt at literacy among Negroes was severely punished. In some communities a Negro’s right hand was mutilated if he learned to read and write. The Negro therefore prized education as the only doorway into the world of knowledge and dignity to which he aspired. The climate was right to begin a program that would lead them to economic respectability. L.D. Milton and J.B. Blayton, the two economists, recognized that so long as the Negro had to depend on white banks to finance his projects for improvement and growth, he was at the mercy of the white man. They recognized that economic emancipation was the key to the racial solution. So long as the race had to depend on a basically hostile source of financing, it would not advance, since the source would simply refuse loans for any project that did not meet with its approval.

  These two men said in essence: “Let everyone in the community pool what little resources he has with others.” By uniting the small power of small sums, by skillfully manipulating it, they could achieve a consolidated financial power. This action resulted in the founding of two banks in Atlanta. Recently, I discovered, an instance arose where the Negro leaders used their economic leverage in a typical manner. It became necessary for the Negro community to expand its physical limits. An area of white residences served as a bottleneck. The housing committee met and Negroes and whites alike agreed to have Negroes purchase this block of homes. The white lending agencies, however, refused to make the loans. As usual the Negro leaders called a meeting to discuss what might be done. They agreed to set aside a large sum of money from which applicants could make loans to buy these houses. After such loans were made, the white lending agencies called and said: “Don’t take all that business away from us. How about letting us handle a few of those loans?” Business that had been refused a few days previously was now welcomed.

  But though financing is the key, other elements are no less important. Education, housing, job opportunities and the vote enter the picture of any improving community. The Negro leader, the “successful” man in Atlanta, is deeply imbued with a sense of responsibility toward his community. This is true of the doctors, the lawyers, the educators, the religious leaders and the businessmen.

  “There is no ‘big Me’ and ‘little you,’ ” T.M. Alexander, one of the founders of the Southeastern Fidelity Fire Insurance, said. “We must pool all of our resources, material and mental, to gain the respect that will enable all of us to walk the streets with the dignity of American citizens.”

  In the matter of education, Atlanta has long been eminent. With men of the quality of Benjamin Mays, president of Morehouse, and Rufus Clement, president of Atlanta University - to mention only two who are world-renowned - the intellectual climate is of high quality. The most impressive proof of this is found in the classrooms where teachers and students face squarely the problems that haunt this country, particularly the race problem. I visited the sociology class of Spelman College where Dr. Moreland (Mrs. Charles Moreland) bullied and taunted and challenged her class to think and talk. This handsome and brilliant young woman, like her students, despises the idea that in America any man has to “earn” his rights to first-class citizenship. In the classes I attended, one of the students was assigned to take the role of the white racist, and to argue his points to the other students. It was a brutal and revealing session. The comparison between them and the white racists was cruel indeed. The students have better manners, more learning, more courtesy and infinitely more understanding.

  Every leader is interested in better housing. Many professional men, particularly doctors like F. Earl McLendon, have developed residential areas as their contribution to the cause. Atlanta has virtually miles and miles of splendid Negro homes. They have destroyed the cliché that whenever Negroes move into an area the property values go down. In every instance, they have improved the homes they have bought from the whites and built even better ones. The philosophy here is simple. Try to anchor as many Negroes as possible in their own homes.

  The fourth element, the vote, the right of the governed to govern themselves, has long been a cherished goal of all thinking men of Atlanta. Every business, professional and civic leader is also a leader in politics. In 1949, the Democrats, under A.T. Walden, and the Republicans, under John Wesley Dobbs, united to form the Atlanta Negro Voters League; and the Negro began to have a voice in his government. It has become an increasingly important and responsible one. By 1955 this type of political action helped elect Atlanta University President Rufus E. Clement to the city school board, making him the first Negro to hold elective office in Georgia since the Reconstruction. (See Bardolph, The Negro Vanguard, New York: Rinehart & Co., 1959.)

  All take into account the cooperation of a fair-minded city administration under the leadership of Mayor Hartsfield. Almost alone among politicians of the South, Mayor Hartsfield has not sunk to the level of winning votes at the Negro’s expense. He has proved the point that a man can, after all, stand up for justice and constitutional law and still not sacrifice his political career.

  Benjamin Mays, J.B. Blayton, L.D. Milton, A.T. Walden, John Wesley Dobbs, Norris Herndon of the Atlantic Life Insurance Company, banker-druggist C.R. Yates, W.J. Shaw, E.M. Martin, Rev. Samuel Williams, Rev. William Holmes Borders, Rev. H.I. Bearden, Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr., and his son, Martin Luther King, Jr. - each has contributed and continues to contribute to the American dream in its best sense.

  I recall scenes picked at random:

  - The look of growing concern on photographer Don Rutledge’s face as we moved from one scene to another - concern and humiliation to realize that these men, these scenes, these ideals were unknown to most Americans and utterly beyond the comprehension of the Southern racist. It was a look, however, overspread with delight;

  - The look of surprise and vast amusement on Dr. Benjamin Mays’ intelligent face when I confided to him my journey as a Negro;

  - At Spelman C
ollege, hearing Rosalyn Pope play magnificently the Bach Toccata in D, and then the strange, bewildered expression on her face when she told me about arriving in Paris to spend a year studying piano - the strangeness of living in a great city where she could attend concerts to her fill, where she could walk into any door where she was a human being first and last and not dismissed as a “Negro”;

  - The evening in T.M. Alexander’s home, the talk with his wife and his brilliant children: “We realize that we have to run just to keep up.” They are intent, like the other members of the community, upon doing everything within their power to nullify the picture of the loud, the brassy, the pushy and “successful” Negro;

  - The long talk with the Reverend Samuel Williams in his living room. A forceful man, but quiet, of fine intellect. Professor of Philosophy. “I spent years,” he told me, “studying the phenomenon of love.”

  “And I spend years studying the phenomenon of justice.”

  “At base, we spend years studying the same thing,” he said.

  It was time to return to New Orleans. My assignments in Atlanta with Rutledge were finished. He was anxious to get back to his wife and child. I asked him if he knew a first-rate photographer in New Orleans, since I wanted to go back over the terrain again as a Negro and have photos made. The project fascinated him and we arranged to drive to New Orleans together so he could photograph it.

  December 9 New Orleans

  In New Orleans I resumed my Negro identity and we went to all of my former haunts to photograph them.

  Getting photos proved a problem. A Negro being photographed by a white arouses suspicions. Whites tended to wonder, “What Negro celebrity is he?” and to presume I was uppity. It equally aroused the curiosity of the Negroes. The “Uncle Toms” think that every Negro should bury his head in the sand and pretend he is not there. They distrust any Negro prominent enough to be photographed by a white photographer. Others feared I might be an Uncle Tom going over to the white side.