He believed they should be told that their lives would probably get worse rather than better, that they would encounter more difficulties than easy streets, and should learn to come to terms with disappointment. They should be told that they would fail more times than they would succeed, that they would be lucky to find careers that fulfilled them and would, in all probability, be bored stupid for much of their professional lives. Their hearts would be broken, and they would endure relationships that went up in flames or collapsed into rubble; sometimes they would know why, but most times they wouldn’t. They would suffer bereavement and loss, and for long periods of time simply exist. For all these experiences they wouldn’t be a better or worse person, only a changed person.
Once old, they should compare photographs of themselves as a child with how they were then. They should focus on the eyes: it would be their eyes that would tell the real story of their lives, not the lines on their faces or the loose skin hanging from their chins. Assuredly, their eyes would be sadder; there would no longer be a twinkle there but weariness, a hunted look.
Doc believed that if children knew such cataclysms were possibilities that could strike their lives at any time, the lucky ones would more likely appreciate the providence of their blessed lives, while the unlucky would learn to savour the fleeting moments of happiness allowed them. In particular, he would urge both groups to remember and appreciate the people who had shared in, and were often the reason for their happiness. Always remember to take photographs, he would have advised them. Don’t forget the photographs!
And then, five years ago, Nancy had unexpectedly phoned and renewed a relationship that had ended close to forty-five years earlier. In all probability it would end again within the year, and once more at Nancy’s choosing.
Uncivil Times
When the clock struck midnight on December 31, 1959, few could have foreseen the troubled years that lay ahead for the nation or prophesied the forces about to be unleashed. The time of Eisenhower had been one of consensus, and its spirit unquestioning and complacent. The parents of Doc and people their age had little appetite for self-criticism. They had lived through the Great Depression and fought a World War, and their lives were now comfortable. They had every reason to celebrate rather than criticise the America of their birth.
Change, however, was in the air, ruffling the growing hair on their children’s heads and tapping into their consciences. By the time Doc enrolled at Duke University’s Medical School, his generation was already starting to question the nation’s values, especially in the area of race. Negroes, they noted, were still discriminated against in almost all walks of life, and stores, restaurants and hotels remained segregated. They intuitively recognised that racial prejudice was wrong, an unquestionable evil.
Before arriving in Durham, Doc had experienced little of the prejudice that Negroes endured on a daily basis. The town he grew up in had been essentially white, and consequently there had been no racial divide. His early life had also been sheltered, and the success of the high school football team or finding a date for the prom had always taken precedence over any national issues that might have stirred the day.
Duke University changed this. Friends he made there were of the intellectual variety, people who placed emphasis on creativity and originality. By nature, they were more disposed to question and reject traditional and dominant values, and Doc came under their sway. Two friends, in particular, were instrumental in steering him down the path of civil rights activism. Galvanised by a black student sit-in at a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter in nearby Greensboro, they joined the Congress of Racial Equality and, in conjunction with another student called Steve Barrentine, started to organise regular meetings and activities on campus. It was at one such meeting that Doc met Nancy.
Twenty people were gathered in Steve Barrentine’s apartment that night. It was the first meeting Doc had attended, and the only two people he knew there were his friends, neither of whom had thought it important to mention that, as a new arrival, he would be expected to describe his own experiences of racial discrimination and suggest ways of combating the unconscionable status quo. Consequently, when called upon to do so, Doc was taken by surprise.
Flustered by having to address the meeting with no thoughts prepared, he started by sensibly admitting that he had few experiences of racial discrimination to recount. He then joked that he’d have probably befriended more Negroes had they had air-conditioning in their houses. ‘All the Negroes I knew were poor,’ he said, ‘and let’s face it, who needs poor friends when it’s ninety-eight degrees in the shade?’
There was a stunned silence. People let out small gasps of air, shook their heads and examined their shoes in particular detail. Doc noticed only one person in the room stifling a laugh: a scrawny-looking girl sitting cross-legged on the floor smoking a cigarette. The silence was punctured – and Doc saved – by a loud and deep guffaw from the kitchen. A well-built Negro came into the room and walked towards Gene with his hand outstretched.
‘I don’t know who you are, man, but I think you jus’ nailed it. I ain’t got no air-conditionin’ an’ I ain’t got no civil rights, neither. Ain’t no way they not linked. Hell, if the governmen’ jus’ give me an’ my people some o’ the ventilation you white folks have, we’d be on our way to equality!’
As the man who’d spoken these words was the only black person in the room, the others started to smile and nod their heads. ‘Good thinking, Bob,’ Steve Barrentine said. ‘I think we should make that a discussion point for our next meeting.’
Doc imagined that if mud ever became animate, then it would sound like Bob Crenshaw: he’d never heard such a deep and resonant voice. He took Bob’s proffered hand with a greater enthusiasm than he usually accepted hands, and made a mental note not to wash until back in his apartment.
‘Glad to meet you, Bob – and thanks for speaking up when you did. I was beginning to feel like Jesus on the cross out there. They appear to hold you in some regard.’
‘Only reason they do is cos I black, an’ they ain’t,’ Bob smiled, taking Gene to one side. ‘I could say any ol’ damn shit an’ they’d still agree with me. By the way, what you said then was jus’ plain dumb, man. This ain’t no audience fo’ jokes, Gene. Folks here is humourless – well-meaning, but too worthy fo’ their own damn good. You wanna get a drink an’ be humorous some place safe?’
‘Sure,’ Gene said (as we’ll call him during his time at Duke; just as we’ll call black or Afro-Americans, Negroes – as they too were called at the time).
‘Hey, Nancy,’ Bob called over to the scrawny girl. ‘We’re goin’ fo’ a drink. You comin’?’
Nancy nodded and went to get her coat. ‘Let’s go to my place,’ she said.
The three of them left together, and Gene, who had arrived at the apartment on foot, climbed into the passenger seat of Bob’s battered old car.
‘This the firs’ time you been in a black man’s car?’ Bob asked.
‘First time,’ Gene replied, ‘so drive carefully. I have a promising career ahead of me.’
Bob let out one of his deep guffaws: ‘Ha!’
Nancy lived in a house rather than an apartment, and unlike most students at the university didn’t share with others. She threw her coat over an armchair and took three beers from the refrigerator. When she handed one of the bottles to Gene, she introduced herself as Nancy Travis.
‘This is a really nice house, Nancy,’ Gene said. ‘It’s the size of my parents’!’
‘Nancy’s a rich girl, ain’t you, Nancy,’ Bob teased. ‘A rich girl from Miss’ippi. How would yo’ daddy feel if he knew a black man was sittin’ on yo’ couch, Nance?’
‘He’d be fine with it,’ Nancy replied, with what Gene took to be a hint of exasperation in her voice. ‘Black people come and go in our house all the time.’
‘Yea, but I bet they’s servants.’
‘They’re also friends, and some of them we look upon as family. That’
s what people here don’t understand. They simply see Miss’ippi as a boogey man. It’s a lot more complicated than that.’
‘I jus’ messin’ with you, girl. No need to get antsy.’
‘Who’s antsy…?’
‘You two seem to know each other well,’ Gene interrupted. ‘How did you meet?’
‘At one of the meetings,’ Nancy answered. ‘A girlfriend of his brought him and then dropped out of the group. We got stuck with him. She dropped him too, by the way, and I can’t say I blame her.’
Bob excused himself to use the bathroom. ‘How you know I didn’ drop her?’ he called out.
‘But you’re friends, right?’ Gene asked.
‘I guess so,’ Nancy laughed. ‘But there are times when he drives me nuts!’
Bob came back into the room and picked up the phone. ‘Okay if I use the phone, Nance?’ Nancy nodded her approval. Bob dialled a long number, grunted a few times into the mouthpiece, hung up and then announced he had to leave: some urgent business had come up. ‘You okay to get back by yo’self, Gene?’
Gene looked at Nancy to make sure it was okay for him to stay.
‘I’ll take him back,’ Nancy said.
‘Will you be at the next meeting?’ Gene asked him.
‘Hell no,’ Bob said, as he pulled on his coat. ‘I can think o’ better things to do with my time ’n listen to Steve Barrentine talk ’bout air-conditionin’. One mo’ thing, Nance – you gotta stop wearin’ that top. Looks like it’s made outta some ol’ bathmat!’
Gene was right in supposing that Nancy had been trying to suppress a laugh at his inappropriate comments during the meeting, but on closer examination proved to be nowhere near as scrawny as he’d first imagined her to be. She was in fact slim rather than skinny, about 5 feet 6 inches tall and really quite beautiful. She had large green eyes, expensively uniform teeth and thick strawberry-blonde hair. She also spoke with a seductively lazy drawl, and Gene found himself drawn to her.
When Nancy stopped the car outside his apartment building, he asked for a date. She paused before agreeing and then paused again. ‘There’s something you need to know about me, Gene,’ she said. As he waited for her to continue his heart dropped, and he feared she was going to tell him that she preferred the company of women or was addicted to prescription drugs. But what Nancy said was this: ‘I’m from the Delta, Gene. The most I’ll ever be able to cook for you is a grilled cheese sandwich.’
The Delta
Nancy Travis came from a rich family that owned large tracts of land in the Mississippi Delta. The temperature on the day of her birth had been 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit – the exact same temperature as her mother’s womb – and the day’s accompanying humidity had made for an easy transition into the world. Her parents’ money and privileged position similarly ensured that her passage through life would, in all probability, be smooth and uncomplicated.
The Travis family owned 6,000 acres of fertile land in the county of Tallahatchie, and grew cotton on topsoil estimated to be twenty-seven feet deep. The nearest small town was Sumner, and the nearest large town Clarksdale. The Travis family had moved there from Virginia in 1835, two years after the territory was opened for settlement, and with a cohort of slaves transformed the wilderness and swamps into some of the richest land in the state. In the nineteenth century they survived malaria, yellow fever, the Civil War, Reconstruction and the floods of 1882–84; and in the twentieth century embraced the new technologies of machinery and pesticides, and survived the floods of 1931 and 1933.
The family enjoyed a life of advantage, and a lifestyle that came with money. They gave lavish parties; flew to New York for opening nights and shopping trips; holidayed in Europe and the Caribbean; had a reserved suite at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis; and Hilton Travis, Nancy’s father, went on safari to Africa. Black cooks prepared their meals; black maids cleaned their house; and black gardeners tended their grounds.
Nancy was the youngest of four children, accidental. Her mother, Martha Travis, had borne her first three children while still in her twenties: Nancy was conceived in her mother’s forty-third year. (Bob, with his usual sensitivity, had told Nancy she was lucky not to have been brain-damaged.) There was a gap of some fourteen years between Nancy and her closest sibling. She had one brother and two sisters: Brandon, Daisy and Ruby. She became the centre of attention and, for many years, was treated like a family pet.
Brandon had attended the state’s agricultural college in Starkville and now helped his father run the farm. Daisy and Ruby had married early and well, Daisy to a dentist in Memphis and Ruby, Nancy’s favourite, to another farmer in neighbouring Leflore County. Nancy was the first member of her family to attend university.
Martha and Hilton Travis wanted the best for their youngest daughter. The first three of their children had grown up in times that placed greater emphasis on training in social and cultural activities than on academic studies – Brandon had attended college purely to acquire practical knowledge. They realised, however, that unlike that of her siblings, Nancy’s future would much more depend on the schools she attended and the education she earned.
Before the Supreme Court ruled in 1954 that all public schools be desegregated, Mississippi’s schools were already poor. The private academies opened by White Citizen Councils in response to that ruling, only served to further weaken the standard of education in the state. At the age of twelve, therefore, Martha and Hilton Travis enrolled Nancy in a private girls’ school in Richmond, Virginia; and in 1960, Nancy enrolled herself at Duke University. Herein lay the roots of Nancy’s dualism when confronted with the issues of race and racial prejudice.
Nancy was a child of Mississippi but became a stranger to it. She loved the state of her birth, and the Delta more so. Above all she loved her parents and family. She intuitively knew her parents to be good people, and could never remember them treating the Negroes who worked for them with anything other than kindness and consideration. When she’d told Bob that household servants were considered friends – and some as part of the family – she hadn’t been exaggerating.
At school and university, however, the environment was different. Many of the students were from northern states, whose families were politically more progressive or liberal by nature. They looked upon Mississippi as exotic, and Nancy was forever being placed in the position of being its spokesperson, and with increasing difficulty its defender.
The first – and worst – such occasion happened barely a year after Nancy had arrived in Richmond, when the badly beaten body of a fourteen-year-old Negro boy was pulled from the Tallahatchie River. His face had been mutilated: his nose was broken, his right eye missing, and there was a hole in the side of his head. The boy’s name was Emmett Till. He came from Chicago and had been visiting relatives in a county adjacent to Tallahatchie. He’d either wolf-whistled a white woman or called her Baby; no one was quite sure.
It was decided by some, however, that Till had insulted the nearest thing to an angel walking God’s planet. Condemned as an uppity nigra who didn’t know his place, Till was dragged from his bed three nights later and brutally murdered. Those who killed him went to bed that night with their consciences clear, and the jury that acquitted them of his murder at the ensuing trial, similarly returned to their beds untroubled.
The murder of Emmett Till horrified Nancy and her parents as much as it disgusted the nation. She refused to defend the actions of those responsible or excuse the ignorance and bigotry that caused them to act the way they did. She believed they were uncharacteristic of Mississippians, aberrations. Eventually, however, she came to wonder if this was really so.
As Nancy spent more time away from home, she became increasingly distanced from the romantic memories of her childhood idyll. In succeeding visits to the Delta, the scales that blinded her while living there gradually fell from her eyes. She started to notice the poverty and the gulf that divided the lifestyles of the privileged white few from the unfortunate black many. S
he saw the Negroes’ cabins for what they were – shacks, more suited to hens than humans: leaking roofs, broken windows repaired with cardboard, torn screens and no plumbing. She noticed too, the deep creases in the Negroes’ faces, and the look of their being much older than their actual years. More disturbing still for her was the realisation that her own family’s wealth was built on such poverty.
Nancy’s parents were paternalistic in the best sense, but within that word lay the dichotomy. The relationship between them and their Negroes was never one based on equality. In reality, her parents viewed them as children whose care was their obligation. In return for this care was an unspoken understanding that Negroes would pay them certain dues: they would defer to their judgements, never speak back, contradict or – God forbid – sass them.
Privately, her father criticised the ways of Mississippi, bemoaned the fact that Negroes could never expect justice from white juries, and recognised the anomaly of black people being barred from exercising democratic rights in what, supposedly, was the world’s greatest democracy. He would admit that change had to take place, but maintained that such change could only come from within – and that it would be slow. The worst thing that could happen, he argued, was if outside pressure was brought to bear on the state. He held that it was always easier for people to be influenced by principle the further they were from a situation.
Apart, however, from taking out a subscription to the Delta Democrat Times, the state’s only liberal newspaper, her father appeared to do little if anything to bring about change. He protested the verdict of the Emmett Till trial, for instance, but only in private. In truth, Hilton Travis could never afford to be seen as a ‘nigger lover’ by the surrounding white communities. The decade of the sixties might have dawned in America, but in Mississippi the year was still 1890.
At Duke, Nancy joined in the civil rights movement, but with the proviso that she would never take part in any activities within Mississippi. Despite all her soul-searching and new-found insights, when the moment of truth came she proved as incapable as her father of taking any kind of action there. She believed such undertakings would be tantamount to throwing bricks through her parents’ windows, and she could predict the hurt and embarrassment it would cause them. She was as much a prisoner of Mississippi as her father, tied to the place of her birth, her home and her family.
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