‘About the demands I have this to say. They called for a total realigning of a great deal of the Sutton financial system. At this time it is inconceivable that the students maturely handle the sort of responsibility demanded in this document. Many of the matters brought up in the paper had never come to our attention in this manner before. I have referred certain issues to the Student-Faculty Alliance and I will look into others myself. Under no circumstances do I intend to crawl on my belly before the students, however. I think that my record indicates an intense concern for Sutton University and a proficiency in my position as president. I will do my best in the future as I have in the past. I am willing to work with students, but I will not be dictated to by them.’ Calhoun finally succeeded in lighting his pipe.
Victor Johnson, head down, made a few final notations on his crowded note pad and then looked up.
‘Is that all?’ he asked.
‘That's all unless you have questions,’ Calhoun said, looking out of the window. The president's concern about the activities outside his window kept him from seeing the middle finger on Victor Johnson's right hand being raised in his direction, indicating the editor's heartfelt opinion of the whole thing.
The intercom came on.
‘Yes?’ Calhoun waved unconvincingly at the editor's retreating back.
‘Coach Mallory is on the line,’ Miss Felch reported.
‘Good.’ Calhoun switched lines. ‘Lo, Coach . . . right . . .’
‘They didn’ come in,’ Coach Mallory reported. He had read the note from the president's office instructing him to send in the four members of MJUMBE who played football.
‘None of them?’
‘Baker, Jones, Cotton, and King. Those right?’
‘Those are the four. I wanted to talk to them because they seem to have as much to do with this whole mess as Thomas does. I can't locate Thomas either.’
‘Oh.’ The coach wasn't paying a great deal of attention. Thirty of his men were on the field doing calisthenics. He thought he would be able to deal with the missing four when he found them.
‘Tell me, coach,’ Calhoun was saying, ‘are those four boys on some sort of athletic scholarship?’
‘Yes,’ Mallory said guardedly. ‘They are.’
‘I see,’ was Calhoun's comment. The way the two words were said raised the hair on the back of the young Black coach's neck. ‘Well, have a nice practice. I'll be at the game on Saturday looking for a victory.’
The phone was returned to its cradle. Mallory stood behind his desk for minutes staring down at the instrument. He was dressed in a sweat suit and baseball cap. He had yet to trot out onto the baked Virginia soil and take the three laps with which he generally started his practices, but there was a line of perspiration reaching his thick eyebrows and sweat stains stood out against his armpits and crotch. In the dead silence of the empty locker room, Mallory decided to break his long-standing rule about practice. He stepped quickly into the corridor and trotted out to the door that led to the practice field. He immediately caught the eye of his assistant coach and beckoned him.
‘Run them through everything, Bob,’ Mallory said hurriedly. ‘Double on the running an’ the calisthenics. I've got an emergency.’
The Sutton senior physical education major who served as assistant coach frowned and was tempted to ask what was happening, but he knew better. He nodded, walked toward the players, and the last thing Mallory heard before the wooden door slammed shut was the shrill whistle splitting the early autumn calm.
Edmund C. Mallory was a Sutton graduate. He was a short, stocky man with a fierce, driving determination that he instilled in his athletes. It was not uncommon for Sutton to walk onto a football field as heavy underdogs and walk away as winners. For even though the university did not give out as many scholarships as they needed to compete athletically, Mallory teams were well trained physically, psychologically, and strategically. Mallory loved to tell his team: ‘There are no underdogs as far as we're concerned. When you go on the field the score is zero-zero. Your action from that point on decides who the underdog is.’
The sort of relationship that Mallory sought with his athletes went beyond the coach-player relationship. Most of the time Mallory got to know the men who played under him rather well. Mallory thought he knew Ralph Baker, Ben King, Speedy Cotton, and Fred Jones very well. The four seniors had all advanced from the freshman team together. Cotton, King, and Baker were at starting positions for their third consecutive year, and though they had never gone into any great amount of detail about their campus-political involvement, the coach was reasonably sure that their college careers were now on the line because of their political commitments.
The thought of Ogden Calhoun's sly but pointed inquiry into the financial situation of the four men made Mallory positive that the political move dictated by MJUMBE was pushing Ogden Calhoun in the direction of repression.
As he showered it occurred to Mallory that he had not yet decided exactly where he was going and what he was going to do. Then he thought of Arnold McNeil and vowed that some preventative moves would be made. Standing there under the steaming water, he could not resolve completely what direction he would take, but he knew something had to be done to stop Calhoun.
22
Counterthreat
The members of MJUMBE had been busy. The members of their ‘enforcer’ program had met and been informed of what to do in practically all possible situations. These were the men, primarily athletes and members of Greek fraternities, who guarded the entrances to class buildings and informed students who were thinking of going to class that Sutton was on strike. There had been no physical restraint used during the first two hours of the strike. None had been necessary.
Baker had written another newsletter. His article referred to Ogden Calhoun's noon declaration and called it ‘extremely unsatisfactory’ and vowed that Sutton students should be prepared for a long wait. It stressed the fact that under no circumstances should the members of the student body be willing to accept less than the requests called for since the list had only mentioned ‘the bare essentials.’
Abul Menka had typed up lists of needed equipment for the Music Department student who had asked if any microphones or sound machines would be needed. MJUMBE proposed to invite in a series of lecturers for a seminar program if the strike stretched into the next week. A second list was sent to the Fine Arts Building requesting majors to contact MJUMBE for possible lecture assignments. There was a great apprehension about the students moving to break the strike out of sheer boredom.
‘We'll be all right this weekend,’ Baker asserted. ‘The Alphas are havin’ some kinda dance. As long as the niggers can dance they'll be all right.’
‘If we wuz to knock the dance they'd turn on us,’ Cotton quipped.
‘In a minnit.’
‘If we get to the weekend,’ Abul said, coming into the main meeting room. ‘I expect Calhoun to move on us before then.’
‘He'd be movin’ on the whole community,’ Cotton said.
‘Idealistically,’ Abul admitted, ‘but if we had that much faith in any type of ideal unity we wouldn'a needed to have the brothers on the doors blockin’ classes.’
‘But . . .’
‘But no thin’,’ Abul stepped in. ‘That meetin’ in the auditorium means zero. If Calhoun moves before we get the necessary power nobody leaves here but MJUMBE an’ Thomas.’
‘What necessary power?’ Cotton asked. ‘What mo’ can we git?’
‘Thass the problem. We gotta make Calhoun think we got more goin’ for us than we do.’
It was at that instant that Fred Jones came through the door with a tray of sandwiches and plastic cups filled with Coke.
‘We're bein’ paged in the student union,’ he said quietly.
‘We who?’
‘We all of us,’ Jonesy replied. ‘Ben King, Ralph Baker, Everett Cotton, Fred Jones, and Jonathan Wise.’
Baker laughed. ‘I had forgot yawl's nam
es,’ he said, turning to Speedy Cotton and Abul Menka. No one on campus could have pointed out Everett Cotton or Jonathan Wise. ‘Jonathan, my boy,’ Baker said to Abul, ‘we gotta educate people ‘bout you.’
‘What were we bein’ paged for?’ Abul asked Jonesy.
‘We're wanted in the Administration Building.’
The sandwiches and Cokes were distributed and the men ate in silence. When the phone rang Jonesy answered and told the person on the other end to call back later.
‘Maybe we should go,’ Abul said suddenly.
‘Where?’
‘To see old Assbucket,’ came the reply.
‘What good would it do?’ Ben King asked. ‘He knows where we stand.’
‘Does he?’ Abul quizzed. ‘He knows one thing. He got a buncha deman's an’ a strike. There's two ways of lookin’ at a meetin’ wit’ him. One way is the way you lookin’, Ben. A sign of weakness. The other way of seen’ it is as a chance to find out what the ol’ bastard's into.’
‘Is he gonna tell us?’
‘Sure. He'll tell us by the type of questions that he asks. He'll tell us by the way he approaches the whole set. If we don’ go he can look at that as a sign of fear. If we show up an’ freeze him, he won't know what to do.’
‘Freeze ‘im how?’
‘Freeze, baby, freeze! You can dig that! He's gonna throw out a lotta stimulators aimed at makin’ us blow our cool an’ goin’ through an’ emotional thing. You're right when you say he knows what we want, but he doesn't know what our limits are; what we're willin’ to do to get what we're after.’
‘He don’ care,’ King said.
‘Maybe not,’ Abul admitted, ‘but you gotta remember he ain’ never really been put to the test. No one student movement on this campus ever had total support. Las’ year Peabody had the frats an’ the sororities. The year before Coombs had the block-heads. This is a thing that has everybody pullin’ an’ Calhoun may be walkin’ on eggs.’
Baker made the decision. ‘Let's go! If he had everything under control he wouldn'a been pagin’ us. Maybe if we show a little more unity he'll be even more shook up . . . Lemme do the talkin’.’
Jonesy was about to suggest that they let Abul do the talking. He had never heard Abul say as many things as he had heard today. The strange thing was that he found himself agreeing with all of the things that he heard. He said nothing.
23
Choosing Sides
Edmund C. Mallory, Sutton football coach, found out from Mrs Millie McNeil that her husband had telephoned from a Sutton bar called the Mine where he was having drinks with an old reporter friend. She admitted that the call had been placed at one thirty and though it was already three she assumed that her mate was still there.
Her assumption turned out to be a valid one because Mallory spotted McNeil and a man he did not recognize sitting in a booth just inside the air-conditioned bar and grill.
‘Ed Mallory,’ McNeil said, doing the introductions. ‘This is Ike Spurryman, an old college friend of mine. Ike, this is Ed Mallory, our highly productive football coach.’
They were approached by a waitress who appeared startled when the coach ordered a 7-Up. She quickly regained her composure however and departed.
‘Knowing that you're not a drinking man,’ McNeil began, ‘I suppose I must have something to do with your visit to this little hideaway.’
It appeared to Coach Mallory that his proposed ally was a little drunk.
‘You have everything to do with it,’ Mallory admitted, getting right to the point. ‘I'm quite sure that you and I didn't agree with all of the methods that Calhoun or the student group have been using.’
‘Indeed,’ McNeil smiled. ‘Both parties are wrong. Stop! You're both wrong! . . . Pardon me, but I'm a product of the television age.’
‘The question is what we propose to do . . . can I talk in front of you without fear of jeopardy, Mr Spurryman?’
‘Of course. And call me Ike,’ the reporter replied.
‘Well, I don't like the idea of the student strike,’ the coach admitted. ‘But I don't like the way Calhoun is going about dealing with the student leaders either.’
‘How's he dealing with them?’ McNeil asked, sobering up a bit.
‘Intimidation as far as I can see. He called me a little while ago and asked me if the MJUMBE members were on scholarship.’
‘Whew! Trouble. What can I say? The people knocked me last night for admitting that I was a member of the Bullshit Squad.’ The history professor chuckled again.
‘We can't just sit around. Who else is with us?’
‘Mrs Pruitt. Most of the younger people, I suppose.’
‘Why can't we set ourselves up as sort of mediators?’
‘The main reason is because the people who suggest this, namely you and I, are known student sympathizers. If we could talk Royce and Mercer and people like them into taking some kind of stand, we'd be all right.’
‘Why them?’
‘Because most of the young faculty members who are on our side are white. That's giving the students a way out. They are naturally suspicious of the white faculty members, or they overreact to them to show their militancy. It would just be better to have some solid Black figures for them to ally themselves with.’
‘And any mediation tactics we tried to implement would be put off by whom?’ Mallory asked.
‘Initially by both sides,’ McNeil asserted. ‘We'd be more clearly in the middle than ever before.’
‘Then at least this would give us an opportunity to break away from being constantly identified with Calhoun. I'm tired of political discussions with students about what needs to be done at Sutton starting off with, ‘You people.’ The students clearly mean the administrators but they don't see the faculty as other than the administration.’
‘How can they?’ McNeil asked. ‘You have to look at political things on a college campus as a conflict on many levels. It is youth against the Establishment. It's youth against age. It's freedom against repression. It's both real and symbolic. We are not of their generation.’
‘I can't talk that generation gap theme. I think it's fairly well played out.’
‘You don't have to talk it, man. You're living it! You have kids, don't you? What do you think they're going to throw at you when they're old enough to start wanting special privileges? They'll say: “You don't understand. You don't realize what I mean.” Mark my words. It will take a lot of serious time and energy for you to even begin to remember when you were in the same situation aside from vague generalities. I mean, aside from major events. Feelings. That's what you won't be able to remember.’
The 7-Up came along with another draft beer for the reporter who sat in the corner of the booth smoking a cigarette and saying nothing. The arrival of the waitress took on the appearance of a signaled time-out. Mallory sipped from the glass, watching the bubbles and clinking the two small ice cubes together. McNeil pulled on his drink and tamped his cigar against the side of an overloaded ashtray.
‘Then what do we do?’ Mallory asked, ‘if we can't set ourselves up as mediaries or a liaison sort of body. Do I sit by and watch four of my men railroaded onto the highway?’
‘I'm not saying we can't set ourselves up that way, but if we did we would be doing it for the students, right?’
Mallory nodded.
‘Who says they want us?’ McNeil asked. ‘They won't completely trust us. They might reject us publicly and alienate all but a very few of us . . . I propose that we find out first of all whether or not they believe we can do anything positive. Then if they do, we can move. I don't think we should try to do anything at all before that.’
‘And how do we find out if we can do any good?’
‘Contact them,’ McNeil said, finishing his drink in a gulp.
‘Where would we find Thomas at this hour. It's nearly three thirty.’
‘I suggest we try and find your football players,’ McNeil said. ‘They are the ones who s
eem to be most directly under the gun. And the young man who has allied himself with them was very impressive.’
‘Who?’
‘This one.’ McNeil proffered a copy of The Statesman and poked a yellow finger at the only MJUMBE man who was not a football player. ‘Captain Cool?’ McNeil asked.
‘Abul Menka,’ Mallory said. ‘Where could we . . . wait! I know. They'd probably be at the fraternity house. We can go there.’
‘I don't know how wise that would be,’ McNeil balked. ‘That could be misconstrued in several directions.’
‘Man, I ain’ got time fo’ no who construed what!’ Mallory said, raising his voice for the first time. ‘If we gonna be concerned about what we might construe, we can stop now. Somebody's always gonna get the wrong idea from what's done.’
‘All I'm suggesting is that we call and let them know we're coming,’ McNeil said. ‘That way they'll know why we're coming and that might break down a little of the suspicion that would lead them to believe that we're administrative spies or some such nonsense.’
‘Call if you want to.’
McNeil left the table. It was then that Spurryman voiced his personal opinion.
‘Just my luck,’ he said finishing his beer. ‘Seems like damn near every real story I get I'm bound by some kind of personal thing not to print.’
‘If you weren't a friend of McNeil's you wouldn't have been in any position to hear what you just heard,’ Mallory pointed out.
‘Yeah. But nevertheless . . .’
‘May just turn out to be talk,’ the coach said, slowly turning back to his glass of soda.
‘A damn chess game!’ Spurryman exclaimed. ‘If there had been no student strike I could've been back in Norfolk with my wife. Tomorrow's her birthday.’
‘I could've been gettin’ ready for my Saturday game.’
‘You play A & T on Saturday, don't you?’
‘Right here.’
‘At least I'll get to see a good football game if the damn thing's still on an’ they tell me to stay.’
McNeil came back to the booth and slid in opposite the reporter and the coach.
The Nigger Factory Page 15