Jam on the Vine (9780802191571)

by Barnett, Lashonda

  Yours in the struggle,

  Ivoe Leila Williams

  THE COLORED SOLDIER’S PROBLEM

  By Ivoe Leila Williams

  There has been a singularly ill-advised handling of the Negro soldiers ever since the mobilization of the American forces. Numerous “race riots” and outbreaks of greater or less seriousness have occurred as a result of quartering Negro regulars in communities where race prejudice might naturally have been expected to result in friction, if nothing worse. These occurrences, however, appear to have been controlled and there have been no special reasons for complaint for some time.

  But the wrong lesson appears to have been learned by the government’s military authorities from these occurrences. Ever since the registered forces have been in process of selection under the new law there has been evinced a seeming disposition to ignore the Negroes as prospective units of the new national army, with the result that a twofold injustice has been worked. In the first place, white men who would not have been called for months, in all probability, have been “advanced” in the lists while the Negroes have been held back. Let it not be understood that considerations of race or color should operate to relieve white men of any obligations that are entailed upon them as citizens or available soldiers or that Negroes, because they are Negroes, should be sent to places of danger ahead of white men. That is not the fundamental principle involved. Before the law all are equal in the matter of responsibility. But wholly unnecessary and wholly avoidable dissatisfaction is being caused by this injustice, which is being wrought in the case of the white men who are sent to the training camps, while Negroes are held back by order of the authorities.

  There is also an unnecessary injustice wrought upon the tens of thousands of willing Negroes who ought to take their places in the ranks but who are deprived of that privilege. They are being placed in the position of men who are either unwilling to assume the responsibilities of citizenship or who are not regarded as worthy of assuming the burdens falling upon all alike. Either assumption is unjust.

  In view of prejudices that exist and that cannot be consistently ignored, the problem of the Negro soldier will not be solved by promiscuous mingling of the two races and certainly not by sending white soldiers alone while Negroes are held at home. There is no apparent reason that these Negro soldiers could not be trained at one or more training camps devoted exclusively to soldiers of their race. The same fundamental results would be secured without the friction and dissatisfaction, which have already been caused.

  Under proper conditions the Negroes might give us as good an account of themselves as soldiers of the white race and they should be allowed the opportunity of doing so. If it is not considered an opportunity by all the available Negro soldiers, they should be required to assume the duty devolving upon them as such. They must be credited, however, with having shown as yet no disposition to shirk these duties and responsibilities, and they should be invested with their proportionate share of the burdens of membership in the national forces.

  .

  Ivoe stood with Timbo outside of the cattle killing beds, listening as he talked about the slaughtering capacity of Ogden Packing Plant. “Three hundred cattle and five hundred hogs daily.” A walk through a courtyard delivered them to a row of wooden buildings. He pointed to the dry saltcellar, the cold storage room, and the tank house, where they rendered the lard. At the cutting room, Ivoe remained at the door. Coarse voices floated over the cleavers slamming against wood, the chorus of the slaughter. Smoke curled up from the wooden roof of the next building. “We cure over there. Remind you of back home, don’t it?” For a moment, the aroma of hickory covered the stench until a warm breeze blew in the wrong direction. Across from the smokehouse, her brother worked in the sausage room, where men cleaned and sorted by hand the intestines before feeding them to the grinders. Here, the odor was the most pungent. Ivoe’s stomach wrenched. Someone’s grinder jammed. The worker dug his fingers around, cursing when the machine started up again. “See, that ain’t got not business being there,” Timbo said of the dried blood caked on some of the machines.

  Unbearable heat and long hours added to the degradation of Timbo’s job. From the animals’ entrance to the last point where meat left the plant, levels of sanitation were deplorable. Butchering stalls stank to high heaven. At every turn machines sparked or combusted, and nowhere was there a fire extinguisher. The colored workers could talk for hours—legitimate complaints and sound ideas for plant improvement (ventilation, hygiene checks, and the like), but the bottom line was simple: shared deplorable conditions and equal opportunity for injury should account for equal pay.

  OGDEN PACKING PLANT—

  WORKERS STRIKE FOR SHORTER HOURS AND HIGHER WAGES

  By Ivoe Leila Williams

  KANSAS CITY, Mo.—For three days now the steam whistle at Ogden Packing Plant has not blown at 9 o’clock as its West Bottoms neighbors are accustomed. Instead 200 Negro men are found picketing along the blood-swept sidewalks. The trouble in Kansas City’s meatpacking plants is entirely economic; the strike is the result of unfair wages and labor conditions. Second only to Chicago’s Union Stock Yards, stockyards have boomed in the West Bottoms because of its close proximity to the largest convergence of railroad in the country, where daily more than 300 refrigerator trains ship fresh meats to scores of distant markets. Since the outbreak of war, demand for American meat products has skyrocketed. Our meatpackers have exported more than 100 million tons of beef and 1 billion pounds of sausage to feed soldiers and civilians. Factories that hold government contracts such as that of the Ogden Sausage Company are required by law to extend a livable wage. However, the firm drives down wages paid to its colored packers. Migration north of Kansas City and the first draft have precipitated an intense labor shortage, giving those men who remain greater employment opportunity and leverage in negotiating wages. But when the word passes around that help is needed and colored laborers apply, they are often told by white union officials that they have secured all the men they need because the places are reserved for white men only.

  If he is lucky enough to secure a position, the colored laborer’s path to livelihood remains by no means smooth. Even as his hours increase and his work doubles, his wages freeze. Laborers would normally take such complaints to the union. However, most of the trade unions exclude colored men, and those at the meat factories are no different. Ogden’s white union men deny exclusion, yet I know skilled workmen who were not admitted into the unions because they are colored. (Even when the colored man is allowed to join a union, he frequently derives little benefit, owing to certain tricks of the trade.) The colored men of Ogden Sausage Company need our support. Imagine a unified front of the colored men of all the city’s meatpacking plants—over 5,000. Surely the voices of demand for increased wages and more sanitary work conditions would be heard. And perhaps then it will be understood that our work, our loyalty, is a prize to be won.

  .

  Ivoe turned on the radio and looked out the window onto Eighteenth and Vine. Sophie Tucker sang about her little chocolate soldier, taking Ivoe’s mind back to a conversation with her brother the other night. The disappointment with which he had corrected her childhood impressions of his time with Company E (he had not been armed let alone a participant in any feat beyond Jim Crow’s purview) had embarrassed them both. But when he spoke of the union and the strike, his eyes brightened and he sounded strong. For no other reason, she would go against Ona and attend the rally where Timbo planned to address the strikers and their supporters. That morning’s terse discussion with her partner hinged on Ivoe “laying low.” Ona told her to spend the day writing an editorial not in direct opposition to the Kansas City Star Ledger.

  For weeks Ivoe had been embroiled in rebuttal articles. The city’s largest paper attacked men like her brother. The strike was denounced, the strikers labeled unpatriotic in their willingness to deny soldiers the vital nourishment
of meat during the greatest battles the world had known. When the Star Ledger indicted black male strikers as draft dodgers, Jam responded with a front-page article, “Why Fight for a Flag Whose Folds Do Not Protect?” And it devoted three columns to personal accounts of men denied registration cards from white postal workers all over the city, a practice dating back to May 1917. The Star Ledger’s “Performance Report Card,” which exalted white soldiers and made no mention of black soldiering, was met with an article (sourced by a clubwoman who worked for the exemption board) exposing hundreds of white registrants discharged on the same physical grounds that had exempted only two black men from military service. Letters of warning had come with no return address and no signature, demanding she desist her “one-sided dialogue.” Thereafter, she received an invitation to visit with the mayor and responded with a request to bring along her brother and the members of his union because they would benefit most from a meeting with Kansas City’s boss, whereas she had little if any need for a social call. Mayor Pendleton had not responded.

  Timbo’s questions evolved with his desire to penetrate the underbelly of the meatpacking plants. He had ferreted out much more than underpaid labor: schemes that led to the mayor’s office, a range of bribes and fraud that included meat for local restaurants and the U.S. Armed Forces. For now, Ivoe laid the puzzle out, reserved Timbo’s information. Ona thought that such a story—if not factually ironclad—could sink their fledgling newspaper. They should wait for additional pieces; it was no telling how big the picture was.

  That day her brother’s concerns were not with the crooked. He addressed a quiet mass of nearly two hundred about the small battles the union had won in front of the Livestock Exchange Building. With more than four hundred offices for the Stockyards Company, it was the largest livestock building in the world and the crown jewel of Kansas City commerce. The events that followed made no sense to Ivoe. One minute applause rippled through the crowd, the next Timbo was carried off. Ivoe thought she recognized the black men who grabbed him as a fight broke out in the audience. She strained to see where they had taken him when she was encircled by two police officers. She pushed past the men, unsure whether her brother had been carried to safety or danger. “Timbo!” she cried out, but stopped at the feel of a hand squeezing her arm.

  “You Ivoe Williams? Are you Ivoe Williams of the colored newspaper?”

  Her hands trembled but her voice did not betray her. She projected above the crowd that indeed she was Ms. Williams, founder and editor of Jam on the Vine.

  The paddy wagon coursed along the curb at 1125 Locust, police headquarters. The handkerchief tied around her head cut into the corners of her mouth. Morbid thoughts about prisons had haunted her for years, yet she was more concerned about Ona than a night in the county jail. The officers led her past the cellblock, out the back door, along a high wall to the stables yard, and pulled her along the horse tunnel until they emerged at a stall occupied by three men in suits. The police left her alone. She immediately recognized the men from political events associated with the mayor. Mice took cover in a pile of dung-smeared hay as the men tied her to a post. Grunting failed to put off the two working at her dress. The groping of buttocks she could endure, almost expected; it was the third man’s casual glance about the stall that frightened her. He wore the calm demeanor she imagined of Jack the Ripper. Finally his eyes landed on a bucket. The grooming tools landed at her feet.

  “‘Clean her up’ was the message we were given. Isn’t that right, boys?” He kicked a brush in her direction. “Which one do you want me to use?”

  What sounded like “please” in her head came out muffled, drowned out by the neighing of police horses. The yank of her dress to the ground nearly pulled her down; a firm grip around her neck steadied her. A breast was fondled, a nipple twisted hard. An odd thought sliced through the worst fear she had known. The expressionless man in front of her was wizened, had a family or somebody. Even if there was no one, he had freedom, a thousand other places he could be. Where did it come from? The kind of motivation that said, This now because I can. She saw her father’s face in her mind’s eye, felt the warm sensation down her inner thighs. The man cussed, said she peed like a mare, left the stall and returned with another bucket. The sting of the cold water made her knees buckle as they ordered her to stand and choose her brush.

  The face brush—the softest—was missing. Papa’d preferred horse grooming with corncobs, but he had taught her about the tools all the same. The bristles of the dandy brush were long and hard. She nodded at the curry brush with short metal teeth. The opening of a jar labeled HORSEFLY filled the stall with a pungent odor. She writhed and shook her head furiously to fling the insecticide from her body. He doused her until the bottle was empty and she had accepted her fate. He would set a match to her, sweep up the remains or leave them to the mice.

  The man stepped toward her. So this was the helplessness and regret Papa had also felt. At that moment, she knew her father was dead. The man raked against her breasts as though cleaning a tough-skinned elephant. Through her desperate pleas, they took turns scrubbing. Before she fainted, Ivoe thought of Momma—her daughter disappeared like her husband. She would see the worst of her life as the consequence of leaving Texas.

  .

  The nagging question of why she hadn’t just gone with Ivoe wrecked Ona. Tears trailed down her cheeks as she bent to kiss the top of her head. Were it not for the dress Ivoe wore, she would not have recognized the woman she found in the cell. Her face, legs, and arms were full of welts, her body a map of bloody lines. That evening she followed Lemon’s directions to the tee: salve and collard green leaves were laid over the scratches. Ivoe slept the whole night and all the next morning. In the afternoon she refused food and water, asking for news of her brother. He was fine, Ona assured her. Timbo had been taken away by friends who only meant to get him to Fairmount Park on time.

  Ivoe laid her head in Ona’s lap. Ona could feel herself trembling as she spoke. “If we have to eat beans every day, I don’t care, so long as you have an escort whenever you attend a rally or protest.” The peculiar nature of victimhood was under way, preparing for foolproof safety, planning for her next attack. “If you are ever late—you can’t be late, Ivoe. You must be where you say you’ll be at all times. We need an attorney on retainer. We need a telephone tree with many different branches . . . members of the women’s clubs, the church, the Vine’s business owners. Everybody gets called until your whereabouts are known.” Finally, spent of ideas, Ona cradled her tight. “We will file charges when you are well enough to fight.”

  .

  In the year that followed, they never spoke of the incident, though Ona often mentioned leaving Kansas City. No, Ivoe said. She had to stay and fight. The trick was battle selection. If they pursued Pendleton’s administration, they would lose what little resources they had; worse, she could lose her brother or her own life. The problem of proof urged restraint. She and Timbo had figured out who was connected to whom and why, which was the same as for how much. But what leverage did they have? Why would any white man offer incriminating evidence about the mayor? Timbo’s strike ended (after eleven months) with better wages and a more hygienic workplace. They put their investigation aside, not knowing they were bracing for another war.

  .

  “Miss Ivoe, I’m sorry to be late,” Bunchee said, bending over to catch his breath. Usually his pride in delivering the paper made him walk taller than four foot nine. At school, his teacher kept a copy of Jam on her desk. And his closest friend had gotten a whipping for using the paper the wrong way. After fishing at Brush Creek he and Bunchee had wrapped the trout in Jam to carry it home. His friend lit up, telling his mother about the two big fish they had caught. “That’s good, baby” had barely made it out her mouth when she saw the soggy bundle tucked under his arm. She hit him upside the head, saying he never paid attention and how many times had she told him to leave her p
aper alone? It meant something that Bunchee delivered Jam. He hated to disappoint and it showed in his face. “I’ll work fast. Run if I have to. I promise to deliver every issue before dark.”

  The nature of Bunchee’s running concerned Ivoe. He hadn’t run into the office as though he might miss the broadcast of a baseball game or free ice cream at Swope Park. His had been a distressed run, revealed by moist eyes and a torn shirt with snot on his collar. She looked out the window for any sign of trouble—bullying children, a disgruntled butcher. “Anybody after you? Wait just a minute,” she said, running up to the loft to retrieve their sewing box. In case the police happened by, she wanted his shirt mended. A few whipstitches would do. “Bunchee, what happened?”