Lawyer Tate fixed his eyes on me. “And was it worth it?”
“Well, I didn’t get to see the movie.”
“None of us did,” grumbled Henry.
“You do understand,” said Attorney Tate, “if Henry hadn’t called me and if I did not have an ongoing working relationship with these white people, you two would most likely have been arrested. You do understand that, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir, I understand.”
“I’ve worked with two of those particular officers before. As policemen go, they’re okay. They listen to reason, and they allowed your brother to go in to get you. They didn’t want a racial incident any more than we did. But you do something like this again, it might not turn out so well. Take seriously what I am saying to you, Cassie. You go up against the system again, you could wind up in jail. Is that clear to you?”
“It’s clear, Mr. Tate, but segregation is segregation, that’s the plain fact of the matter, and the fact that there are no signs still doesn’t make it right. It’s the same, with or without the signs.”
Lawyer Tate’s legal eyes studied me for a moment, then he said, “Hold on to that thinking, Cassie . . . and remember . . . our time will come. Our time will come.” He then turned abruptly to his son. “Okay, Henry, date’s over. You and Brenda come with me. We’ll drop Brenda off. Moe,” he said, turning back, “you come by my office when you get a chance. Robert, talk to your sister. I’ll see you and your lovely wife at church . . . and, Cassie,” he continued, glancing over at me, “maybe when Moe comes to see me, you need to come with him. Robert, you come too. I think we all need to talk. And one more thing, Miss Cassie Logan, you stay out of trouble.” With all orders given, he and Henry and Brenda got into his Lincoln and drove away.
We watched as they left, then Stacey said, “Moe, you get your car and we’ll see you at the house. Cassie, you ride with me. Car’s parked up the street. I want to talk to you.”
I sighed, looked at Moe, and went with Stacey. I knew I was in for it.
“So, what were you thinking?” Stacey demanded to know as we drove toward home. “Or did you think?”
I looked out the window, not wanting to talk about it. “It’s been a hard day, Stacey.”
“It could’ve been a lot harder. You could be sitting in jail right now.”
“I know.”
“And all for a movie you didn’t even get to see.”
I turned to him. “What do you want me to say? Maybe I just didn’t think about all that. It was the principle of the thing!”
“Cassie, you know as well as I do that principle will land your behind in jail, and no, you did not think. You certainly didn’t think about Moe.”
I was silent as Stacey glanced over at me.
“Forget yourself and your principle for a moment. What if Moe had been arrested? What good would principle have served then?”
“Moe didn’t have to go in with me,” I protested sullenly. “I didn’t ask him.”
“Oh, come on now, Cassie,” Stacey said, exasperated with me. He knew me like a book. “You know better than that! Moe would never have let you go in that theater alone, and he would never leave you, you know that too. You made up your mind about this thing and you just didn’t care about the consequences.”
I took his chastising, but then defended lamely, “Like I said, it was the principle of the thing.”
Stacey scoffed that off. “The principle. If Lawyer Tate hadn’t shown up to talk to those white people, Moe could have been arrested. You need to think, Cassie, before you go taking a stand about principle. How many times Papa and Mama tell us that?” Stacey again looked at me. “Your principle could have landed Moe back in Mississippi. Your principle could have gotten Moe killed.”
I met Stacey’s eyes in the dark and knew there were no further words to say. He was right, and that’s all there was to that. He was right about everything. We drove the rest of the way home in silence. Like the night, the streets were beginning to quiet, and in silence I thought about the city of Toledo without its signs, but segregated anyway. I thought about Toledo with all its opportunities, but segregated anyway. At least down home in Mississippi and throughout the South, folks were direct and honest about what was expected. Everybody knew exactly where a body stood. There was no pretense to equality. The signs were everywhere. Whites Only. Colored Not Allowed. We had a place and they had a place. Everybody had a place, and everybody knew where and what that place was. Whites Only. Colored Not Allowed. But here in Toledo, there were no signs. There did not have to be. It was simply understood.
Whites Only. Colored Not Allowed.
LAYOFFS
(1946–1947)
Moe Turner was Stacey’s best friend, and they had been through a lot together. At the age of fourteen, the two of them had run off to the Louisiana cane fields looking for work. They had gone not out of rebellion, but because both the Turners and our family, like just about every family around, were struggling with their crops, with their debt. Our family in particular, one of the few black families in the community who owned land, was faced with losing that land. With no money coming in, Stacey and Moe had taken it upon themselves to get some money by going off on their own. They were gone for months and both Moe’s widowed father and all our family had searched for them, worried about them, and prayed for them. In the end, we had found them, sick and frail in a Louisiana jail.
Both had come home that time, but that was not the case when, a few years later, Moe took a crowbar and slammed it into three white boys, three white boys in Mississippi. He bloodied them, injuring them severely, then he had fled the county and Mississippi and gone up to Memphis with the help of Stacey and a white boy named Jeremy Simms. The year Moe fled was 1941, just before the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the country’s entry into World War II. I remember thinking that at least Moe didn’t have to worry about having to be a soldier. The government and the state of Mississippi didn’t know where to find him.
“Moe,” said Attorney Tate, crossing his long legs as he pushed slightly away from his desk, which was between us, “I asked you to come meet with me because I have a story to tell you, a story that might be of interest to you. It’s about Mississippi.”
Moe looked quizzically at the attorney, then quickly at Stacey and me, and again at Attorney Tate. “Interest to me?”
Attorney Tate nodded. “And I asked Robert and Cassie to come with you because I think they have a part in it.”
Both Stacey and I kept our eyes straight ahead, focused on Attorney Tate, but my heart began to race, for I feared where this might be going.
“As you know, I have contact with the police department and also with a number of attorneys in this area, including the district attorney’s office. Well, recently one of these people contacted me as a representative of the Negro community and asked me if I knew a young man by the name of Moe Turner who might live here. . . .”
His voice trailed off for a moment as his eyes studied us. I kept my eyes directly on him. I felt movement from Moe, who sat next to me on the office couch. Lawyer Tate’s eyes took note. “Of course, I told this person truthfully that I was not aware of any gentleman by that name, but I did ask why he was inquiring. I was told that it had come to his attention that a man named Moe Turner from Mississippi might be in the area and that this young man was wanted by the law in Mississippi.” Again Lawyer Tate paused. Again he set his gaze on each of us. Then he added, “Wanted for a brutal assault on three white men.”
Moe sighed, and I looked at him. In Moe’s face I saw the same look of fear as five years ago, when he realized what he had done and what he was about to face. Attorney Tate kept his eyes on Moe, but Moe’s eyes were downcast and he didn’t speak.
Stacey glanced over at Moe and at me, then said, “So, what does this have to do with us?”
“Well, maybe not a thing,” replied Lawyer Tat
e. “But I felt I had to mention it to you, because your name came up, Robert.”
“My name?” questioned Stacey.
“Oh, goodness,” I murmured, no longer able to pretend disinterest in what Attorney Tate was saying.
My emotional disclaimer was not lost on the lawyer, who glanced my way but said nothing. He went on. “Seems there is a white boy from Mississippi working at Willys Overland. Seems he recognized you, Robert, and he said that he was there in a town called Strawberry on the day of the attack. He recalled that on that day you and your sister were there in town also, and that he knew your family and the Turner family were close. He told folks back in Strawberry about you. Said that perhaps you would know where Moe Turner would be. Authorities there contacted the Toledo police and said there is an arrest warrant in Mississippi for this Moe Turner for aggravated assault. Ironic thing is that your name came up on the same day Miss Cassie here decided to integrate the downstairs seating area at the movie theater.” He smiled bemusedly my way. “Course now, the police didn’t take any names about that theater incident and that was at my request. I didn’t want any of this coming back on you or your family, Robert . . . or you, Moe.”
Stacey was silent a moment, eyes on Lawyer Tate, then, without looking at Moe or me, he said, “Well, I tell you, Lawyer Tate—”
At that, the attorney held up his hand, stopping him from speaking. “I don’t need explanations. I don’t need to know anything. In fact, I do not want to know anything. All I wanted you to know is that there is a white person from Mississippi who knows you and Cassie and that if he presses this thing, somebody from law enforcement might come to question you. I assume no one has contacted you about this.” Stacey shook his head in silence. “Well, maybe no one will come at all. You and Cassie weren’t implicated in that attack on those Mississippi boys. Like I told the detective who asked me about all this, I don’t know the name Moe Turner. Actually, the only Moe I know is a young man by the name of Moe McKlellan. . . .” He looked straight at Moe. “But, of course, I didn’t tell them that.”
Moe shifted uneasily. Since his arrival in the North, Moe had been using the name Moe McKlellan and had gotten his job under that name. He also had identification under that name.
“This man who said he recognized me, you know who he is?” asked Stacey.
Attorney Tate touched a file on his desk, thumped it, and put on his glasses before opening it. He checked a paper inside. “Harold Rockmiler,” he said. He took off his glasses and looked up. “You know him?”
Stacey shook his head and looked at me. I shrugged. I hadn’t heard of him either.
“Well, as I said,” continued Lawyer Tate, “I just wanted all of you to know there was an inquiry. Also, if you ever need legal advice, my door is always open.” He pushed back from his desk and stood. With that, Stacey, Moe, and I knew the meeting was ended, and we stood too. We thanked Attorney Tate, but as we started to leave, he stopped me. “Cassie, I’d like to speak to you for a minute.”
I turned back as Stacey and Moe went into the outer office. “Yes, sir?” I said.
Lawyer Tate came over to me. “I’ve been thinking about your stand the other night at the movie theater. Maybe it wasn’t a wise thing you did, but I admired it.”
I glanced at Stacey, standing now by the secretary’s desk. “Well, my brother sure didn’t.”
Lawyer Tate smiled at that, then said, “I know you’re working on a degree in education from the university here and Henry tells me you’re almost finished with your courses. How soon will that be?”
“I have a couple more courses to take in the fall. Once I’ve passed them, I’ll be qualified to teach in Ohio, probably by next January. But why are you asking?”
“Well, I’ve just been wondering if you’re planning on actually teaching once you do qualify.”
I was surprised that Lawyer Tate had been wondering about me at all. “Well, to be truthful with you, I don’t know if I’ll teach or not. My mother’s a teacher and she loves it, but I don’t feel the same as she does about teaching and I figure I ought to love whatever I do if that’s what I’m going to be doing the rest of my life.”
Attorney Tate nodded. “I agree with you, Cassie, that you ought to love whatever you do and have a real commitment to it. So, think about this, Cassie.” His eyes met mine. “Law.”
“Law?”
“That’s right, law. Just think about it. You want to take a stand about injustices, this could be a way. Like I said the other night, our day is coming for change, and you could well be a part of it. Just think about it.”
I was silent a moment, struck by the thought. “I will,” I said, and moved to go.
“And, Cassie, one word of advice. If you do choose law, never give yourself away concerning your circumstances, or those of a client, when it is not in your best interest to do so.”
“What do you mean?”
“During our conversation earlier, Cassie, you confirmed something to me that I already suspected, something a good lawyer would always recognize.”
I thought a moment, then realized what he meant. My emotional murmur had given him insight into my thinking. “Oh,” I said.
He smiled. “You ever want to talk further about this, I’m here.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I’ll remember that.”
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
Attorney Tate hadn’t asked, so we hadn’t told him what had happened that day back in Strawberry when Moe had thrashed those three white boys with a crowbar. If we had told the attorney, I knew he would have understood. He too was from the South—South Carolina—and even if he had not come out of the South he would have understood anyway. Anybody of color would have understood.
It was the taunting, the humiliation that led Moe to strike out at Statler Aames and his brothers. And it was the fear. The Aames brothers along with their cousin, Jeremy Simms, had already chased down a colored boy along the Creek Rosa Lee, and the boy had been injured. On that December day in Strawberry I knew I was thinking about what had happened along the Rosa Lee, and I knew Moe was too. Clarence Hopkins was as well.
Clarence was also a good friend of ours, same age as Stacey and Moe. He recently had joined the Army, and he was with us, in uniform, that day. Statler Aames and his brothers saw Clarence and even though Clarence was in uniform, or perhaps because he was, they began to taunt him, to humiliate him with racial jokes. They had forced Clarence to take off his soldier’s cap so that they could rub his head for so-called good luck. Clarence had bowed his head, scrunched his soldier’s cap in his hands in silence, and they had rubbed his head with raucous laughter and invited other white men watching to do the same.
Stacey was not with us, but Moe and I had witnessed all that was happening to Clarence and had felt the shame of it. Only the appearance of Mr. Wade Jamison stopped the Aames brothers from further humiliating Clarence. Mr. Wade Jamison was a white man, a lawyer, a powerful figure in the county, and could be a formidable foe. Mr. Wade Jamison had befriended us on more than one occasion. He was the one white man we called our friend. But Mr. Jamison was not present a little while later when Statler and the other Aames boys tried to do the same thing to Moe as they had done to Clarence.
Moe chose not to bow his head.
When they approached, Moe was in the process of using a tire iron to remove a flat tire from Stacey’s car. The Aames brothers seemed to take no note of the crowbar or that Moe might use it. They took no note that Moe might not submit to their taunting as Clarence had done. They took no note that Moe might strike back. They attempted to touch Moe’s head and Moe had lashed out with the tire iron. He struck Statler first, knocking him to the ground, then the other two brothers, Leon and Troy, as they came at him. Moe had seriously injured Troy, whom he had smashed in the head, and Troy had been bedridden ever since. He lashed out at all of them for what they were attempti
ng to do to him, for what they had done to Clarence, for what they had done along the Rosa Lee. He had lashed out for all of us; then he had run for his life.
Moe escaped the county in the tarp-covered bed of a truck driven by Jeremy Simms. Jeremy drove him as far as Jackson. From Jackson, Stacey had taken Moe out of Mississippi up to the train station in Memphis. I was with them, along with our friend Little Willie Wiggins. On that day we all feared we might never see Moe again as he fled far away from us, but we knew he had to go. There was no way he could stay in Mississippi and live. Moe, of course, was feeling all this too, and it was even more frightening for him. He was leaving everyone he knew, everyone he loved. He was leaving his widowed father and all his family. He was leaving with the laws of Mississippi against him. He was leaving and knew he could never return. He was leaving me, and that is why he kissed me. He was leaving me, and that is why he said he loved me.
That was the first time Moe had ever kissed me, the first time I had ever realized he thought of me as more than a friend, more than just Stacey’s little sister. It was the first time and the last. In the years since, he had not attempted to kiss me again, and that was just as well for I had felt nothing when Moe kissed me. Moe was my friend, my close and special friend, but that was all and that was all I wanted him to be.
“Moe, I think you know it’s best if you don’t come down here for a while,” said Stacey when we were in the car and heading back to the house. “You best stay in Detroit.”
Moe was silent.
Stacey glanced over. “We’ll come see you there.”
“I don’t want to put y’all in trouble.”
“I think we’ll be all right. White folks always known about our families, how close we are. I’m sure a lot of them know I’m up here, and Cassie too. The law in Mississippi’s not interested in us—”
“Just me,” said Moe.
Stacey nodded. “I think so. That’s why I say you shouldn’t come for a while.”
All the Days Past, All the Days to Come Page 6