by Maya Angelou
"We'll be there."
"Eight-thirty on Friday."
"See you, sister. See you at the U.N."
"God bless you."
We sat quiet in the taxi and held on to each other. The enormity of the crowd and its passionate response had made us mute. We agreed to meet the next day.
I went back to an empty house. Guy's dinner dishes drained on the sideboard and a note propped on the dining-room table informed me that he was attending a SANE meeting and to expect him at ten-thirty.
Rosa phoned. We had to draw money from CAW AH. Her niece Jean was going downtown to a fabric outlet in the morning. She would buy black tulle and elastic. Rosa would pick up bobby pins from Woolworth's. We ought to meet at her house to make the arm bands and stick the pins in the veils. I agreed and hung up. Abbey phoned. Would I call women of CAWAH and would I check with the Harlem Writers Guild, and just to be on the safe side, wouldn't it be a good idea to make up a hundred veils and arm bands? I agreed.
Guy came home, full of his meeting. SANE was planning a demonstration on Saturday in New Jersey. He and Chuck would
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like to go. If the Killens and I gave permission for them to miss a school day, they would join a march on Friday, walking across the George Washington Bridge. He would be O.K., Mom. They would carry sleeping bags, and a lot of peanuts, and after all, hadn't I said I wanted him to be involved? "Dad," would certainly agree if he wasn't in India. My generation had caused the atomic bomb to be dropped on Hiroshima, the year he was born. So he could say correctly that he was an atomic baby. He and Chuck had talked. The bomb must never be used again. Human beings had been killed by the hundreds of thousands, and millions mutilated, and did I want to see the photographs of Hiroshima again?
I gave him permission to go to New Jersey.
Jean, Amece and Sarah cut the bolt of black tulle. Rosa sewed strips of elastic to half the large squares while Abbey and I gathered bobby pins into the remainder.
Jean pinned a veil to her hair and the stiff material stood out like a softly pleated fan. Her eyes and copper-colored skin were faintly visible through the material. She looked like a young woman, widowed by an untimely accident. We looked at her and approved. Our gesture was going to be successful.
On Friday morning, I stepped over Guy's sleeping bag, which he had laid open on the living-room floor. It wouldn't be kind to awaken him, since he would be sleeping rough that evening after his march. He knew I had planned to leave the house early for the United Nations. I placed a five-dollar bill on the plaid sleeping bag and left the apartment.
Abbey's house was a flurry of action. CAWAH women were busy, drinking coffee, laying the veils in one box, talking, putting the arm bands in another box, eating sweet rolls a teacher had brought, smiling and flirting with Max, who walked around us like a handsome pasha in a busy harem. We left for the elevators, carrying the boxes, and jumpy with excitement.
Max and Abbey could take four in their car. The rest would find taxis. We agreed to meet on the sidewalk in front of the U.N. Amece and Rosa had the veils, so they rode with Max. The
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teacher, the model, Sarah and I would travel together. Jean and the other friends would get their own taxis. Finding a cab so early on Friday on New York's Upper West Side was not easy. Business people had radio-controlled taxis on regular calls, and many white drivers sped up when black people hailed them, afraid of being ordered north to Harlem and/or of receiving small tips.
At ten minutes to nine our taxi turned off 42nd Street onto First Avenue. Sarah and I screamed at the same time. The driver put on brakes and we all crashed forward.
"What the hell is going on here?" The cabbie's alarm matched our own. People stood packed together on the sidewalk and spilled out into the street. Placards stating freedom now, back to
AFRICA, AFRICA FOR THE AFRICANS, ONE MAN, ONE VOTE Waved On
sticks above the crowd.
We looked out the windows. Thousands of people circled in the street and all of them were black. We paid and made our way to the crowd.
"Here she is. Here's one of them."
"Sister, we told you we'd be here. Where you been?"
"How do we get inside? The police said ..."
"They won't let us in."
The shouts and questions were directed at me. I began a chant and used it moving through the anxious crowd: "I'll see about it. I'll take care of it. I'll take care of it. I'll see about it." Not knowing whom to see, or really how I would take care of anything.
Rosa was waiting for me in front of the severely modern building by the large glass doors.
"Can you imagine this crowd? So many people. So many." She was excited and her Caribbean was particularly noticeable. "And the guards have refused entrance."
"Rosa, you said you'd get tickets from the African delegations."
"I know, but only the Senegalese and my friend from Upper Volta have shown up." She had to shout, because the crowd had begun to chant.
She leaned toward me, frowning, "I've only got seven tickets."
The people on the sidewalk shouted. "Freedom!" "Freedom!" "Lumumba! Lumumba!"
She said, "Little Carlos is here. The Cuban, you know. He took the tickets and went in with Abbey, Max, Amece and others. He'll bring the tickets back and take in six more. It's the only way." Carlos Moore was an angry young man who moved through Harlem's political sky like a luminous meteor.
I looked over at the black throng. Many had never been in midtown Manhattan, thinking the blocks south of Harlem as dangerous as enemy territory and no man's land. On our casual encouragement, they had braved the perilous journey.
Carlos came trotting through the double doors. "Sister, you have arrived." He grinned, his little chocolate face gleeful. "I am ready for the next group. Let's go! Now!"
I turned, and without thinking about it, plucked the first people in the crowd.
"Give me your placards. You're going in." I held the ungainly weighted sticks and Carlos shouted to the chosen men and women. "Follow me, brothers and sisters. Stay close to me." They disappeared into the dim foyer, and I redistributed the placards.
Rosa had walked away into the crowd. I took her example and moved through the people near the building.
"What's going on, sister?"
"The crackers don't want to let us in, huh?"
"We could break the motherfucker wide open."
"Shit, all we got to do is die. And we gonna do that any goddam way."
I stopped with that group. "Nothing could please the whites more than to have a reason to shoot down innocent black folks. Don't give them the pleasure."
An old woman grabbed my sleeve. "God will bless you, honey. If you keep the children alive."
She sounded wise and was about the age of my grandmother. "Yes, ma'am. Thank you." I took her hand and pulled her away from the seething mass. She would go in with the next group. We
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walked to the steps together. I turned and raised my voice to explain what had obviously happened.
Informers had alerted the police that Harlem was coming to the U.N. So security had been increased. In order to get into the building we had to exercise restraint. The cops were nervous, so to prevent some trigger-happy idiot from shooting into the crowd, we had to remain cool.
The people assented with a grace I found assuring. The old woman and I reached the top steps as Carlos came through the doors. "Six more. And we move. Now!"
Carlos gathered the next five people along with the old lady and led them into the building.
For the next thirty minutes, as Carlos siphoned off groups of six and led them into the building, more cadres of police arrived to stand armed and confused on the sidewalks and across the street, while plain-clothed white men took photographs of the action.
A marcher grabbed my sleeve. "What you folks think you're doing? You told us to come down here and now you can't get us in." The man was furious. He continued, "Ye
ah, that's black folks for you. Running around half shaved and grinning."
I wanted to explain how some fink had put us in the cross, but Rosa appeared, taking my other sleeve.
"Come on, Maya. Come on now." Her urgency would not be denied. I looked at the angry man and lied. "I'll be right back".
Inside the gleaming hall, unarmed security guards stood anxiously at their posts. Near the wide stairs leading to the second floor, Carlos was hemmed in by another group of guards.
"I've got my ticket. This is mine." Frayed stubs protruded from his black fist. "They were given to me by a delegate."
Rosa and I pushed into the circle, forcing the guards away. Rosa took his arm. "Come on, Carlos, we've got to go."
We walked together straight and moderately slowly, controlling the desire to break and run, keening into the General Assembly.
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Although we were beyond the guards' hearing, Carlos whispered, "The Assembly has started. Stevenson is going to speak soon."
Upstairs, more guards stood silent as we passed. Two black men were waiting by the entry to the hall, anxiety flushing their faces.
"Carlos! We thought they had you, man."
"They'll never have me, mon. I am Carlos, mon."
His assurance had returned. Rosa smiled at me and we entered the dark, quiet auditorium. Miles away, down a steep incline, delegates sat before microphones in a square of light, but the upper balcony was too dim for me to distinguish anything clearly.
After a few seconds, the gloom gave way, and the audience became visible. About seventy-five black people were mixed among the whites. Some women had already pinned veils over their faces.
Amece, Jean and the teacher sat together. Max and Abbey were across the aisle near Sarah and the model. An accented voice droned unintelligibly.
"Uh, uhm, mm, urn."
The little white man so far away leaned toward his microphone, his bald forehead shining-white. Dark-rimmed glasses stood out on the well-known face.
A scream shattered his first word. The sound was bloody and broad and piercing. In a second other voices joined it.
"Murderers."
"Lumumba. Lumumba."
"Killers."
"Bigoted sons of bitches."
The scream still rode high over the heads of astounded people who were rising, clutching each other or pushing out toward the aisle.
The houselights came on. Stevenson took off his glasses and looked to the balcony. The shock opened his mouth and made his chin drop.
A man near me screamed, "You Ku Klux JQan motherfuckers."
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Another yelled, "Murderers."
African diplomats were as alarmed as their white counterparts. I was also shaken. We had not anticipated a riot. We had been expected to stand, veiled and mournful, in a dramatic but silent protest.
"Baby killers."
"Slave drivers."
Terrorized whites in the audience tried to hustle away from the yelling blacks. Security guards rushed through the doors on the upper and lower levels.
The garish lights, the stampede of bodies and the continuing high-pitched scream were overpowering. My knees weakened and I sat down in the nearest seat.
A woman in the aisle beside me screamed at the guards, "Don't dare touch me. Don't put your hands on me, you white bastard!"
The guards were shouting, "Get ou£. Get out."
The woman said, "Don't touch me, you Belgian bastard."
Below, the diplomats rose and formed an orderly file toward an exit.
When the piercing scream stopped I heard my own voice shouting, "Murderers. Killers. Assassins."
Two women grappled with a guard in the aisle. Garlos had leaped onto a white man's back and was riding him to the floor. A stout black woman held the lapels of a white man in civilian clothes.
"Who you trying to kill? Who you trying to kill? You don't know me, you dog. You don't know who you messing with."
The man was hypnotized and beyond fear, and the woman shook him like a dishrag.
The diplomats had vanished and except for the guards the whites had disappeared. The balcony was ours. Just as in the Southern segregated movie houses, we were in the buzzards' roost again.
Rosa found me and I got up and followed her. We urged the people back to the safety of the street. The black folks strode
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proudly past the guards, through the hall and out the doors into sunshine.
The waiting crowd, enlarged by latecomers and more police, had changed its mood. Insiders had told outsiders that we had rioted, and now an extravagant disorder was what the blacks wanted, while the law officers yearned for vindication.
"Let's go back in." "Let's go in and show them bastards we mean business." "This ain't no United Nations. This is just united white folks. Let's go back in."
A cadre of police stood on the steps, their eyes glittering. By law, they were forbidden inside the U.N. building, but they were eager to prevent our reentry.
Some folks screamed at the silent seething police.
"You killed Lumumba too. You shit."
"I wish I had your ass on 125th Street."
"Take off your pistol. I'll whip your ass."
Carlos rushed to me.
"We're going to the Belgian Consulate. Walk together." Rosa's voice was loud. "Forty-sixth Street. The Associated Press Building. Let us go. Let's go."
The crowd began to move between a corridor of police which stretched to the street. Up front, someone had started to sing.
"And before I'll be a slave, I'll be buried in my grave . . ."
The song rippled, now high, now low. Picked up by voices and dropped but never discarded.
"And go home to my God and be free."
Mounted police, sitting tall on hot horses, looked down as we crossed First Avenue, singing.
Rosa and I were walking side by side in the last group as we turned into 43 rd street. I said, "That scream started it. Wonder who screamed."
She frowned and laughed at the same time. "Amece, and she almost killed Jean."
The marchers around us were singing
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"No more slavery,
No more slavery,
No more slavery over me."
Rosa continued, "Amece said she looked down and saw Stevenson and thought about Lumumba. She reached to caress her daughter, but Jean jumped and Amece screamed. Unfortunately, she had her arm around Jean's neck. So when Jean jerked, Amece tightened her grip and kept screaming. Nobody was going to hurt her baby. So she screamed" Rosa laughed. "Nobody but Amece. She nearly choked Jean to death."
The crowd was trooping and chanting.
Six mounted police climbed the sidewalk and rode through the stragglers. People jumped out of the way as the horses bore down on them.
A wiry black man unable to escape was being pressed against the wall of a building. I flung myself toward him slapping horses, jutting my elbows into their flanks.
"Get away. Move, dammit."
The man was flat against the wall, ignoring the horses, staring up at the policemen. I reached him and took his hand.
"Come on, brother. Come on, brother."
We walked between the shifting horses and back to Rosa, who had halted the group.
Rosa was grinning, her face filled with disbelief. "Maya An-gelou, I thought you were scared of animals. You went into those horses, kicking ass!"
She was right. I had never owned a pet. I didn't understand the intelligent idiocy of dogs or cats; in fact, all animals terrorized me. The day's action had taken away my usual self and made me uncommon. I was literally intoxicated with adventure.
We approached the corner of 46th and Sixth Avenue, and the intersection reminded me of a South American news telecast. For the moment, heavily armed police and angry people seemed to neutralize the scene. Bright sunlight left no face in shadow and
the two groups watched each other warily, moving dreami
ly this way and then that. That way and this. Policemen's hands were never far from their pistols, and plain-clothed officers spoke into the static of walkie-talkies. Black demonstrators edged along the sidewalk, rumbling and carrying battered and torn placards.
Police cars were parked double in the street and a captain walked among his men, talking and looking obliquely at the crowd, trying to evaluate its mood and its intention.