Extrait
One
I was born in the small town of Fort Scott, Kansas. Clumped in the vastness of the prairie, it was proud of its posture as part of a free state, while clinging grimly to the ways of the Deep South. Blacks and whites moved about in deceiving air, seeming to avoid any sort of relationship that might somehow damage their pride. And as they lived, so were they consumed, one race by despair, the other by intolerance. It was a place with an inner music of its own; a tormenting music that provoked our black souls. The grade school was segregated but the high school wasn't--mainly because the town fathers couldn't scrounge up enough money to build a separate one. But even inside those walls of meager learning, black students had to accommodate themselves to the taste of salt. We were not allowed to participate in sports or attend social functions. The class advisers warned us against seeking higher education, adding, "You were meant to be maids and porters." College for us, they said, would be a waste of time and money.
Both the Empress and the Liberty theaters spoke silently, with small signs for blacks pointing toward the "buzzard's roost." From there only could we watch Hoot Gibson and William S. Hart chase Indians across the silent movie screens. White eating places warned us not to poke our heads through their doors or there would be trouble, and we were not allowed to drink a soda in either of the two drugstores. Even the graveyards shunted black burials to unkempt outer fields. Law was white, and issued death to blacks with the flick of a thumb. The executioner was a tobacco-chewing sheriff named Kirby. Humiliated or enraged, most blacks had to take in whatever spirit the white town fathers gave, and that spirit usually kept them in darkness. But there were other blacks with outsized courage, who showed that death was nothing to fear. They too were gun-minded, and as mean as Kirby was, he wasn't stupid. When the opposition became too fierce his old Harley Davidson churned up dust.
In retrospect, I consider myself lucky to be alive--especially when I remember that four of my close friends died of senseless brutality before they were twenty-one. I also consider myself lucky that I didn't kill someone. There was always the opportunity to do so--out of self-defense or uncontrollable anger, and not because of any wrongdoing of my own.
Reflecting now, I realize that, even within the limits of my childhood vision, I was on a search for pride, meanwhile taking measurable glimpses of how certain blacks, who were fed up with racism, rebelled against it.
In 1921, when I was nine, the Tulsa, Oklahoma, race riot took place. Whites invaded the black neighborhood, which turned out to be an armed camp. Many white Tulsans were killed and rumors swept through our community that the fury would spread into the state of Kansas and beyond. At this time Martin, a cousin of mine, decided he would go south to work for a mill that had offered him a job. My mother, knowing his temperament, pleaded with him not to go, but he caught a freight train headed south. Months passed and we had no word of him. Then one day his name flashed across the nation as one of the most wanted men in the country. He had killed a white mill hand who had called him a "dirty nigger" and spat in his face. He had killed another while fleeing the scene.
He came one night. I remember it was raining and I lay in the darkness of my room listening to pounding on the roof. Suddenly the window next to my bed slid up and Martin, soaking wet and cautious, scrambled through the opening. I started to yell as he landed on my bed, but he quickly covered my mouth with his hand and whispered his name, frightening me into silence. He went straight to my mother's room and shook her awake. She prayed over him and then tried to persuade him to surrender. He refused. He went to our old icebox, filled a paper sack with food and went out the same way he had entered. Two weeks later,
