A Shade of Difference (60 page)

“Mr. President,” he said, into the angry mutterings he had aroused from many sections of the great assemblage, “this is a futile and empty gesture, and everyone knows it. We know it. The proposers know it. The Ambassador of France knows it.

“The only matter before this Assembly is the amendment of the distinguished Ambassador of Panama. We are not concerned with some will-o’-the-wisp created by a black lackey, in some other gathering in a country whose attitude on race is all too well known to us. We are concerned only with the amendment of the Ambassador of Panama. Let us vote on it, Mr. President.
Now!”

And, as many delegates stood and gave him a standing ovation, he strode with an air of unassailable righteousness back up the aisle to his seat.

There occurred then several moments of vagueness and uncertainty at the podium. Again it could be seen that there was discussion in the U.S. delegation; again the crew-cut young State Department aide hurried to whisper to the President. The Secretary-General was observed to leave his chair and go behind the wall in back of the podium to his private waiting room, hidden from the Assembly. In a moment he was back, shaking his head. Again there was frantic conferring at the rostrum, further hasty conferring in the U.S. delegation.

“I’m going up to him,” Hal Fry said grimly through the whirling haze before his eyes.

“You’re staying right here!” Lafe said in his ear. “Just try to stand up. You can’t do it.”

“Yes, I ca—” Hal Fry said; but the words died, for he couldn’t. He sat back with a helpless expression. “I’m too dizzy,” he whispered.

“You sit right here,” Lafe said quickly. “If you want to be helped out, the others will take you. If you can stick it, I’ll take you myself after he speaks.”

“I’ll stick,” Hal said, with an attempt at a smile that hurt his colleague to see. “That’s the least I can do.”

“Good,” Lafe said. “Don’t move.”

And he jumped up and strode down the aisle toward the podium, causing a renewed and livelier buzz as delegates, press, and visitors craned eagerly to see him go. He too stopped briefly to confer with the President and the S.-G., and then turned away to start toward the S.-G.’s private room. With an abrupt air of decision, as though he had finally made some commitment in his own mind, the Secretary-General rose suddenly and followed after. He caught up with the Senator and they disappeared together behind the wall that bore upon it the map of a troubled planet.

For several minutes, as the excitement and speculation increased and the whirr of buzz and gossip mounted, there was no further action at the dais. Then the S.-G. returned to his seat, impassive but with a certain indefinable air of relief. The Senator from Iowa followed and conferred quickly with the President.

“If the Assembly will be in order,” the President said, “the United States of America will now address the Assembly. The distinguished representative of the United States.”

“Mr. President,” Lafe Smith said, “much has been made here today of a resolution in the United States Congress. Much has been said about the character and integrity of its author. In our country, when a man is attacked he has a right to speak back and explain his actions and his purposes. In this Assembly a man should have the same right. It is my honor to present to this worthy gathering a man I am proud to claim as a fellow American, a fellow worker on my delegation, and a colleague in the Congress of the United States, the distinguished Representative from the State of California, the Honorable Cullee Hamilton.”

“Oh, brother,” the
New York
Post
snapped. “Of all the cheap stunts!”

“Nothing like desperation to bring out the good old American corn, is there?” the
Daily Express
agreed.

“You mean we’re not supposed to defend ourselves but just let all the rest of you bastards walk all over us?” the
New York
Herald Tribune
inquired with a sudden angry glint in his eyes. But the
Express’
answer, if any, was lost in the noise and confusion from floor and galleries as the Congressman from California appeared from behind the map-wall and walked slowly forward to take his position, with a little bow to the President, at the rostrum. Lafe Smith hurried back up the aisle to take his seat beside Senator Fry, and the room quieted down.

Of his thoughts at that moment, no single one stood forth with any clarity of outline in Cullee’s mind as he waited for the hum and stir to subside. He was not, indeed, really conscious of the room; a moment which under other circumstances might have been a proud one for him was instead a blur in which he found himself concentrating desperately on the task of holding himself steady and planning his opening remarks. He was not conscious that someone from over in the direction of the delegation of Mali shouted “Traitor!” or that the Soviet Union and its satellites were banging their desks or that others from Africa were booing or that the uproar was met and matched with counternoise of applause and approval from many other delegations. Nor could he perceive in the public gallery his wife and his friend, or note that they seemed to scrunch down a little lower in their seats, as though for fear he might see them.

He could not have seen them at that distance, even had he known they were there; and at this moment they and all else were crowded from his mind by the sheer necessity to remain standing and not keel over, to open his mouth and let something intelligible come out. One tiny thing he did notice as he glanced down at his hands gripping the lectern: he was holding it so tightly that his knuckles were white. White! There’s an irony for you, he thought, in his first glimmer of coherence since Lafe’s voice had dragged him forward, through a great unhappy confusion, to face the world. With it came another thought: This is like the House. Pretend it’s the House. You’ve done that so often, it’s easy; pretend it’s the House—and presently, in what seemed a flick of time to those who watched but an eternity to him, he found that he was able to draw a deep breath and, through the gradually subsiding uproar, begin.

“Mr. Speaker—” he said, and caught himself as there came a quick reaction of laughter, partly hostile but predominantly friendly; and, encouraged by it, he corrected himself and, increasingly assured, managed to speak with a gradual return of his usual even dignity.

“Mr. President: I suppose I could waste your time, and mine, by indulging in personalities with other delegates who have spoken here. I just don’t know what good it would do. If you want to think badly of me, I can’t stop you. If you want to be decent to me, I will thank you. It’s your decision, and I can’t see that calling names is going to help anybody decide about it.”

He paused, and there was a ripple of approval across the room, most of it from Western delegations but some, too, from the Africans and Asians.

“There is one thing I think you should know,” he said quietly. “I happen to be an American, and I happen to be proud of it. And if I can love my country in spite of all the things some of my fellow Americans have done to my people, then I don’t see what gives some of you the right to be so smart and self-righteous about attacking her.”

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Lafe said in a worried tone, but Hal Fry, now in one of those sudden capricious quirks of his private demon, feeling much better, said, “No, he’s right He knows how to talk to them.”

“Quite a fuss has been made here,” Cullee went on, and now he had them listening intently, “because I introduced a resolution. A lot of people wanted me to introduce this resolution, and they weren’t all white, either. Some of them were people who are attacking me now because of it. Some people say I did it because the Administration wanted me to. Of course I talked to the Administration about it. It involves foreign policy and some important matters for my country. Why wouldn’t I talk to the Administration? I’d be a pretty poor Congressman if I didn’t, I think.” There was a little murmur of approval and agreement, and no competing desk-banging, this time.

“Well. So I introduced a resolution. You all know what it does. It expresses the apologies of the Congress to my good friend from Gorotoland there, His Royal Highness the M’Bulu. My wife and I”—for just a second his voice got a little thin, but only a couple of people in the galleries noticed it as he hurried on—“my wife and I have been in Terry’s home. He has been in my home. Not with all
his
wives,” he added with a sudden impulse of humor that proved to be correct, for there was a wave of appreciative laughter over the hall, “but, anyway,
he
has. I was with him in Charleston.” The laughter died abruptly and he talked right into the silence as he knew he must. “I advised him against doing what he did there”—a scattering of boos came up—“because I happen to believe there are more effective ways to handle it, and I have a responsibility to work for them peaceably in the Congress of the United States. But, he went ahead. That was his privilege. Because he did, many things have happened, including my being here right now.

“So. Something had to be done, I thought, to express officially our apologies in the Congress, and also to give aid to his country which, we all hope, will very rapidly be set free of its colonial status to Britain. And I also thought the Congress should pledge itself officially to move even faster in the area of race relations than it has in the past.”

At this there was skeptical laughter here and there over the floor, and he responded sharply.

“You think it
hasn’t
done anything in the past? Brothers, you need to read up a bit. You need to get smart about what’s going on in this country, and I don’t mean just in Little Rock or Alabama or Charleston or any other place the distinguished delegate of the Soviet Union can think of. He’s white too, remember. And his Chinese friends are yellow. I’d think a lot about letting them take over Africa, if I were you.”

There was violent desk-banging and some shouts of protest from the Soviet delegation. He ignored them and went on.

“My job is in the Congress, and that’s where I work for my people. Terry has his ways; I have mine. I guess the Ambassador of Panama”—he said sarcastically—“and his wife—and his brother-in-law, the Governor of California who would like to be President—and all their friends and relations have their own ways, too.” He paused and then added dryly, “Perhaps I’m mistaken, but I think they’re white, too. At least they were last time I looked.” There was a sudden delighted shout of laughter from many delegations.

“You know he’s got to do it this way,” Hal responded to Lafe’s quizzical expression. “It’s the only way that will work.”

“So there was a white amendment introduced up here. And there’s a colored resolution introduced down there. And you want to vote on the white one because the way things are set up you can’t vote on the colored one. But I tell you something, my friends, it’s the colored one that really means something, because that’s the one that carries the money for Gorotoland and that’s the one that puts the Congress on record to do more about our race problems at home. When we vote in the Congress, things happen. I think you ought to give us a chance to do it.

“I’m not going to pretend to you that it’s going to be easy, because it isn’t. We’ve got some tough fighters on the other side. They may win. I don’t think they will, but it could be. You’ve got to give us the chance, though. I can tell you one thing for sure, my resolution never will get through if you pass this amendment here today. I’d withdraw it right now if that happened. It would be beaten anyway, if that happened. And that isn’t the only reason I’d withdraw it. I’d withdraw it because I have some pride for my country.

“And there would go our apologies to Terry. And there would go the money for Gorotoland. And there would go the chance to make a recommendation on race matters in the United States that would really mean something.

“I think,” he said with a sudden harsh sarcasm, “that those things are a lot more important than a lot of name-calling here by fancy highbinders who don’t know what they’re talking about when they talk about the United States of America!”

There was a sullen murmuring, and he shouted with a sudden anger, “All right, look at
me!
I’m the United States of America! I’m black and I’m the United States of America! How about that, dear friends of the United Nations who know so much! How about that? …

“Mr. President,” he said more quietly into the abrupt silence that greeted his explosion, “I want to make a motion on behalf of the United States delegation, of which I have the honor to be a member.

“I move that the debate on this amendment be adjourned until the Congress of the United States has concluded legislative action on my resolution.”

At this there was an instant uproar, shouts of “Point of order! Point of order!” from the Soviet delegation and the Ambassador of Panama. The little Dutchman in the Chair conferred nervously with the Secretary-General, then hastily recognized Felix Labaiya, who walked hurriedly to the podium without speaking to Cullee, turned, and faced the restless Assembly.

“Mr. President,” he said coldly, “I move under Rule 79 of the General Assembly that the meeting be suspended.”

“Mr. President—” Cullee began angrily, stepping forward, but the President forestalled him with a hasty gavel.

“Under Rule 79,” he said, “the motion of the distinguished delegate of Panama takes precedence over all other motions and must be voted upon immediately without debate. All those in favor will signify by show of hands—”

“Roll call, Mr. President!” Vasily Tashikov shouted. “Roll call!”

“A roll call is requested,” the President said. The Secretary-General reached into the box, drew a name, passed it to him.

“The voting will begin with Iceland,” he said.

“No,” said Iceland.

“India.”

“Yes.”

“Indonesia.”

“Yes.”

“Iran.”

“Yes.”

‘Iraq.”

“Yes.”

“Ireland.”

“No.”

“Israel.”

“No.”

“Italy.”

“No.”

“Ivory Coast.”

“No.”

“Jamaica.”