And All Our Wounds Forgiven (23 page)

I hung up and made another call to a psychiatrist in New York who had started to treat some of our casualties. I told him I had a major one and he should expect me in the next twenty-four hours. He knew that if I were bringing someone personally, it was serious.

George helped me put Bobby in the truck. It was Christmas and I didn’t think the highway patrol or state police would be on the roads to wonder about a white woman and black man in a truck.

I made it to Ohio and the person I’d called was waiting and together we drove nonstop to New York, deposited Bobby who looked as if he had never even blinked his eyes, drove back to Ohio and I went back to Nashville.

I went by to see Cal and told him where Bobby was.

He nodded his approval.

“You want to tell me what this was all about?”

He was silent for a long time. “No,” he said finally. “I really really don’t. It’s a nightmare and I fear it is only going to get worse.”

There was another long silence. “I’ve always known the dangers. I’ve always known that to awaken the Negro to take action against the evil stifling him would also mean rousing the Negro’s own evil. Even before I embarked on the bus boycott in Atlanta in the late fifties, I worried about that. What would I do, what could be done when the centuries of anger extravasated?

“The stupidity of white America is terrifying. It does not require great intelligence to figure out that if you hate a people all you are doing is giving them lessons in how to hate you. And that’s what Negroes have been learning all these years. Just because they haven’t expressed it yet doesn’t mean they haven’t been taking notes and practicing in quiet.

“It was my hope that by creating a movement for social change I could circumvent the hatred. I was wrong. It is from within my very own movement the lava has begun to flow.”

I understood his words but had no context. What had happened? Had Bobby done something awful? What was going on?

All he said was, “Thank you. You must trust me very much to do all you have just done and know so little.”

“You know I trust you.”

“I know. Your trust enables me to doubt and question and regret.” He smiled weakly. “You are about to collapse. Go home and unplug your phone.”

What Cal said that night didn’t make sense until two years later at the famous staff meeting in the spring of sixty-six. Bobby was there, his eyes glittering with fever. He had been fund-raising in New York and had begun to acquire a following because of his impassioned rhetoric and a new-found ability to touch the guilt of whites in a way that made them write very large checks to assuage it.

Bobby had changed.

“He’s gone mad,” I told Cal.

“No. He is
suffering
the madness white America will not take responsibility for.”

I was unprepared for the challenge to Cal’s leadership from those who had gathered around Bobby. I was not prepared to hear Cal called an “Uncle Tom.” I was especially unprepared when the motion was made that all whites in any way connected with the organization were to leave immediately.

I was sitting to Cal’s right. I did not dare look at him but I had the feeling he was surprised too.

The motion was quickly seconded and the debate began.

The argument was simple: While there might have been a place for whites in the civil rights struggle, it was now a struggle for black liberation. The ideal of integration had failed because whites were not interested in living with blacks on an equal basis. The only alternative was for blacks to live with each other, to create the black economic, social and cultural institutions that would teach African values and sustain black men and black women.

I have never felt so dumb in my life. How could all of this have been going on and me not notice? I knew nothing about black people. Absolutely nothing.

Then I remembered something. I looked through the folders I always had with me at staff meetings, found the document I was looking for, underlined a particular passage and handed it to Cal.

The debate went on for some time. Those who spoke against the motion did so weakly. It was apparent that the defenders of the motion had history on their side.

Finally, when it seemed everyone had had his say, Cal spoke. His voice was quiet, almost a whisper. “We must be careful that we do not become the evil we have been so intent on killing. We must be careful that our desire for justice is not so ardent that it becomes a thirst for vengeance. We must not only be careful; we must also take care. And taking care means pulling up the weeds that threaten to choke the fragile green new life breaking the earth. Taking care means watering that new life so it will not wither from lack of sustenance. Taking care means picking off the bugs that would eat the tiny leaves.

“The arguments put forth here are very appealing. If I were not careful I would be seduced by them. Who would not be? How simple it would be if we could create a world of blackness. How comforting it would be, and God knows, we need comfort. But this is not comfort. It is death.”

His voice was stronger now but it was still not loud. He spoke conversationally and with deep sadness.

“It is obvious that my time is past. However, that does not mean I will hand over my organization to you or anybody. If you feel as you do, then be honest enough and men enough to go out and build your own organization instead of trying to take over the fruits of another man’s labor. But, please understand. I will decide when I go. I, or a bullet. Nothing else.

“The motion on the floor is the expulsion of whites. The motion is out of order.”

There was an outbreak of shouting and yelling. Cal waited until it died down.

“The motion is out of order because in Section 1, Paragraph 1 of our Constitution,” and he picked up the sheet of paper I had underlined and slipped him when the debate began, “you will notice that it says, ‘The Southern Committee for Racial Justice is founded on the principle of racial equality. Membership in the organization is open to people of all races, colors and creeds without restriction or qualification.’

“The motion is out of order. Next order of business.”

Over the next few months three-quarters of the staff would leave to start a new group, Black Revolutionary Liberators. By this time, Bobby was in a hospital.

Without an effective organization any longer, Cal spent most of his time speaking on college campuses. The money was good and he had never had much of that. I went with him and I noticed that his audiences now were practically all white, but he never commented on it and neither did I.

Winter, 1969. I was the one who took the call in Cal’s basement office. Gary Dunbar, one of Cal’s oldest friends and a civil rights leader in Tackett, Georgia, had been shot and killed. Could Cal come?

It was the first time I had seen him want to say no.

Tackett was one of those little towns with only a general store and a post office to indicate there was an entity called a town. The place smelled of ancient deaths and unquiet ghosts. One would not have been surprised if the blue sky rained down blood.

We arrived early the next afternoon. Cal met briefly with the local leadership, and agreed to speak at a mass meeting that night and at his friend’s funeral the next morning, but he refused to lead a march from the cemetery to the sheriff’s office.

“Your march will be more effective if I am not involved.”

“Our march will be more effective if we have somebody leading it who can get us some TV coverage,” a young black kid said, glaring at Cal. “That’s about all you’re good for anymore. At least do that much.”

Cal’s head dropped to his chest. “I will not lead the march,” he repeated.

But if there had been any doubt if people still wanted to hear John Calvin Marshall it was put to rest that night. The little church was filled, with people sitting in the windows and standing three deep outside.

I could not remember how many times I had heard him speak. From the first sentence I could tell which speech it was going to be. He had three basic ones and moved their various parts around to fit the situation.

That night though the beginning was unlike any I’d ever heard.

“The waters are troubled tonight. God has taken his servant, Death, and used him to agitate the placid stream. What was clear is now muddy. What was smooth is now roiled. What was placid is now disquieted.

“I came to bring peace and did not see the sword in its scabbard at my side. I did not see that it is not possible to correct injustice without committing it. I did not see that good is the creator of evil when good leaves evil unbe-friended. I did not see and God has troubled the water.

“Oh, say, can you see?

“No, no, you can’t. This afternoon when I came to town, some became angry with me because I would not lead them in a march to demand the sheriff find and arrest the murderer or murderers of Gary Dunbar.

“Oh, say, can you see?

“No, no, you can’t. Can’t you see that Gary’s murder is not the author of your anger, and the prosecution of his murderers will not assuage your anger? Your anger makes you feel that, at long last, you have been blessed with righteousness, but righteousness humbles;
self-righteousness
emboldens.

“Oh, say, can you see?

“I see Ol’ Death riding his white horse and he is taking a strange path. He is passing up the homes where the white folks live and is just stopping at those where black reside. But Death ain’t no racist. Uh-uh. What does Death know that we don’t? Death knows that white folks are already dead.

“Oh, say, can you see?

“Yes, they are. Only people who are passionately in love with Death build atom bombs and hydrogen bombs that can destroy the world many times over. Only people who are married to Death would spend more than half their national budget on weapons to kill. Only people who themselves want to be dead would think that accidents and killings are news to be put on the front page of papers and heard first on television. Only people who lust for Death would think skin color and hair texture and eye color could ever tell you anything about the quality of another human being.

“And now, black people are beginning their own love affair with Death.

“Oh, say, can you see?

“Black is beautiful! That’s what they say. I’m black and I’m proud! Why? I want to ask. What effort did you put into becoming black? None. Then, why are you proud of it?

“Black is NOT beautiful. Don’t you understand that if black is beautiful, then white has to be ugly, and doesn’t that sound familiar?

“If I need to tell myself that I am black and proud, if I need to tell myself how beautiful blackness is, am I not confessing my self-hatred? Am I not confessing how ugly I appear to myself?

“You are angry with the sheriff. No. You are angry at yourselves for having spent all your life as niggersniggersniggers. Don’t blame the white man. Just because he may want you to be a nigger doesn’t mean you have to oblige him.

“Oh, say, can you see — nigger?”

I am glad I thought to set up the tape recorder because I would not have believed it if I could not have heard it again. I suppose I could give the tape to some biographer. No one knows it exists. There are rumors about a strange, incoherent speech he gave in Tackett the night before he died, but there has never been corroboration.

Most of the people left early. This was not the John Calvin Marshall they had heard about. They did not know who this crazy man was, and the nigger had to be crazy to drive into Tackett with a white woman, not to mention get up and say what he said.

But I understood.

John Calvin Marshall and Cal had become one. He was now free.

“You want to march to protest the killing of Gary Dunbar. Damn! That is not what Gary wants. He wants you to go out and do whatever it is he was doing that got him killed. You’re angry! No angry person has ever been free!”

The church and the grounds were practically deserted when he finished, but Cal walked off the pulpit with a bounce in his step and a smile on his face.

He was approached by some of the men who had spoken with him that afternoon and I heard them say that they were sorry but they had to withdraw the invitation to speak at the funeral the next day. They were trying to get in touch with Jesse Jackson and they might delay the funeral a day or two if Jackson could come.

We got in the truck and I asked him if he wanted to go home. He thought for a moment and shook his head.

“We have a free night. Let’s make the best of it.”

I saw the car pull in behind us when we drove out of Tackett. We were silent. The lights of the car following us were on bright and I put on my sunglasses. I did not dare speed to try to get away. It could have been the sheriff or the highway patrol, or one of them could have been waiting on a side road for us to come speeding by.

As we neared Atlanta and traffic became heavier the car lowered its beams and dropped back. I sighed deeply but was unaware of it until Cal asked, “Something wrong?”

“No. Why do you ask?”

“You sighed.”

“I did?” I remembered. “Oh, the car that followed us from Tackett just lowered its beam and I guess I had been more concerned about it than I realized.”

“How long have you been doing this?”

I thought. “Seven years.”

“You sound tired.”

Some of our most intimate moments were the nights we were going someplace in the truck. It was hard deciding whether it was more risky travelling at night or in the daytime. We preferred the night because he was a more difficult target and a following car was easier to see. I think he also preferred the night because the darkness intensified the stillness of the world around us until it seemed that no one existed except him and me in the dim glow of the dashboard lights. We seldom spoke. He would reach over, lift my dress or skirt and put his left hand between my thighs. I did not wear underpants then.

I have made love to only two men in fifty-two years. You and Cal (and, Gregory, you may never read any of this. The gap between what I seem to need to say — everything in graphic detail — and what you may need to hear is increasing). And I have never
made
love with you.