Certain People (12 page)

The name Links refers to links of friendship. Husbands of Links are called Connecting Links, and children are called Heir-o-Links. Membership in Links in any city is limited to thirty women (some cities have far fewer members) and most Links are so fair-skinned that some blacks wonder why Links call themselves a black group at all. The number thirty was selected as a ceiling for membership because “That was the maximum number that anyone could put up at
one's house,” according to Mrs. Hough, a former national president of Links. (In segregation days, when wealthy blacks traveled in the South, they could not stay in the best hotels; southern Links members were expected to hostess their visiting sisters.) Today, there are 130 Links chapters across the country, and their fund-raising projects involve education, medicine, and the arts. A popular Links fund-raising event is sponsorship of the
Ebony
Fashion Fair, a traveling fashion show that annually visits a number of cities across the country. Most Links husbands are members of
Boulé
. Nearly all Links members are AKA's, with a small sprinkling of Deltas.

For their choosiness and their grand ways, the Links are ridiculed and even despised by lower-class blacks. “They're nothing but snobs,” says the outspoken Lina Fleming of Cincinnati. “Or let's just say they
try
to be snobs.” Mrs. Fleming insists that she would not join Links if asked, and adds, “My sister was asked to be a Link. She turned them down. Being a Link means nothing.” But it does mean something—if you are a Link.

At the same time, the Links and the other women's groups are—like the men's fraternal lodges—torn by inner strife, feuding, and clambering for one-upmanship. Each Link, and each Link chapter, seems to spend much of its time trying to outdo the others, and to talk the others down. (“Those Washington Links think they're so
grand!
” sniffs one of the Detroit Links.) As for the Moles, they publish an annual magazine called
Molerama
and, in the 1974 edition, the publicity chairman for the Washington chapter was one Thersa Archer. In her annual report of her chapter's doings, which she wrote herself, Mrs. Archer described herself as “hard working, careful,” and went on with a lengthy paragraph—one of the longest paragraphs in the article—describing her fourteen-day cruise to Nassau, Curaçao, Barbados, Martinique, and St. Thomas, a Fourth of July holiday spent in Norwalk, Connecticut, Thanksgiving with friends in Pittsburgh, and announced her and her husband's fortieth wedding anniversary. Thersa Archer, however, had obviously been having some sort of dispute with one of her publicity committee members, Beatrice Smith. She gave Beatrice Smith only a short, perfunctory paragraph, in which she described Mrs. Smith as “fickle, easily led.” There must have been quite a row over this, because the words “fickle, easily led” were blacked out by the printer as the magazine went to press, though they are still legible through the ink.

Though many blacks tend to lay the blame for their woes at the
feet of an amorphous white “Establishment,” the infighting between and among their own many elite groups may have helped prevent them from having a true Establishment of their own. In any human society there has always been a pecking order, with an elite group gathered at the top. In New York, Mrs. Astor had her “Four Hundred.” The uptown Jews had their “One Hundred.” In Washington, the Links have their “Thirty,” and Houston's Smart Set has its “Twelve.” And of course the blacks have had a special need for their many tiny, closed social sets, clubs, secret fraternal and sororal orders, each with its secret rite and ritual, grip and password, each containing secrets within secrets. They have needed to bond together as a defensive shield against what they see as an inimical or, at best, indifferent white world. But in so doing the little clubs and orders have managed to erect tall barricades against each other as well. Perhaps this is at least one reason why promising black businessmen have had difficulty succeeding with what should have been promising black businesses. They don't quite like each other.

Though each of the little clubs and societies likes to think of itself as the Top, they are really a series of small tops cut off from any base. They are even ambivalent about the color of their skin. Most light-skinned blacks say that they are “not proud” of having white ancestors. Yet they are very proud of the light skin their white ancestors have given them, and often it is the main requirement to join the club. The view from the clubhouse is comfortable and cozy, but it does not take in what Barbara Proctor calls “those bottomless blacks” who, if they are aware of the elite groups, view them with scorn and consider their social pretensions ridiculous. A wry and bitter little ditty has emerged from the bottom of the black world which reveals rather clearly how this world regards the higher-ups. It goes:

Twinkle, twinkle, little nigger
,

All you do is sit and figger
.

Don't you know that if you get bigger

All you'll be is a bigger nigger?

Sometimes attempts are made to bridge the abysmal social gap. One Links member tells of a young black man who worked in her office. Though his origins were the ghetto, he was college-educated, well-spoken, and “seemed nice.” She considered inviting him for dinner, but says, “I wasn't sure how my friends would react, and how
he'd react to them. Still, I asked him. He came, and—I was really surprised—he handled himself very well!” That, however, was as far as it went. Another Link recalls shopping with her mother at Rich's department store in Atlanta, and seeing, on an escalator, an old black woman in split-out shoes, sagging stockings, a tattered shawl and a turban. She whispered to her mother, “Look at that dirty old colored lady!” Her mother reprimanded her. “You mustn't say things like that,” she said. “She may be just as nice as you and me.” It was probably just what Charlotte Hawkins Brown would have said, and that was as far as
that
went.

And so the fragmented elite of the black world, with their clubs and societies each secretly at war with all the others, has not yet achieved what might be termed true clout in either the white world or the black. Among blacks, the elite have achieved importance without real position. They have become dignitaries, but without power, leading ladies and gentlemen without much influence, figureheads, but not leaders—shining examples, but not guides. As Lina Fleming puts it bluntly about the Links, “They're all chiefs but no Indians.”

9

“Let Us Pray.…”

A certain amount of divisiveness was, of course, encouraged by the white slave-owners of the antebellum South. It was easier to control a divided people than a united one, and plantation owners taught their house servants to believe that they were “better” than their fellow slaves in the fields. To be sent to the fields was a form of punishment and, if he did his job well, the house slave was rewarded with better food, better clothing, and a generally easier life. It amused slave-owners to let their house slaves have periodic parties, dances, teas, and other “socials,” for which the slaves dressed up in their best clothes—invariably hand-me-downs from the master and his wife—and which were otherwise imitations of Southern white social activities.

An ex-slave named Austin Steward, who wrote and published his autobiography in 1857, gave a vivid description of the status layers that existed on the plantation:

It was about ten o'clock when the aristocratic slaves began to assemble, dressed in the cast-off finery of their master and mistress, swelling out and putting on airs in imitation of those they were forced to obey from day to day.

House servants were, of course, “the stars” of the party; all eyes were turned to them to see how they conducted, for they, among slaves, are what a military man would call “fugle-men.” The field hands, and such of them as have generally been excluded from the dwelling of their owners, look to the house servants as a pattern of
politeness and gentility. And, indeed, it is often the only method of obtaining any knowledge of the manners of what is called “genteel society;” hence, they are ever regarded as a privileged class; and are sometimes greatly envied, while others are bitterly hated.

But it would be an oversimplification to say that the house slaves and field slaves on all Southern plantations “hated” each other because of the caste system. In households where the slavemaster or his wife was particularly despotic or demanding, there were often slaves who would have gladly changed places with the field workers and who misbehaved in an attempt to do so. And, in the end, it was always Slave Row—where every slave returned at day's end—and not “the big house” that was the heart and nerve center of the slave community.

Here the house slaves, quietly and steadily, brought whatever food and clothing could be pilfered from the house, and distributed it among the others. Since the slaves saw their own people as stolen property, they saw nothing wrong with stealing from their masters. Naturally, it is seldom pleasant to be on the receiving end of this sort of charity, and there was doubtless some resentment among the field hands against their benefactors. House servants were also able to provide a certain amount of after-hours entertainment to the other inhabitants of Slave Row—many of whom had never set foot inside the big house, or spoken to “Massah” or his “missus”—regaling them with tales and gossip of the doings of the household, mimicking and parodying their masters' speech, gestures, and mannerisms, often to the point of high hilarity. Most important, the house servants brought news of what Massah might be planning, picked up by eavesdropping at parlor doors and in back stairways. If, say, the serving maid at dinner learned that the master was planning to sell a block of slaves, that news was quickly reported to Slave Row. The house slaves earned respect as the plantation's spies.

It is quite clear that most slave-owners distrusted their house servants, as indicated by accounts of “spelling-out stories”—where the master and his family spelled out words and sentences that they did not want the slaves to understand. A woman who could covertly learn to spell was a valued agent to the community of Slave Row. Secrecy became a mode of life on the plantation, and most slaves made it a rule never to let the white man know what they were thinking. Slave-owners, meanwhile, tried to use their house servants as sources
of information as to what the field hands were saying or contemplating. And naturally there were servants who, in return for bribes or special favors, became traitors to their fellow blacks, just as there were Jewish traitors in the concentration camps of World War II. When traitors were discovered, they were harshly dealt with, even killed. Once, at a kangaroo court that was set up on a Mississippi plantation, a black waitress was accused of telling her master about a planned slave revolt. In her testimony, she stood up dramatically among her fellow slaves and said, “I told the Massah, ‘I'm going to tell you the truth, so help me God'—and then I told him
nothin'!
”

“Negro dialect,” meanwhile, was another expression of the need for secrecy. Just as the Jews of Europe developed Yiddish, or Judeo-German, and the Jews of Spain developed Ladino, or Judeo-Spanish, as a way to keep their Christian enemies from knowing too much about their business, the slaves developed a language, full of allusions, innuendos and puns, that the white master could almost, but not quite, understand. Also, the slaves communicated with one another through music, and many harmless-sounding spirituals were actually skillfully coded messages being passed up and down Slave Row. “Steal away, steal away to Jesus, steal away, steal away home.… I ain't got long to stay here,” meant that there would be an escape attempt that night. Other songs evoked battle and destruction: “Joshua fit the battle of Jericho, And the walls came tumblin' down.” And others were direct challenges to the slavemaster: “Tell old Pharaoh, let my people go!”

The social hierarchy of Slave Row was much more complicated than simply a matter of house servants versus field hands. Age conferred status, among other things, and older people were addressed as “Uncle” and “Auntie” not because they were relatives but because these were terms of repect. Slave artisans were also a privileged class. Each plantation was in effect a feudal city-state and needed, in addition to laborers, skilled carpenters, cabinet and furniture makers, cobblers, tailors, stonemasons, blacksmiths, painters, plasterers, silversmiths, and ironmongers. Many of these slaves had brought the secrets of their crafts with them from Africa, and the beautiful grill-work of New Orleans is a particularly striking example of slave craftsmanship. These people composed an aristocracy of talent. Then, in each Slave Row community, there was another aristocracy based on the slave's relationship with his master. If a slave woman, for example, talked back to her mistress and got away with it, she
was highly regarded. If a man stood up straight to his master, without bowing, and looked him straight in the eye (against the law in Louisiana), and was not punished for his uppityness, he became a plantation hero. An even greater hero was the slave who had made a brave attempt to escape, even though he might eventually have been caught and brought back to the plantation. The slaves who had made the most successful thefts from the masters, or who had carried off the most convincing deceptions, were also afforded special status, as were those who had become adept at seasoning their masters' food with urine, arsenic, ground glass, and “spiders beaten up in buttermilk.”

The plantation also needed policemen, and often the most important man on the estate was the driver. The driver was the slave appointed by the slavemaster and charged with the responsibility of supervising the work of the slaves in the fields by day and patrolling the slave quarters by night. “The head driver,” according to James H. Hammond, a South Carolina slavemaster, “is the most important Negro on the plantation, and is not required to work like the other hands. He is to be treated with more respect than any other Negro by master and overseer.… He is to be required to maintain proper discipline at all times; to see that no Negro idles or does bad work in the field, and to punish it [sic] with discretion.… He is a confidential servant, and may be a guard against any excesses or omissions of the overseer.” He was, in other words, to be a combination major-domo and political liaison between the master and the other slaves, with a role rather similar to that of the straw boss of Jim Crow days.