Certain People (19 page)

Mrs. Lafontant was also the first woman attorney of any color to present a case before the United States Supreme Court, and that occasion presented her with an unusual problem. Lawyers presenting cases before that august body have always, by tradition, worn white tie, striped trousers, and tailcoats. Mrs. Lafontant consulted with various males in her profession, but none of them had the slightest idea of what a woman in that position might wear. One actually suggested that she appear before the Supreme Court in a long white evening gown. In the end, Mrs. Lafontant solved the problem herself by designing an outfit of her own. It consisted of a slim-cut skirt of gray-and-white striped material, with a hemline just below the knee; a modified tailcoat; and a white blouse with a white jabot at the throat. The justices complimented her on her appearance.

“Mother was always talking about our African relatives,” Mrs. Lafontant recalls, “and as a small child I knew that Africa was not all a jungle, and I was very proud of my African cousins. But when I mentioned them to my friends, nobody believed me.” In 1956, Mrs. Lafontant met one of her several-times-removed cousins from Lagos, when Mrs. Ayo Vaughan-Richards visited the United States. Mrs. Vaughan-Richards, another of Scipio's great-great-granddaughters, is Nigeria's principal nursing officer and the hostess of her own Nigerian television show. Married to a white architect whom she met
while studying in Scotland, Ayo Vaughan persuaded her husband to add her name to his with a hyphen.

Ayo Vaughan-Richards and Jewel Lafontant became friends, and Mrs. Lafontant repaid the visit in 1964 when she went to Africa for the first time. “I was so excited about going to see my people,” she says, “that I cut my hair and wore it natural. When Ayo met me at the airport, she cried, ‘Cousin Jewel! What happened to all of your lovely hair?' I told her about ‘black is beautiful,' and about hair. ‘Of course black is beautiful,' she said impatiently, ‘but why do they have to do that to their hair?'” Mrs. Lafontant has revisited Lagos several times and, in Lagos, Mrs. Vaughan-Richards says, “We've kept in touch through the years. But I have a commitment to persuade
all
of our relations in the states to come home. Those who have visited us had tears in their eyes when I showed them the graves of their ancestors.”

If all the Vaughans and Vaughan-connected families in the United States did return to Africa, it is estimated that a migration of some 115,000 people would be involved, as the descendants of Scipio's remaining eleven children have proliferated across the American countryside. Today, there are Vaughns as well as Vaughans, and they are all considered to be in some way, however dizzyingly, “connected.” When the question was asked if jazz singer Sarah Vaughan was part of the family, “Probably” was the reply. In Lagos, the descendants of James Churchill Vaughan have been equally prolific and have become bewilderingly interconnected with the great tribal families of Nigeria. Ayo Vaughan-Richards's maternal grandfather, for example, was Chief Taiwo Obowu, who is buried in a huge mausoleum in the heart of Lagos. There is a street in Lagos called Vaughan Lane. Lagos Vaughans have exotic names like Kehinde, Adeyinka, Lawunmi, and Apinke, and there are also titled Vaughans. Lady Kofo Ademola, wife of Sir Adetokunbo Ademola, the former chief justice of Nigeria, is a Vaughan cousin. She was the first Nigerian woman to graduate from Oxford. The “oldest living Vaughan” in Lagos is said to be Michael Ayo Vaughan, seventy-seven, a retired banker, and, in the present generation, James Olabode Vaughan, supply and distribution manager for the Mobil Oil Corporation, who is forty-seven, is another of Scipio's great-great-grandsons. James Olabode Vaughan has black skin, but his half-brother, James Wilson Vaughan, a London-based film-maker, has the features of those on the head of an old American Indian nickel—a “throwback,” it is
assumed, to his Cherokee great-great-grandmother. All Vaughans can recite the inscription that is carved on all four sides of James Churchill Vaughan's marble tomb in Lagos:

Sacred to the memory of James Churchill Vaughan, Native of Camden, South Carolina, born April 1, 1828. He migrated to Africa in the year 1853, leaving behind a large family, owing to the oppressive laws then in force against colored men in the Southern States
.

His life in Africa was characterized by many vicissitudes in all of which he proved himself equal to the attendant difficulties. He died on the 13th of September, 1893
.

And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God. Job XIX. 26

In America, Vaughans have not only married Carters and Stradfords, but also MacLaughlins, McDonalds, Robinsons, Rayfords, Moseleys, Jacksons, Mouzons, Gants, and Lees. Through the Lees, the Vaughans are also connected to the Dibbles, another old-line Camden family. Sallie Rebecca Lee, a Scipio granddaughter, married Eugene H. Dibble, and the Dibbles claim to be descended from an African prince. The Dibbles, the family is careful to point out, did not come to the United States as slaves. They came as merchants from Africa, settled in South Carolina, and went into the wholesale grocery business. The first Eugene Dibble's grocery business became one of the largest in the South, and with his profits he bought acreage in what is today much of downtown Camden. The family still owns this property, and has been renting it for years, peacefully, to white tenants.

Today's most prominent Dibble is probably Eugene Dibble III of Chicago, who, though he is not a Black Muslim, has the lucrative position of chief financial consultant to the Nation of Islam, for whom, among other things, he is putting together the financing of a new 500-bed hospital, a $50,000,000 undertaking. Mr. Dibble is also Muhammad Ali's advisor on money matters. Mr. Dibble's father was a doctor at Tuskegee Institute and was a friend of George Washington Carver, and his Grandfather Dibble was a friend and neighbor of Bernard Baruch; they had adjoining farms in South Carolina. Eugene Dibble, a tall, powerfully built man who admits that, if he wished to, he could easily “pass” for white (and, when it's convenient to do so, he does), is as family-proud as his multitudinous relations. “My
mother was a Taylor,” he says. “My Grandfather Taylor was a builder, and built all of the buildings at Tuskegee. He was the first black man to graduate from M.I.T. My uncle, Robert R. Taylor, was a prominent Chicago businessman. The Taylors, like the Dibbles, were never slaves. My brother, Robert T. Dibble, is a doctor in Washington, and one of my sisters is on the faculty of Howard, and another is with the University of Chicago.” He can also rattle off genealogical facts about the family of a sort that would be beyond most white families, such as: “Jewel Lafontant's mother was my grandfather's first cousin.”

Equally well versed in genealogy, surprisingly, are the Dibbles' five children, who range in age from twelve to twenty and whose skin colors range from the light side to the dark. Not long ago, the children drew up an enormous family tree in an attempt to gather all the members of the family on one sheet of paper, those in Africa as well as those in the United States. It took many sheets of paper, Scotch-taped together, and, when spread open, it nearly covers the entire living room floor of the Dibbles' large Chicago apartment. Proudly looking over the monumental work of Rochon Dibble, twenty; Clyla Dibble, eighteen; Eugene Dibble IV, seventeen; Andrew Dibble, fourteen; and Hilary Dibble, twelve, Eugene Dibble III says, “We have figured out that over the years there have been twenty-three Dibbles at the Mount Hermon and Northfield Schools in Massachusetts. It would be safe to say that there has
always
been a Dibble at Mount Hermon or Northfield. Eugene the Fourth is headed for Yale. I have a little motto that I've passed on to my children: ‘Genealogy determines the eye, and environment creates what the eye can see.'”

Not to be outdone is Mrs. Eugene Dibble III. She was a Campbell, and Campbells are related to Lees and Reeds (making the Dibbles in some way related to each other), and she points out, “My great uncle, Lee Reed, was a Supreme Court Justice in South Carolina.” She adds, “My family has been traced back to the Tudor Kings of England.” With equal pride, Mrs. Dibble, a Wellesley graduate, also adds, “My maternal grandfather was a servant. But he saved enough money to buy a home in a good neighborhood. I think that's pretty good for a man who never went beyond the third grade!”

13

Passing

Whether or not it is an attitude implanted within them by generations of a dominant white society, most upper-class blacks have deep feelings of inferiority because of the color of their skin and their general “visibility” as black people. Though most would not admit it, they would really rather be white. To the brave cry of “Black is beautiful” could be added, in an almost inaudible whisper, “but white is still better.” Even in the proudest black families, the little whisper is there, expressing itself in the search for white ancestors or, if none can be found, at least American Indians. Furthermore, black secret self-loathing is no new phenomenon, and was apparent among the black elite over a hundred years ago, as a mulatto black writer named John E. Bruce observed satirically shortly after the Civil War:

There is another element in this strange heterogeneous conglomeration, which for want of a better name has been styled society and it is this species of African humanity which is forever and ever informing the uninitiated what a narrow escape they had from being born white. They have small hands, aristocratic insteps and wear blue veins, they have auburn hair and finely chiselled features. They are uneducated as a rule (i.e.) the largest number of them, though it would hardly be discovered unless they opened their
mouths
in the presence of their superiors in intellect, which they are very careful not to do. In personal appearance, they fill the bill precisely so far as
importance
and pomposity goes—but no farther. They are opposed to manual labor, their physical organization couldn't stand it, they prefer shuffling cards or dice or “removing the spirits of
Frumenta from the gaze of rude men” if somebody else becomes responsible for the damage. Around the festive board, they are unequalled for their verbosity and especially for their aptness in tracing their ancestry. One will carry you away back to the times of William the Silent and bring you up to 18 so and so, to show how illustrious is his lineage and pedigree. His great, great grandfather's mother-in-law was the Marchioness So and So and his father was ex-Chief Justice Chastity of S.C. or some other southern state with a polygamous record.

Upper-class black families tend to have fewer children than blacks in the ghetto, partly because, according to middle-class American standards, it is not “nice” to have large families, but also because children are just another daily reminder of the fact of blackness. One woman, light-skinned, tells of her distress and disbelief when she was first shown her baby in the hospital. It was so black. “That's not my baby!” she cried. (Another woman, also light-skinned, was equally dismayed to see that her baby was, to all appearances, white.) The children of parents of mixed ancestry can, of course, turn out to be of any shade, like the Dibble children, who range from quite light to quite dark, and this in itself can create problems: one little boy may be accepted by his white contemporaries, while his brother may not be. A number of wealthy black families, including the John Johnsons of Chicago, have adopted children just to avoid this situation. At least there will be no question of what color a child's skin will be.

Black families often go to elaborate lengths to “protect” their children from finding out that they are black, or “different.” Often, in the home, the terms “black” or “colored” or “Negro” will never be used in front of children, and children's friends are carefully screened to be sure that they meet only their “own kind,” and do not learn that there are people of any other color in the world outside. One woman recalls, “When I was a little girl and overheard an adult say someone was black, I assumed it meant that that person was dirty.” The word “white” is also often taboo in front of children, and Victoria Sanders, a Chicago stockbroker whose mother and aunts were cleaning women, says, “I knew that my mother cleaned for white people, and so I assumed that this meant white people must be dirty.”

In much the same way, upper-class Jews who have moved away from the Orthodoxy often keep the fact of their Jewishness a secret from their children—sometimes until they are almost grown. Geoffrey Hellman, the New York writer, tells that he was not told that he was
Jewish until it was time for him to go to prep school, when he was taken aside by his father and told the sober facts of life. With blacks, of course, the terrible news comes earlier—usually when they start the first grade at school—and it comes with shattering, almost traumatic effect. In countless households there has been repeated the scene where the child, in tears, comes home from school and says, “Mommy, what's a nigger, and am I one?” Sometimes, despite the most careful secrecy, the news that a child is different comes earlier. A Cincinnati woman remembers that, as a little girl, she was traveling by bus with her mother to the South. The fact that they were sitting in the back of the bus made no impression on her. She was too young to read the sign printed above the driver's head, and all the people seated around her were her own color. But when the bus made a refreshment stop along the highway, and she and her mother were refused service at the lunch counter, “I'll never forget the look on my mother's face when the waitress said, ‘We don't serve colored,'” she says. “She looked so desperately sad that I thought she was going to die, and I was so frightened that I began to cry.”

Such early bruises do not heal easily, if they heal at all. When asked if he felt inferior to white people, one seventeen-year-old boy from a well-to-do black family said, “Offhand, I'd say no, but actually knowing all these things that are thrown up to you about white people being superior—that they look more or less down on all Negroes—that we have to look to them for everything we get—that they'd rather think of us as mice than men—I don't believe I or any other Negro can help but feel inferior. My father says that it isn't so—that we feel inferior only to those whom we feel are superior. But I don't believe we can feel otherwise. Around white people until I know them awhile I feel definitely out of place. Once I played a Ping-Pong match with a white boy whose play I know wasn't as good as mine, and boys he managed to beat I beat with ease, but I just couldn't get it out of my mind that I was playing a white boy. Sort of an Indian sign on me, you know.”