Coming of Age in Mississippi (47 page)

After three days of walking and pleading with Negroes to demonstrate their desire to vote, our polls closed. Polling places had been set up all over the county in churches, small Negro groceries, and even in some of the Negro homes. When all the results were in and counted, to my surprise 2,800 Madison County Negroes had cast votes in the election. The largest number of votes came from polling places out in the country where voters were not openly intimidated by the cops. However, several of the poll managers reported incidents with local whites.

The total number of votes cast by Mississippi Negroes was 80,000. This was about 60,000 more than the number of Negroes officially registered in the state. But since there were more than 400,000 Negroes of voting age (twenty-one and older) in Mississippi, the 80,000 votes didn’t greatly impress me—even though Negroes had not voted in Mississippi in significant numbers since Reconstruction. “If it took this much work to get 80,000 votes,” I thought, “then we’ll be working a lifetime to get the 400,000 and some registered.”

The last evening of the freedom vote, I told George and Doris that I planned to leave the project for a while. They didn’t take me seriously, though. They just sort of brushed me off. However, after I told Mrs. Chinn and a few other Negroes the next day, they believed I meant what I said. No one seemed to see that I was on the verge of a breakdown. I think the fact that I found myself on the Klan’s blacklist brought it on faster. Had I stayed there another week, I would probably have died from lack of sleep and nervousness.

After George and Doris realized I was actually leaving, they tried to talk me out of it. The day before I was to go, I went to the office and found large posters on the wall saying,
“Winners never quit and quitters never win,” or “If a task is once begun, never leave it ’til it’s done.”

I had expected them to understand. Somehow I got the feeling that they thought I was leaving the Movement for good. I expected George to understand, because he knew I was always so serious and took things pretty hard. He was more philosophical. If things didn’t go right, he would just say, “We have to try harder.” And he had other things going for him. He mixed well with people in Canton. He had a lot of other men to hang out with. He had Mr. Chinn to rely upon. He could go out and drink beer with the men every night or so, and he had lots of girls. His life was pretty normal in many ways. With girls, things were different. We weren’t allowed to go anywhere, and there wasn’t anything we could do to relax. People were always overprotecting us. I knew Doris wouldn’t stay long; she was too scared. She would leave soon after I did.

I was not sure myself that I was not leaving for good—and this really made me feel bad. I had gotten so tired of seeing people suffering, naked and hungry. It just seemed as if there was no end to it, or at least “the Vote” was not the way to end it.

Later on during the day, Dave Dennis came and talked to me. He started telling me about what a good worker I was, and all that shit. It added to the feeling George had caused me to have. But Dave knew that I had made up my mind, and he didn’t really try to pressure me to stay. He said that he hoped that I would not leave the Movement for good, that he could tell I had a certain compassion for the work and these were the kind of people the Movement needed most. I found myself wishing I had just left without telling anyone that I was leaving.

The next morning George and Doris drove me to the train station in Jackson. Before the train pulled in, I found myself sitting in the white waiting room with a white civil rights worker I happened to meet. She was a fund raiser for CORE.
Sitting there in the station, I got the same feeling I had in all the other sit-ins I had participated in. I remember getting up once, and going to the Negro section to ask the Negroes there if they knew the white section was desegregated. Then I knew that I would never really be leaving the Movement.

It was about 11 P.M. when I got off the train at the Carrollton Avenue Station in New Orleans. I was dead tired—too tired to be bothered with my luggage, a trunk of books, and two boxes of clothes. I let it all go on to the main station with the intention of picking it up in a day or so.

Carrying only one small, light suitcase, I walked up Carrollton Avenue to Stroelitz. My Grandmother Winnie was now living in the second house on the corner of Stroelitz and Pine Street. Within a few minutes, I was knocking on her door and listening for her heavy footsteps.

“Who is it?” she called out.

“It’s me, Essie Mae.”

Winnie cracked the door and peeped out at me.

“What you want?” she asked as though she was talking to a complete stranger.

I just looked at her, not knowing what to do or say. It didn’t seem as though she could have been talking to me—not Essie Mae, her oldest grandchild. I had always stayed with her when I was in college and working at Maple Hill Restaurant.

“I am just in from Mississippi. I would like to stay with you a few days until I get straight,” I finally said.

“I’m tired,” Winnie said, her voice almost shaking. “And I don’t want anybody staying with me.”

I didn’t say anything after that. I just turned and walked off her porch. She was scared of me, I thought. I knew it was because of my civil rights work. I hadn’t seen her since I had become really active. She and my aunt and my other relatives probably had been thinking that if I came here, I would get involved with the Movement in New Orleans. “If so,” I thought, “they are all too scared to take me in. Mama must have told them about all the threats and intimidations they were subjected to at home because of me.”

I stood on the corner about fifteen minutes wondering where to go. It was now about eleven-thirty and I had to find a place to sleep. Then I remembered that my Uncle George Lee lived right around the corner in High Court and that Adline was now staying with him. She had written me a couple of letters from his place when I was in Canton. But I hated to go there. I had never forgotten the time George Lee set our house on fire when I was four years old and put the blame on me. I stood there with tears in my eyes and about seventy-five cents in my pockets. I had no place else to go. So I went. I was trembling as I walked up to his door. To my surprise he and his wife Etha seemed really glad to see me. They told me I could stay as long as I needed to, and wanted to know all about the Movement.

Adline wasn’t in and I was relieved. She would have wanted to talk to me all night. Finally, as George Lee continued asking me questions, Etha realized how tired I was. She helped me let out the sofa which I would have to share with Adline. It was about two-thirty when I got to bed. I fell asleep with George Lee still talking.

I woke up about two the following afternoon. Adline had come in during the night, slept next to me, and had long since gone to the restaurant where she worked as a waitress. I got
up, had a cup of coffee with Etha, and went back to bed. It was about nine that night when I awoke the second time. I opened my eyes and Adline was sitting in the chair opposite the sofa looking at me.

“Are you sick?” she asked. “Etha said that you had been sleeping all day.”

“No,” I said, staring at her. She looked different. “I guess it’s because I haven’t seen her in two years,” I thought. Then I closed my eyes again.

“Didn’t you sleep in Canton, Essie Mae?”

Half asleep again, I just shook my head. I could hear her rattling on and on about giving Mama a birthday party in a couple of weeks. She also told me that my brother Junior had come to New Orleans a few months ago and was working as a short order cook. He was staying with Winnie—which made me realize that my grandmother was really afraid to let me stay with her.

I woke up the next morning and it was Saturday. George Lee and Adline were both home from work. I had slept for two days and still hadn’t gotten enough sleep. And I realized I wasn’t about to get enough cooped up in George Lee’s place. Two of his friends had come in and the three of them were now in the kitchen playing cards and laughing and talking. When I had lived with Winnie, I used to see people going into certain houses in High Court to gamble. But I didn’t know George Lee’s house was used to gamble in, too.

I decided to go to Maple Hill Restaurant that afternoon and see if I could get my old job. In spite of the fact that I had always been able to get a job there in the past, if only for a week, this time I was afraid to go back. I was sure that they’d heard of my civil rights work by now. The Woolworth’s sit-in had been well publicized in all the papers throughout the country. Mr. Steve, the owner, might even worry about losing some of his customers if I began working there—I was sure most of the steady ones would remember me.

I needed a job badly. I didn’t have any money. I needed a
place to sleep—everything. And I really didn’t have anywhere else to go for a job in New Orleans. With a college education, about the only thing you could do in Mississippi, Louisiana, and most of the South was teach. And I would not make the mistake of teaching in a Southern classroom. Most of the teachers were Uncle Toms. Those that weren’t had to teach in awful, segregated, inferior Uncle Tom schools. The way I felt about teaching, I would much rather wash dishes with my degree—that is, if I weren’t told how clean I should get them or where to stack them.

When I walked in the front door of Maple Hill, everything was the same. Joe, the short order cook, was serving the few customers at the counter. George, Mr. Steve’s son, was going over the checks at the cash register, tapping his feet to some loud jazz tune that was playing on the juke-box. I must have stood there for about five minutes before he saw me. “Annie! Annie! Annie!” he shouted, as he greeted me with a hug. “Hey, Joe!” he called to the waiter serving the few customers at the counter. “Look who’s here!” “Annie Moody! Annie Moody!” Joe yelled. “Come on, let’s go to the pantry and see everyone,” George said, almost running me in there.

“Look,” he said as he opened the pantry doors. “None other than the rebel herself.”

“The rebel! The rebel!” James shouted. “Them white folks finally got you out of Mississippi at last.”

In no time I was feeling at home again. When George returned to the cash register, James said, “You know, Anne, we were so proud of you here after the sit-in and all. George even cut your picture out of the paper and showed it to us, and all of the new helpers. Then he even showed it to some of the students.”

Just as I was leaving, Mr. Steve arrived. He was glad to see me, too. We stood in the street outside the restaurant and talked for about fifteen minutes. By this time, it began to seem as though I would never get away from talking about the Movement. Everyone I had talked to since being in New
Orleans had talked me almost to death. Standing here in the street now, it seemed endless. Finally, we stopped talking about the Movement long enough for me to ask Mr. Steve if he could fit me in as a waitress for a while. “Yes, you know you are welcome at my place,” he said in his heavy Greek accent. “Sure I make room for you. When do you want to come?” “Next week, if it’s possible,” I said. “I gotta find an apartment right away.” “Sure me fix,” he said as we parted.

I started working on Tuesday of the following week. But once I had started, I really didn’t want the job. I was working like a machine. My mind just wasn’t on what I was doing. I found myself leaving the restaurant every day on my break. I would go home or for a walk for an hour or so. I just didn’t feel like hanging around the place and joking with the other waiters like I used to when I was in college.

That weekend, between my salary and my tips, I had about sixty-five dollars, and Adline had about thirty. We put our salaries together and went out looking for an apartment. Within a couple of hours, we had found one. It was in a newly built, white, two-story apartment building in a quiet neighborhood. It was only fifty dollars a month, and had one large room, a kitchenette, and a bath.

After paying a month’s rent and the security, we didn’t have enough money left for a down payment on furniture. But we moved in anyway and slept on blankets on the floor until our next pay checks. Our apartment was only about five blocks from Winnie’s house, so Junior came over to see us almost every night that first week. He and Adline would sit around on the floor and plan the birthday party they were going to give Mama when she came to town the following weekend. I dreaded the thought of that party. I hadn’t seen Mama in two years and I had stopped writing her a couple of months ago.

The night before Mama was due to arrive, our new furniture was delivered. Adline and I were too tired to do anything but
put the bed together, so we got up at seven the next morning and rushed around trying to get everything arranged. We’d bought a mahogany bedroom set, a deep orange sofa, a small table for the kitchenette, and a couple of chairs.

Junior was knocking on the door within an hour. I knew Mama was with him, so I waited for Adline to go and open it. She pretended she didn’t even hear the knock. Finally, I opened it myself—and there was Mama.

“Hi, come in,” I said, trying to appear as cheerful as possible. She had brought my little sister Jennie Ann, and I turned to her immediately. “Goodness, Jennie Ann, you are almost as tall as me.” I pulled her over to the mirror on the bathroom door and measured her height against mine.

“How are you, Mama?” I made myself say.

“O.K. and you?” she said as if she wanted to embrace me. Our family was not the embracing, hugging, and kissing kind, though. I can’t even remember once that someone in my family embraced another. Mama turned away and started looking at the furniture, and I tried to think of something to talk about.

“I gotta go pick up some things that I left at work,” Junior said.

“You coming back?” Mama asked him. “I want you to take me by Winnie.”

“I’ll be back later. But Essie Mae or Adline can take you there. It’s just a few blocks from here,” Junior said.

I wanted to answer him and say, “Maybe Adline but not me.” But I kept my mouth closed. I didn’t want Mama to start asking me why I didn’t want to go to Winnie. What Winnie did to you?