Rukia asked Mr. Mwila if our group could have more time. She had five written pages of information and she wanted to use them all. He commended her on her thoroughness, but said the idea of presenting a subject is the ability to focus. “Pick out your strongest points and use your allotted time to present them. Two minutes for each speaker, and no more.”
Danny the K said they were ready to blow us to smithereens.
Ellis asked if we wanted to go first, but I did one of his numbers. I shrugged.
“You’re pro woman president,” he said.
“So,” I said.
“So . . . you know.” He could barely look me in the face. “It’s pro and con. So you should go first.”
I shrugged again.
“Yeah,” Rukia said. “You do the first argument. Then Danny goes next. Then me and then Ellis.” Her eyes lit up and she said, “Then we ask the class to vote by show of hands. Should a woman run for president or not?”
“Hey, that’s good,” I said, thoroughly surprised.
Ellis nodded and said, “Okay.”
“We already know who’s going to win,” Danny bragged. “It’s in the bag.”
I went first. Two minutes seemed to go on forever, but I had my points ready. I had practiced. I knew each point by heart, although I kept my paper in front of me. And before I knew it, I was saying my conclusion, and Danny had begun his argument on why women could not make important decisions about war or about the prices of oil and gas. Then he said in his conclusion that women were better cooking with oil and passing gas. Mr. Mwila had to give one hard hand clap and shout, “Decorum, class three,” to settle things down. Rukia spoke jackrabbit fast to jam in as many women leaders in her two minutes as she could. She ended by saying that we’d already had a woman president during World War II. That Eleanor Roosevelt ran the country when her husband, the president, was sick. Then Ellis gave his reasons why men were made to be leaders and women were not. He almost sounded like Pa.
Mr. Mwila congratulated us on our presentations. He said we all did a fine job presenting our subject and making our arguments. Then we voted.
All the girls said women should run for president if they wanted to. But all the boys raised their hands to vote “No.” Then Michael S. gave Lucy one of those Michael S. looks, and Lucy changed her vote. The boys won.
Before Danny the K could say something clowny, Mr. Mwila wagged his finger and said, “Upperclassmen, be gracious.” Then he turned to me. “An excellent presentation, Miss Gaither.” He smiled warmly and added, “Well done, Miss Marshall.”
When we returned to our seats, Ellis smiled a little and said, “Sorry, you . . . sorry.”
On Tuesday night, Big Ma finally had something to cheer about. She got the president that she prayed for. Pa wasn’t too pleased that his candidate, Hubert Humphrey, had lost the election. He said no black person in the US should have voted for “Tricky Dick Nixon.” Big Ma said she wasn’t black. She was colored. Then Vonetta said, “And Negro on Sunday.” And Fern said, “A Sunday Negro. Surely is.” Uncle Darnell said he hoped someone good would run in the next election when he was old enough to vote.
Mrs. was down at the Shirley Chisholm campaign headquarters celebrating her candidate’s win. Big Ma couldn’t believe the people in New York voted Shirley Chisholm in as their congressman. She said, “Where’s your wife, son? Out there politicking and not taking care of her husband. That Shirley Chisholm already breaking up homes.”
Pa paid Big Ma no mind. He and I stayed glued to the local news, hoping to spot Mrs. at the campaign headquarters reveling in the victory. Much to my surprise there were hundreds of people cheering on our new congressman, when I thought it would be just a handful of people.
Or was that congresswoman like upperclasswoman?
Pa tried to be nice about it. He said, “It’s good to have a black person representing the people.”
Big Ma said, “She black, all right.” And I knew how Big Ma meant what she said, and that it wasn’t nice or Christian-like. My sisters and I were about the same color as our new congressman. Woman.
I knew it was a good thing. An incredible thing. But I wasn’t sure if her victory made a dent. Was it real power, like the Black Panthers mean power, or was it just a taste of power? Like Vonetta being the saver. Vonetta was doing a good job, but it didn’t mean everything had changed. She washed dishes and tried to scrub the bathtub, but I still had to get after her to hang up her school clothes instead of throwing them on the floor.