C H A P T E R • 9
I got to see what Adrianne could do when she was fired up. She and Al had made the front page a beautiful thing.
Over the last two weeks, large withdrawals have been made from Independence National Bank by a Who’s Who in Harlem and Bedford Stuyvesant. Among them are some of the organizations and institutions getting ready for the latest so-called “Harlem Renaissance.” And the list includes the late publisher of this newspaper.
We ask why our leaders failed to alert the rest of us to their concerns if those concerns are compelling enough to cause them to desert the bank?
One such concern is a National Bid List of 61 banks across the country that the Comptroller of the Currency has invited to buy Independence National Bank. The Journal has obtained a copy.
Bank board member Reverend William Garrison, when asked what it meant, offered: “No Comment.”
“Al?” I called out to my production manager who was wearing headphones.
When he didn’t turn around, I walked along the long drafting table that stretches down one side of the suite’s largest room and waited for him to finish making a cut with the mat knife. Then I nudged his arm and handed him the disk. “I’ve got a publisher’s letter and a front-page story for you to lay out.”
He took off the headphones and asked, “Why don’t you do it? I’ve got some ads to do.”
I could have laid them out. I grew up in that room and not enough had changed in the three years I’d been away for my expertise to be out of date. The only job I never learned was publisher.
He stood up. “Mind?” And he carefully slipped the headphones over my hair.
It was good riding on that beat for a minute, and I shook myself loose from the vague regret when I had to give the music back.
“What is it?”
“It’s a tape from a live concert. One of the ones we could salvage after Bobby broke up the table.”
“Did the vendors give it to you for helping them? I was wondering what you were doing down there?”
He laughed. “Look over here,” he said and we walked over to a page in the train of double pages.
He was using my picture of Mr. Cool Bobby Bop holding the vendors’ table above his head. I skimmed the story. The musician was driving by and heard the sound of his music coming from a boom box on their folding table. He jumped out of his fancy red Cadillac and shut their business down.
“Your man obviously didn’t appreciate those African brothers stealing his music.”
“They are selling my product,” he said. “That was his concert you were listening to. That’s something else I do. And it’s not exactly stealing.”
Al took my disk and printed my stories and clipped them to the dummy.
A package was delivered to the Harlem offices of this newspaper within hours of the hit-and-run death of Independence National Bank officer Cecelia Miller. In it was a sheath of documents about the bank. And it included lists of bank customers who had hit the bank to their advantage and were seemingly running for cover now.
We usually do not use so-called “leaks” that would tell only one side of a story because they are at least biased, and sometimes outright lies. But Miller’s bank story became news when we uncovered some secondary source affirmations.
One of my disturbing photos was perfect for my other story.
Harlem native Cecelia Miller died after a hit-and-run driver mowed her down on 125th Street late Wednesday morning.
Witnesses say Miller looked both ways before she stepped off the sidewalk and the cold-hearted driver knocked her into the air and left her lying in the dirty street. Marcus Bell from Freedom Bookstore said, “She bought two oranges from me. Always does in the morning. Always did. Loved oranges since she was a little girl.”
One witness said it looked like the car might have been aiming at her. The much-loved lady was declared dead on-site by paramedics who rushed to the scene from St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital.
The driver deserted the car around the corner and fled on foot. Police have not made an arrest. [continued on P_]
I had slipped reluctantly, but easily, into my place at the paper and the rhythm and pop of its language. To write the part of Cecelia’s story continuing inside, I got to talk about her with the people she went to church with and socialized with at the 100 Black Women, the Links, and her Democratic club.
I was not always the one who broke the news either. Bad news travels fast, especially on one-two-five.
After the printers picked up the paper, I saw a man through the glass door at the front office. He was well dressed and good looking, like a banker I thought, with some papers in his hand.
“Can I help you?”
“Are you Pearl Washington?”
“Yes.” Although something about him made me want to say no.
“Please sign here indicating you received this.”
“Received what? You don’t look like the post office. What are you, some kind of process server?’
“This is a cease-and-desist order from Independence National Bank.”
“I don’t think I want to sign this.”
“You don’t have to. It’s been served. But will you?”
I looked at Al, who had walked up. He shrugged. And I didn’t sign.
I watched the man walk toward the elevator while I called Daddy’s lawyer Attorney Robinson from the front office phone. He said, “I’m surprised. This does make the bank stories you’ve been reporting seem more likely.”
“It may not be legit. I’ve never seen a process server as well dressed as he was. And the newspaper hasn’t yet hit the street.”
“But you all have been calling all over town. Bring it over tomorrow and I’ll look at it.”
I told Al, “Maybe you should publish the cease-and-desist in the next edition. This means they have something to hide.”