MARGE, SOMETIMES I can get so mad at my own folks that I could just scream…. Honey, I went over to Ruth’s last night to talk about startin’ up a benevolent social club for the church. Well, Clarice was there and you know that she don’t allow nobody to call her a Negro. That is a fact. She is an Afro-American! And also Betty was present, and she says she is colored, and not no Negro or Afro-American.
Anyway, we made plans to give lectures and social teas and such. Next thing we went on to discuss what folks we would benefit through this benevolent society. You know, like people who have lost their homes because of tryin’ to get their children into school and families of men that have been killed or run out of town. Well, during the talkin’ Ruth made a crack, “If all those bombings had taken place in the West Indies, the people wouldn’t have taken it.” You know how airish she can be!
Since she is from the West Indies everybody else got quiet for a minute and then the conversation loped along kind of casual sort of. In a few minutes Betty says, “It’s a strange thing, everything is so fine in the West Indies, but they keep comin’ over here.”
At that I chimed in to play peacemaker, “I guess Ruth came from the West Indies for the same reason that I came here from South Carolina.”
With that, Clarice gives us all a sharp look and comes up with, “All I can say is that if they had bombed them folks on the Gold Coast in Africa, them African leaders would have seen to it that somethin’ more was done besides not eatin’ oranges or doin’ without soda pop.”
Marge! By this time I could see this club fallin’ apart before we could get it named hardly. Well, there we were about to bust up this club, so I took the floor. “Ladies,” I said, “why is it that every time our folks get bombed or mobbed we got to get to arguin’ amongst ourselves? Yes, we do. I noticed lately that some of our papers have been havin’ a merry old time cloudin’ up the Issue. Why do we waste time like that, meanwhile callin’ the Klan nothin’ but ‘dastardly and shameful’? I even read where somebody said, ‘This bombin’ has got to stop because it plays into the hands of the Russians and makes bad propaganda which they can use,’
“Now there must be many a brave man turnin’ in his grave when he hears that. Imagine! We can’t work up no more passion about our murdered dead than to call it ‘bad propaganda’! I suppose that if we was real chummy with all the countries in the world then it would be all right to kill our people! Yes, indeed,” I went on, “here we sit makin’ a big fuss about who we are and who is better than the next one while that is the very kind of thinkin’ that was turned on the people we’re tryin’ to help. So I propose, ladies, that we use our funds to help all these brave folk that are in distress, and that we ask every Afro-American, colored, black and Negro organization (in other words anybody that may get lynched) to help us do it.” I had the floor and I held it: “We must also ask any white folks who are ashamed and fightin’ mad about what’s happenin’ to also put their time and money in it, too.”
Honey, one little lady that I hadn’t seen before jumped up and told me, “I don’t want any white people to have anything to do with it! After all, white people are the ones who are mistreatin’ us!” I do hate anybody to take me for a fool so I answered her, “You don’t think that I’m plannin’ to invite no lynch mob to help us, do you? …” “No,” she says, “but I’ve been around them, and I don’t like their ways and some of them are rude and uppity and think they know everything and …”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “When have you been around white people?” Then she sashayed out to the middle of the room and began to really wind up: “I have been around them when we was raisin’ funds for the nursery school, when we was tryin’ to get some colored elected at votin’ time, at the parent-teachers, when we held Brotherhood Week, at the children’s recital, also where I work….”
Clarice hollered out, “Well, I guess she’s really been around ’em, Mildred!” At that I took the floor back again while I could still get it: “Yes, and I want you all to remember that every one of us is better off when white folks (never mind the faults) would rather be with us in these things than stayin’ at home never givin’ a care or joinin’ with mobs and murderers! We need all the white friends we can get and the fewer the enemies the better!” “Well,” she adds, “I’m not gonna be givin’ into them on everything and lettin’ them run everything their way!”
“Well, I guess not,” I said, “but we deal with that when we come to it, but for the time bein’ I’m still gonna ask you ladies that we vote to include Afro-Americans, colored, Negro, white, Chinese, Japanese and every kind of American there is to join hands with us and help make everything peaceful and friendly.”
No, Marge, they didn’t settle down real quiet, and I’m sorry to say that a few more cracks were passed about “some people always do more talkin’ than workin’,” and “I swore I’d never join another club,” and things of that nature. However, I’m pleased to report that they voted the way I asked them. Yes, I feel real good about that.