WHITE (December 3-4, 1969) Page 1 Continuing....

An old man about 50, weather beaten, his hair graying, stands up and knots his thumbs in his overall suspenders and says: “Why the people of course. You and me, we going to decided what we’re going to do with this here farm. Probably do some farming, sho enough, but just don’t knows what kind of farming going to be. Ain’t that right?”

“Straight on brother!”

A tall, very black woman with striking Indian features around 30 says: “this here farm is for all the poor folk in the counties around here. Man, we’re going to show the cracker that we black people can work hard and get something for it. We’re tired of busting our backs and what can we sho for it? The crackers have the money, and we have the debts. We try to save but we never able to save worth a dime.”

Another gentleman dressed like the city folk asks: “You now Brother Martin Luther King, he didn’t preach hatred. He said, ‘Black and white together’. Can white folk who want participate in this here farm?”

“Sure, but what I’m talking about is that those crackers not going to push any black people around anymore. If some white folks that are poor wants to join our movement shoot, we ain’t going to stop em. In fact, we’ve been going out to all the houses in the county, all the poor people’s homes, and we’ve been telling the white folk as well as the black. But you know poor white folk don’t think too highly about us colored ‘uns. And so I say those crackers going to learn that we can do it on our own, that we black folk can work, together and succeed.” The vessels in her neck stand out, but this black face with the beautiful Indian features, the narrow face and the high cheek bones, are even prettier when she became angered.

The group becomes silent. Several other people filed into the church as the foregoing discussion occurs. Cel stands up and goes to the front of the church where the secretary and chairman are sitting behind a small table.

“Brothers and sisters, I’ve been sitting here and listening to what you all been saying. And what folks been saying sounds good.”

“That’s right sister.”
Her little body begins to lilt to the tempo of her words and the old-folks refrain.

“We’re all poor folk – you’re poor and I’m poor. I don’t make no more than $10 a week. Brothers, how come us black folks work hard, and save our money. Yet what do we get out of it. We’re still poor. How come brothers that we’ve been poor for the last 150 years while these here white folk they got enough food in their stomachs, they gets an education while our children got to work in the field. Some folk work hard, and never get nuff money to pay for food and clothing!

“Sho enough. That’s right.” “Sing it sister.”

“Some folks gets medicine and a doctor and gets to a hospital when they get sick. But with colored folk, don’t we get sick? Don’t we deserve doctors and medicines? How come white folks get medicine and black folks we get none?”

“Ah-huh. The head and the bodies in the audience rock back and forth in perfect rhythm and respond in perfect timing for the chorus.

“How come us black folks are always poor? Are we born poor? Are we ashamed of being poor?"

No sister.

“I don’t know about you but I’m proud of being poor, proud of being black. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. We’re not poor cause we’re born this way. Those crackers they control the government, they control what we can grow, the control the taxes and revenues and so us black folks we get nothing.”

“That’s right. Ah-huh.”

“We know that the crackers think about us niggers. But sister Cora, she’s telling you like it is brothers and sisters. We’re going to show those crackers that if we work together we going to get us a good job; we going to have schools for our children so that they can go to the colleges with the white folk. We going to get our own hospital and our own houses so that we live like PEOPLE like those white folk.

“Ah-huh”

“And I want you all to know that we’re not alone. This organization that’s buying the land, it’s both blacks and whites. There are good whites and bad whites just like good and bad colored folk. But we’ve got to have the movement. Without the movement we have nothing. With the movement we can have the world.”

She stops. The dulcet voice – at times sarcastic, at times – anger and at times scolding, and cajoling – has stopped. The world – at least in the church has come to an end and the meeting is over. I stand up and shake hands with the women and men as they file past Cel and the new visitors. I mumble my name and a few words and then become mute. But it really doesn’t matter. I am at one with these people—their hopes and desires. And even if I cannot speak to them on this occasion, it really is unnecessary. What has been said is more than sufficient. I savor the moments. Cel says good-bye to the last of the members at the meeting. The doors slam shut and the motors start and the black silence reigns again in this small corner of a forest and a field in a back-water county church.

We stop to have dinner at a pizza place. Even the South is being invaded by Northern eating customs and institutions. We sit and munch the pizza. I probe a little more into her past. She is only 22 and is the Executive Director of the movement down here. She has gone to an all white school – the first black to enter – in her small native town in northern Georgia.

“I graduated college when I was 20 and wanted to get involved in the movement. But the movement I thought was in the north. I worked in Harlem for a year with both the Puerto Ricans and the Blacks with the Neighborhood Youth Corps. I came back home to finish school. I got my degree in June of 1968 but still I wanted to get more experience in the North. I went up to Chicago during the summer of 1968 and worked with the Hyde Park Community organizations.

“How did you like it? You know I’m from there.”

“I hated it. The Chicago I saw is really an ugly city. You know I was down town during the night of the riots during the convention. I could see that the white kids were going to get their heads bashed in if they were serious about protesting in the refusal of the City in issuing a marching permit. Some of the white kids came over, ‘Hey come on and march with us. You know this is as much your bag as it is ours.’ You know what I said Jay? I just said no. I shook my head no. And I absolutely felt nothing. Even as I watched the police bloody their faces. I could not feel sympathetic.”

“Why not?”

“Because for nearly the last nine years we’ve been protesting and pleading and arguing with the whites, that segregation and discrimination and police brutality are not only the black man’s thing, but your thing too. It’s taken almost 10 years for the white to wake up to this fact. And I’ve had my fill of police brutality and inhuman treatment to feel at all sympathetic with those white kids out there getting the shit kicked out of them. It’s about time they wake up. It’s time they begin to see black and white and what it means.”