Since all their other antics hadn’t worked, the segregationists had stepped it up a notch. They’d stop at nothing to keep me from walking across that stage on graduation night at Central. But even as those thoughts rolled into my mind, I could feel myself harden with determination, as I had a thousand times in my most frightened moments in the last three years. All I wanted was to go to school. What could possibly be the harm in that? These people didn’t know me. I wouldn’t quit. They couldn’t make me. I’d come too far. They couldn’t chase me away from my home, and I wouldn’t run away from Central like a scared dog. Their plan had backfired: I felt more strongly than ever that I had as much right to be there as any white high school student who lived in the neighborhood. I would stay. I would graduate. And I would walk across that stage. Or I would die trying. The clarity of that thought calmed me down, and I finally, somehow, drifted off to sleep.
The next morning, I got out of bed around six o’clock, like every other school morning, and quietly got dressed. Mother and Daddy were in the kitchen—who knows if they’d even been to sleep—when I walked in.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Mother asked.
“Yes,” I responded simply. “I’m sure.”
Daddy knew me. He took one look at the determination in my face, and he knew there was no use trying to keep me at home. He shrugged as if to say, “If that’s what she wants to do …”
It was exactly what I wanted to do, and I hoped that my parents were proud of me for refusing to stay at home.
Before leaving for school, I went to see Tina, who was awake in the den. Standing in her nightgown in front of the television, she pointed excitedly at the screen.
“That’s our house!” she exclaimed.
Sure enough, the bombing had made the national news, and images of our house were flashing across the television screen on NBC’s Today show. Mother rushed in, scooped up Tina, and turned off the television. From that day forward, my parents never said a word to me about the bombing. It was as if clicking the TV off could erase every memory of that horrible night. I knew that in my parents’ minds, the bombing was grown-folks’ business, not the kind of thing that should be on the mind of a child. As always, they believed they were protecting me, deflecting from me the side of life that I was not ready—or they were not ready for me—to handle. Soon enough, they figured, life would reveal its own ugly truths. I didn’t question their authority, so I didn’t bring it up, either. By now, I had my ways of finding out things. I knew that somehow I would find out what had happened and why.
While Mother drove me to school, I wondered if my white classmates and teachers had heard about the bombing. I wondered whether they even cared. I guess part of me yearned for some sign that at least some of them really did care. But the not so subtle glares, whispers, and finger-pointing of the students milling around their lockers inside suddenly made me feel like an object of ridicule. Not one of them—not even the few acquaintances I’d made or the teachers who taught me every day—uttered a word to me the whole morning. I felt more isolated than ever. As I sat through class after class with them, I couldn’t help wondering: Weren’t they even a little curious about the silent Negro girl sitting beside them in class, the one whose house had been bombed? Was it too much to expect a few kind words, a sympathetic smile, a friendly gesture? Even after all I’d been through at Central, I still expected at least that much. I had thought that things were getting better. I had hoped for some sign of their humanity, some sign that they saw mine. I had hoped that maybe some of them would think that the bombing had taken matters too far, that they would think about my family and the tragedy that could have been. I had hoped that maybe now in my most vulnerable moment they would finally see me, Carlotta, the human being with a heart like theirs, a heart that was hurting. But more than ever, their silence cut me to the core.
Back home that afternoon, Loujuana was again making her doll clothes and having her pretend tea parties. Tina was running around, as bubbly and unsuspecting as any four-year-old. And Mother was back in the kitchen, busy as usual. I wasn’t surprised. It was the Walls way. The Cullins way, too: Don’t look back or linger in pain. Pull yourself up. Dust yourself off. Straighten your shoulders. Lift up your head. And walk tall, no matter what. Of course, no one ever said any of this out loud. No one had to. I’d seen it all my life in the way my parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles had always lived. And now it was my turn to show that I’d learned their lessons well.
But being stalwart didn’t mean that I wasn’t curious. I always wanted to know what was going on in even the most peaceful of times, and since I couldn’t count on the adults to keep me informed, I had developed the art of listening. I rarely missed a thing that was going on in my home. I also devoured the newspapers, particularly the Arkansas Gazette, the more progressive of the two local papers. Often, it was my only source of information. In the coming days, I saw my life unfold through the headlines.
The day after the bombing, the banner headline of the Gazette read: BLAST RIPS HOME OF NEGRO PUPIL AT CENTRAL HIGH. Two smaller headlines even mentioned me by name: “Carlotta Walls, Family Unhurt by Explosion” and “Carlotta, One of Original 9 at Central.” Two days later, I read in the same paper that this was the first time in U.S. history that a student had been the target of a bombing. From all appearances, the police were trying to find the culprit.
I was somewhat reassured by the Arkansas Democrat headline that read: 24 DETECTIVES, FBI, OTHER OFFICERS OPEN ALL-OUT PROBE OF BLAST AT NEGRO’S HOME. There was no question in my mind that the violence directed at me was linked to the Labor Day bombings. Some of the bombers were still out on bail. But if others had made the connection, they did not say so publicly.
Both newspapers ran photos of the damage. The Gazette showed Police Chief Smith examining the bricks blown to pieces at the base of the chimney, while the Democrat ran a close-up of the damaged chimney and a police officer stopping a car in front of my house. According to the papers, police determined that two sticks of dynamite had been placed or thrown under a front window of my home.
“It sounded like a cannon,” my neighbor Mrs. Davis told the Gazette.
The newspaper also reported that the force of the blast had broken windows in the house across the street and that police said calls reporting the explosion came from points more than two miles away. Unidentified neighbors told the paper they had seen two unfamiliar automobiles drive by the house just before and after the explosion—a crucial detail that seemed to go nowhere. All the detectives in town were assigned to check out leads or to stand guard at Central and Hall High, the all-white school in the more affluent section of town. Lights inside and around all of the high schools were kept burning through the night for the rest of the week. It was as if everyone were waiting for something else to happen. I anxiously followed the developments in the newspapers.
In the Democrat, known as the pro-segregationist newspaper, local white leaders were speaking out. W. F. Rector, president of the Little Rock Chamber of Commerce, sounded full of outrage, but not over the violence directed at me and my family. He was concerned that the turmoil had cost the city some big business prospects.
“This is a minor incident and we have been kicked in the teeth again,” he said.
Mrs. Bates fired back the next day in the Gazette: “It’s too bad that Mr. Rector, who holds an important position in the community, would call a vicious, cowardly act of this kind a minor incident. People around the world are today judging American democracy by what is happening in Little Rock.”
I appreciated Mrs. Bates even more every time I read a comment like that. Over the last three years, she’d stood in front of countless microphones, and when she opened her mouth, the fiery truth came out. She seemed so comfortable in the limelight. I often suspected that part of her relished the attention and the lights of the cameras. But I have never doubted her sincerity or her conviction.
I know Mrs. Bates was as dumbfounded as I was jus
t two days after the bombing to read in the newspaper the wild implication by Amis Guthridge, chief attorney for the white Citizens Council. He suggested that Negroes might have been behind the bombing in some way.
“I’m not saying who did it,” he added, trying to cover his tracks. “The avenue is wide open. You just can’t tell what’s in back of it.”
The suggestion was so absurd that I couldn’t even muster the energy to get angry. It seemed so outrageous that it didn’t occur to me to be afraid. But his ridiculous claim stayed in the back of my mind.
I remained confident, though, that Police Chief Smith would be fair. It had taken him just three days to arrest the Labor Day bombing suspects. He must have felt tremendous pressure to pull off the same speedy investigation this time around. Despite suffering from the flu, he’d apparently left his sickbed to head a round-the-clock investigation. But it took three days for the Little Rock Chamber of Commerce to meet and agree to offer a reward to help flush out the bomber. This time, the group could muster only $2,500, one-tenth of the reward offered in the Labor Day bombings. When I read this, I felt both infuriated and hurt.
Maybe the Chamber’s coffers were low after putting up such a hefty reward just a few months earlier. Or more likely, I thought, when the time came to ante up, the city’s business leaders just didn’t care as much this time around. The limited reward seemed to send a message that the bombing of our home was somehow less important. This despite the fact that, unlike the empty vehicle and buildings blown up during the Labor Day bombings, my home had living, breathing human beings inside.
My breakfast sat on the counter untouched that morning. And the door slammed a little harder when I left the house.
Thank God for the letters and telegrams that began arriving almost daily from around the world right after the bombing. They were, in part, what kept me going. Out-of-town family and long-lost friends sent heartwarming messages of encouragement. White strangers wrote touching letters expressing their shame. Even a well-known charismatic religious leader known as Father Divine, who claimed to be God, sent a note urging me to keep my head up. A few of the letters were written in a foreign language, and some even arrived with small amounts of cash or checks. But they all had one thing in common: They broke the silence. They let me know that this nightmare was not just mine and my family’s alone, that people of goodwill around the world were watching and listening, that they were horrified by such evil, and that they cared.
Nine days after the bombing, as I’d feared, the other shoe did drop.
It was well after dark on February 18 when my father got home. He was still working nights at Big Daddy’s pool hall to help make ends meet because his construction work had become so erratic. The house was quiet except for my parents’ voices, coming from near the front door. I was in the kitchen, but my ears were alert for any news that I could pick up.
“They want me to go downtown to the police station,” Daddy said. I couldn’t see him, but I heard the door open and close again behind him. I wondered: Where was Daddy going? And who were “they”? Nothing in his voice had sounded alarming, so maybe the police had asked him to come downtown to answer more questions about the bombing. There was nothing to do but go to bed. When I woke up for school the next morning, Daddy wasn’t there, and my mother was pacing back and forth in the kitchen. Her face looked more worried than I’d ever seen, so I knew right away that it wasn’t simply that Daddy had left early for work. Mother tried to go about our morning routine, but I wasn’t fooled. The front-page headlines helped to explain my mother’s mood:
2 NEGROES HELD FOR WALLS BLAST.
POLICE GIVE NO MOTIVE FOR ACCUSED.
My eyes sped across the newspaper page and then froze when I saw a familiar name: Herbert Odell Monts. Police were accusing Herbert, my childhood playmate—the same Herbert who’d been a faithful player on our neighborhood softball team—of bombing my family’s home. Another acquaintance, Maceo Antonio Binns, Jr., also had been accused. I could hardly believe what I was reading. This simply made no sense.
Maceo, then thirty-one, was a regular at my grandfather’s place, so my father knew him well. Our families were loosely connected in other ways, as black families often were in small communities. Maceo’s sister and my family attended the same church, and his nephew McClain Birch was my friend. Herbert was seventeen, just like me, and we’d been buddies practically our entire lives. We were born on the same day, just fifteen minutes apart, and grew up one block from each other. I could almost pitch a stone from my front yard to his. We had played softball and marbles, ridden our bikes, and walked the streets of our neighborhood together more times than I could count.
Every day since the bombing had brought me to a new level of disbelief. Now, I was in shock.
According to the newspaper, Herbert and Maceo had been brought in five days after the bombing for questioning by local police and FBI agents. At that point they’d had no leads in the case, so they’d supposedly intensified their efforts, working late into the night. Chief Smith announced the arrests at one-fifteen that morning. He’d charged Herbert and Maceo under a statute that made it illegal to “willfully or maliciously destroy or injure property by means of an explosive,” which carried a maximum penalty of up to five years in jail. The paper said it was the same felony charge that had been filed in the Labor Day bombings.
Once again, my breakfast went to waste. By the time I finished the article, my stomach was in knots and I was full of questions. What in the world did these arrests have to do with my father? He wouldn’t have pointed the finger at Herbert or Maceo. Why was Daddy still away, and why hadn’t we heard from him?
But as worried as I was, I told myself I could not overreact. With Daddy gone, I had to hold myself together for Mother and my little sisters. So I did what I always did on school mornings: got dressed and went to school.
I never even thought about not going. It was the only way I knew to fight back. In my mind, segregationists were behind all of it—the bombing and the arrests of Herbert and Maceo. If I stayed home even a day, those responsible might think they were winning. So my presence at school said to the enemy, better than any words ever could: You have not whipped me, whittled me down, or scared me enough to make me quit.
At times during the day, the anger and fear inside me felt like a fist in the pit of my stomach, but I refused to cry or even look afraid. I tried to appear nonchalant and intensely focused on my studies. I knew that if I failed, white teachers who doubted the intelligence of black children would feel justified. I was determined to show them that, given the resources and opportunity, black children could perform as well as, if not better, than others.
An old report card from that time shows that I earned all A’s and B’s the first semester of my senior year. Some of my teachers still ignored me and clearly did not want me at Central, but I found that the grades they gave me were mostly fair. After the bombing, my grades tumbled to mostly C’s and a few B’s. I had never made C’s before in my life. So the events clearly took their toll, despite my determination.
The day at school felt surreal. Once again, none of my classmates or teachers said anything about the arrests. I was so distracted that it hardly mattered this time. All I could think about was getting back home to check on my father. When I finally returned to the house after school, Daddy still was not there. And Mother was still pacing. I had to do something. It didn’t matter that I knew my efforts would get me nowhere. I knew now that Daddy was with the police, and I knew that they cared nothing about black families when they carted off our loved ones. No one was going to contact us with an update. I flipped through the local telephone directory, found the number to police headquarters, and dialed it. Calmly, I identified myself and asked to speak to my father.
“He can’t come to the phone,” replied the voice on the other end.
“When is he coming home?” I asked, trying not to sound like a scared child.
There was no answer.
With each passing minute, the anxiety in our home rose like a quiet flood. Word about my father spread quickly, and relatives and friends from all over the country began calling, wanting to know the latest. Every time the phone rang, my mother, sisters, and I all jumped.
Finally, Big Daddy came in with some news. He was well connected for a black man of that era, and he knew someone who had gotten “inside” information. FBI agents were involved, and they were asking my father lots of questions. Of course, we worried that they were doing more than just asking questions. After all, this was the South, where a black man taken from his home in the middle of the night by whites—even the police, even the FBI—could face unthinkable horror.
As I lay in the darkness of my room that night, my mind zoomed in on Daddy. Was he okay? Were police hurting him? I shook the bad thoughts out of my head. Daddy would come home. He had to. He knew how much we—I—needed him. Memories flooded my head: How he came home from work in the evenings and stopped outside to spend a few moments with me and my friends. How he’d turn the jump rope, tap the volleyball across the yard, pitch a few softballs to us, or find some other way to join in our fun. How I always slept better whenever he was in the house. He’d come in, bone-tired from working day and night, and I didn’t even have to see his face to feel his presence. I’d hear the door open and close behind him, wait for the silent pause as he took off his straw hat, and then listen again for the light tap of his shoes across the hardwood floors that we had put down together. In those moments, my world suddenly felt safe again.
A Mighty Long Way Page 20
