A History of the African-American People (Proposed) by Strom Thurmond
Page 7
Sincerely yours,
Blaine
OFFICE OF SENATOR STROM THURMOND
217 RUSSELL SENATE BUILDING
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20515
October 20, 2002
Dear Repinuj,
You now move to imagining the masturbatory coupling of your mother and sister, as if that particular spectacle left you uninvolved. I have nothing against intense voyeurism, but I don’t accept for one moment the notion that it keeps you out of things, that one perversion displaces another, that you can only have one kink at a time. After all, it is you stage-managing all this, directing the scene, orchestrating the oohs and oh-Jesuses and yeses and that’s-the-places and don’t-stops.
You ask for more of the playing doctor. OK. I was just trying to be modest. It seems I was always the patient, carefully undressed and probed by a large hospital staff of neighborhood and visiting girls, and boys too. From the time I was maybe 8 until well into my teens I played this part. The attending physicians ranged in age from 4 to 16 at least, and several times Mr. Tolliver (my little friend Julie’s father) participated. He was ever so old. I can recall all this pretty clearly and can remember only being happy to give others so much pleasure. I don’t think I am lying when I say no sexual joyance came to me in all this. I felt, deeply but purely, the glow, call it altruistic if you must, that comes from being of use. I remember being very careful to present myself in a variety of comely ways, seeking out nice undergarments and, every now and then, perfumes.
I am not saying I am still available for this role. Don’t get me wrong. I have graduated to other dramas.
Wilmington? DELAWARE? Have you ever left your Simon & Schuster cardboard cubicle there, McCloudiness? Certainly not Wilmington, Delaware. I have no objections to an assignation. But let’s choose something with character. Veer east a little on your map and you find——? Let’s make it a game. Look and tell me.
Notnalb
p.s. I cannot imagine why you are so peevish about your name. Roba has about it a distinguished air. True, it doesn’t seem a name belonging in our time and place, does it? Ringing of the names invented for grunting cavemen in films like “Barbarella” or “Cro Magnon!” or for androids in the future, it seems to bring with it, Roba does, hints of melodies lost in the breezes of yesterday or not yet played. Unhearable, unknowable, untouchable.
Memo: McCloud to Snell
October 23, 2002
Dear Martin,
Look at this from Wilkes. What am I to do?
If ever you felt kindly toward me, please help.
Desperately,
Juniper
Memo: Snell to McCloud
October 24, 2002
Dearest Juniper,
I don’t exactly know what you’re asking for.
You do seem upset. Remember our party is but a week away. If you need calming before then, I’m afraid I can’t help you.
That’s rather interesting, that doctor game Wilkes outlined. Wonder if he has a little brother. I don’t see anything kinky or out of line in his letter. Probably you are just timid, McCloud, sexually repressed. I’m not saying you should offer yourself to him or he to you. Nor should either of you find a third party, male or female. It’s not a question of gender; that’s obvious enough. Besides, you affirm that you are straight, though I don’t recall giving you any cause to inform me of this “fact” so often or so insistently. You are barking up the wrong shrub in the garden of gender.
What’s your concern—that he will plead to give you an enema?
Martin
I see you’ve redacted the copy of the letter you sent me, the part that deals with the mystery of the “R.”
FROM THE DESK OF PERCIVAL EVERETT
October 25, 2002
Jim:
Well, now I’m with you. What in the name of the KKK are we dealing with here?
Barton now sends us “clarification” that is about as clear as yo mama’s reputation.
I can make nothing out of this, not one damn thing.
You want to cut and run?
P
Interoffice Memo
October 27, 2002
Percival:
You put me in the unaccustomed position, yes you do, of telling you to take it easy. Usually it’s you telling me to take it easy but now it’s me telling you. So, just take it easy and leave this to me.
It’s not like you, an ex-rodeo champeen and all, to quit just because the challenges mount. I do not lay the claims to athletic accomplishment that you devise, but I do remember my days on the intramural basketball team. I played both guard and forward, even, when Jimmy Canton didn’t show up once, center. We called our team “The Klondykers,” because we all, apart from one guy, came from a part of town called Klondyke. I really enjoyed all that, you know. I’d give anything to be back there right now, though just between you and me, it’d be better to go through high school again a whole lot better looking. It wouldn’t hurt to be a cool guy too. I wasn’t cool back then, were you? I mean, I wasn’t the worst geek or that sort of thing, but not really cool. I can say that now. Why is it we don’t have a chance to just fold time over like a sheet or a piece of legal pad paper and live it all over, only good looking and cool? I’d give anything. You ever think of that?
Don’t you get some feel from this latest material? I get some feel from it. Look again and tell me.
You’re a good friend.
Jim
FROM THE DESK OF PERCIVAL EVERETT
October 29, 2002
Jim:
You OK?
Percival
SIMON & SCHUSTER, INC.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
October 30, 2002
Dear Barton,
I figured out that backwards spelling. Very clever. Did you do that on purpose?
Thanks for the details on the playing doctor experiences. That all sounds delightful, and of course I understand when you say your motives were altruistic. It’s just that I cannot myself ever remember acting altruistically—certainly not when my clothes or anybody else’s clothes were off. I once told the most obnoxious girl in our (or anybody else’s) high school not only that she had a great personality but that I loved her. And you know what that bought me—simply the right to remove her bra and suck on one nipple. I don’t know why one, but she guarded the other as if it were the Hope Diamond. Maybe she was saving that one for marriage.
You are much more outward-thinking, I see.
OK—east of Wilmington. Got it! Philly. Not my favorite city but certainly easy to get to. Right? And I don’t mean to suggest I know Philly well enough to have an opinion really. Who knows? I expect you do. Is it sort of like Paris? Anyway, Philly it is.
Duolccm
p.s. Tomorrow’s the Halloween party Snell has cooked up. As far as I know, I’m the only guest. He says he’ll supply costumes. Pray for me.
FROM THE DESK OF PERCIVAL EVERETT
November 1, 2002
Jim:
I didn’t mean to ignore your other letter exactly. It did have a strange calming effect on me. Like dribbling bourbon between my toes and strummin on the old banjo.
Really, though I got lost in the story about how much you enjoyed basketball and sex in high school, I did do what you said. I went back to this second batch of stuff from Wacko Wilkes and tried to see if there isn’t something there.
What do you think? All these petitions from Northern blacks do hint at something that is a partial but important truth: the South functioned as the North’s convenient Other, allowing the North to do very little toward establishing equal schooling, housing, and voting rights by presenting a whipping boy. Focusing on the demonic South allowed the North to keep its attention away from itself, certainly away from the plight of actual black people right there on the other side of the tracks.
That’s true enough and it may hint at a stronger truth for us. What do you think? The North operated this way, constructing
the South so as to deflect its attention away from its own defects and establish a kind of automatic virtue it could always draw on. The simple fact of living in the North allowed any asshole to feel righteous without doing a damned thing. The automatic quality is what strikes me. And maybe there’s an automatic quality too in Strom’s alliance with things like States’ Rights. I haven’t got it figured out yet, but maybe we will find that he is, for all his political smarts, less a calculator than a guy operating day by day within a set of assumptions he never questions, that are there for him in the air he breathes and come to him automatically. I guess we just have to be careful that we don’t breathe in the same air—or at least mix it with some L.A. smog.
What do you think?
P
Interoffice Memo
November 3, 2002
Dear Percival,
I see.
Maybe so. Maybe old Strom just was there and acted on being there, kind of like a weather vane? Well, that makes him too passive, but I see what you mean. The North never really thought much about equality for blacks, just found itself in the pleasant situation of being able to feel real good by pointing out how unjust to the blacks the South was. That was certainly easier than doing anything themselves.
But I see what you’re saying: it’s like both sides are battling windmills, setting up caricatures of the other and tilting away at them. Blacks simply define the field; they are of themselves of almost no importance.
That’s too cynical, right?
But you’re thinking Strom is less an independent force than a reflector of positions that are, somehow or other, always there for him—really there before him. He doesn’t wake up on Tuesday and think things through; he wakes up on Tuesday to find things thought through for him.
J
OFFICE OF SENATOR STROM THURMOND
217 RUSSELL SENATE BUILDING
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20515
November 5, 2002
Joy—
What was the name of the girl who gave you her breast? Maybe I knew her. You ever think that maybe her other breast was deformed and she was ashamed of it, trying to protect it and save her dignity? Maybe it was wizened, marked with lines or strange circles, equipped with multiple nipples. Who can say? I’m rather glad you cannot, as it would probably have supplied you with more fuel for mockery. Not everything about sex is funny, you know. Women are not simply objects with tits and pussies and so forth either, just there to be manipulated and lied to so you can—AH! Mother enters the picture again, right?
Philadelphia? Are you mad? That’s North. Look further east and a little south.
Baa
p.s. Oh, Roba! Roba! Roba!
Now please do not say No—bah!
Let’s grab our bags and go—bah
To the land of E.A. Poe—bah;
Where we can pitch and throw—bah,
Woo with our little Lo—bah;
Then jump a boat and row—bah
Away from cops and woe—bah,
Lie low, low, low, low, low—bah;
Then back to Lo, shouting “Yo—bah!”
Until the heat doth go—bah.
FROM THE DESK OF PERCIVAL EVERETT
November 5, 2002
Jim—Let’s draft a letter right away to Wilkes, laying out the grounds of our confusion and trying to get him to tell us what the fuck he’s doing. You want to draft it and THEN SEND IT TO ME (not Wilkes, until I see it)?
Percival
SIMON & SCHUSTER, INC.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
November 8, 2002
Dear Percival and James,
Well, our project is attracting some attention, you’ll be glad to hear, and it’s attention from the highest quarters. Because my dealings with those in high positions, elected and appointed, would be damaged, perhaps irreparably, were I to bandy about names, I must leave you to guess, or, rather, not to guess but to quiet your curiosity on this point.
In any case, I received a phone call this morning from a Senator—I think I can say that much—asking about our project. This senior and highly respected Senator said that he had heard talk (in the corridors of the Senate and the Senate dining room) about our project. (He also said he had heard wonderful things about me, which I pass on just for completeness sake.) I might add that, in addition to having his ear to the ground, he is a person who has fought back against calamity and, even worse, the calumny of the vicious press in reporting an accident he had years ago. I can’t use names, but it is a tribute to his fighting spirit and that of his family the way he has stood solid and large against those who would be willing to turn a mere accident into something more.
I’ll add only that he is not even of Senator Thurmond’s party and thus is speaking out of concern for the dignity and democratic forms of the Senate. To quote him, “I wouldn’t even call it ‘concern,’ Martin, confident as I am that a friend like you—may I call you a friend? [I said “certainly”]—will do the thing right. I know I can count on you and won’t insult you by asking.”
So, I think that’s wholly reasonable. And I’ll just repeat the luminous Senator’s words: I know I can count on you to do this thing right and won’t insult you by asking. I mean I can count on you not to mock Senator T or anything like that, right?
Yours truly,
Martin A. Snell
Martin Snell, Editor
SIMON & SCHUSTER, INC.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
November 8, 2002
Barton,
Atlantic City?
Juniper
Interoffice Memo
Percival—This OK?
DRAFT
November 9, 2002
Dear Martin,
I enclose here material received from Wilkes.
What in God’s name are we to make of it? I mean, he says we are to work it up. What the hell does “work it up” mean? Here we are waiting patiently for real material FROM THURMOND and we get what are apparently writing exercises from this Barton person. Who is he? How are we to deal with him?
Is he mad? Are you?
The material also. For fuck’s sake, it leans toward the most absurd apologetic I’ve ever seen. We supposed to say that all was peachy for Southern darkies, that the only ones suffering were those who went North? It gets worse, as you will see.
We are serious writers, Snell, and we sure as Christ cannot proceed without knowing what it is we are to be doing. I can tell you what we won’t do:
—write some cockeyed history designed to make salmon-head look like a friend to man
—sit around for months playing hide-the-hankie with Wilkes
—put up with much more crowshit from you
So, with all respect, do clarify things for us. We don’t mean to cause difficulties. We mean to work. We are dying to work. We work well, you’ll see. Let us work!
Cordially yours,
Percival and Jim
FROM THE DESK OF PERCIVAL EVERETT
November 10, 2002
Jim:
I altered the tone a little and sent it on.
Percival
Office of Senator Strom Thurmond
217 Russell Senate Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
November 10, 2002
Juniper:
Atlantic City is fine by me. Good suggestion. Next weekend?
How was Halloween? Strange you didn’t mention it. Did you get to feed from anyone’s breast? Was Mother there in the flesh? Big Sis?
Barton
OFFICE OF SENATOR STROM THURMOND
217 RUSSELL SENATE BUILDING
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20515
November 10, 2002
Dear Percival and Jim,
Should it be “Jim and Percival”? Or should I alternate? You let me know, if you would, as I cannot be expected to guess and do not want to hear, somewhere down the road, “Barton, you have caused a rift.” But why p
ut it negatively? I wish not to avoid disharmony so much as to conjure concord.
Enough of that, though you must understand that I have no wish to be impersonal. Tell me more about yourselves. Which one is black? Forgive me if you’ve already said this, but I sometimes forget some things in the rush of doing other things. Only one of you is black, right? Neither name is much of a giveaway, is it? But then they seldom are. Jackson, perhaps, or Johnson, but then you can get into serious troubles by making such assumptions, believe you me. Now, if one of you were named Shumoonunu Ackabawka, then I wouldn’t have to ask. But neither of you is, so I must.
Anything else you’d care to add in the personal line, do.
I think the reason you haven’t sent me anything is that I haven’t given you enough to chew on and work up properly. So here’s some more. Part of it is a little lengthy, but just take a deep breath and go at it, working it up.
First comes an excerpt from a little-known speech by the greatest Negro of his time and probably any other time, Booker Taliaferro Washington. This is a speech given in 1884. This is not the celebrated speech he gave later. That was in 1895. Don’t confuse the two, as I will give you some of the latter later in this message. But they are different.
“Any movement for the elevation of the Southern Negro, in order to be successful, must have to a certain extent the cooperation of the Southern whites…. The best course to pursue in regard to the civil rights bill in the South is to let it alone; let it alone and it will settle itself. Good schoolteachers and plenty of money to pay them will be more potent in settling the race question than many civil rights bills and investigating committees.”
Let me just add here that it is common for certain historians (all from guess where?) to dismiss Washington as an “Uncle Tom,” a leader who would sell his people for the humiliation of vocational education and some patronizing. I know this, but I will warn you two that history is never so simple. Neither are men. Neither is Stowe’s Uncle Tom, for that matter. He’s actually a tough old bird and resists to the death. That’s another issue, though. Don’t confuse me.