A History of the African-American People (Proposed) by Strom Thurmond

by Percival Everett

  Note this. In the crucial year of 1904, just twenty years later you will note, Washington published in the important magazine, The Outlook, an essay, “Cruelty in the Congo Country.” I can send it to you if you like. In it, Washington brilliantly shows how the United States government, having established Liberia as what it regarded as an African showcase, then cooperated with Belgium to ensure the existence of the Congo under Leopold’s vile rule. Moreover, our government had done nothing to halt the abuses in the Congo, abuses that Washington outlines with grisly clarity and with his wonderful, judicious acumen. He was no dummy. He showed how King Leopold of Belgium worked by using one tribe to police another, taking a small portion of the “tributes” he was collecting to pay off those he was inciting to acts of horror. King Leopold, Washington says, is not really capitalizing on the native savagery and brutality; he is instilling these qualities, importing them from Europe. The heart of darkness (cf. Conrad) beats not in the African but in the European who transplants it there—with the blithe cooperation of the United States of America.

  Mix that in with your liberal acid and shoot it up.

  Second is a short bit from M. Edward Bryant of Alabama, writing in The Christian Recorder (Philadelphia), January 19, 1888. Now M. Edward Bryant was a well-known Selma radical, both an editor and a minister. He was a firebrand, you might say, capable of such Malcolm X-like outbursts as “Let the world know that we prefer death to such liberty as we have today.” But here’s what he really intends to say:

  “The Negro needs to learn how to use his power wisely. We want to live in peace with all mankind, and especially with the whites of the South. Our interests are identical. But we do not want the peace of the lamb with the lion. Give us our rights, not social equality, and we will die by you, for you, and with you.”

  I don’t want to presume to guide you much, but do note that, apart from all that flapdoodle about dying, these sentiments echo the Senator’s historic position.

  Two short pieces follow.

  First from the North Carolina [Negro] Teacher’s Association report, 1886, offered without comment. You’ll see for yourself the significance here and the representative quality of these two sentences. (The second sentence is curtailed, but nothing of importance is left out, you have my word.)

  “To have separate schools seems to be a part of the political organism of the South; and we would not have it otherwise, but there should not be any wide disparagement in favor of or against either race. This would be out of harmony with the genius of American institutions….”

  And then from the Virginia Readjuster Party statement in 1883. I confess I do not know a lot about this Party. To be candid, I know nothing at all, though I’m sure the following statement, once again, represents the good sense even of what we would call, anachronistically but inescapably, THE FAR LEFT of Negro sentiment IN THE SOUTH:

  “We are not as intelligent, nor as strong, financially, as any other people. We are just out of slavery; we are struggling upward, we need friends.”

  I don’t know what you make of that remark about inferior intelligence. I can speak for the Senator in saying that he (nor I) never supposed anything of the kind. Why they said that is something for you to work out.

  Finally, the Atlanta Cotton Exposition speech of September 18, 1895 by, of course, Booker T. I wonder why so many things happen in September? Apart from the days dwindling down to a precious few, I mean. Is it so with you? I know it is for me. In early September I met _______________, who has, despite some recent idiocies, meant almost everything. Almost but not—well, you know. Also in September I learned to have a good personality, as we called it then. I set myself a rigorous course of training, all through the month. When done—well, you know the result. Or rather, you don’t yet. Not really.

  Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrre’s Booker!

  “It is in the South that the Negro is given a man’s chance in the commercial world…. You can be sure in the future, as you have been in the past, that you and your families will be surrounded by the most patient, faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful people that the world has ever seen…. In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress…. The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle, rather than of artificial forcing.”

  If you are not familiar with the striking metaphor of the bucket Washington uses in this speech, do look at it. I can supply it, but I find it a little long to reproduce here. Perhaps, as one of you—the black?—is a researcher, you can find it yourself.

  Well, ta ta for now.

  Do either of you have a sister, younger?

  Go Diamondbacks!

  Bisto

  Interoffice Memo

  November 12, 2002

  Percival:

  Well, suck off your dog, isn’t this the limit? Here we haven’t written a word—right? you haven’t written anything, have you?—and we get this warning to do the right thing. I take it the whole fucking letter is a tribute to Snell’s intimacy with fatso Ted Kennedy, who has obviously never heard of Snell before. “May I call you a friend?” indeed. I didn’t know anybody used that line except vacuum-cleaner salesmen. I tried it once in picking up a girl, back in my inexperienced days, and you can imagine what she said! What she said was, “You can call it as you see it, dumbo, but that doesn’t mean I gotta do it!” She wasn’t the brightest, I guess, but then neither was I for using a line like that. I sometimes think I’m not very bright period. That ever occur to you? About me, I mean.

  The last line in the letter is what Snell wants from us, I think. “I can count on you not to mock Senator T or anything.” That after he’s just said he needn’t mention what it is he wants. Thinks better of it and decides he has to spell it out to dummies like us.

  Why do you suppose Ted Kennedy is worried about us mocking Strom Thurmond? For all I know, Strom Thurmond is dead and we’d only be mocking assface Barton Wilkes, if we even mocked. And mocked what? What is it we have to mock?

  Where is the source of all this? What are we doing?

  I bought a new shirt today—on the net. One of those Eddie Bauer real big ones that go over other shirts.

  Jim

  FROM THE DESK OF PERCIVAL EVERETT

  November 13, 2002

  Jim:

  You seem a little disoriented. Try to get your gyroscope spinning up and down again.

  Snell’s letter is really something, isn’t it? I wonder who’d win in a loony contest, Snell or Wilkes?

  I think we should give Snell about as much attention here as Teddy deserves. Imagine trying to stroke Snell so he’ll not embarrass the Senate by publishing anything untoward, even about Thurmond. Makes you wonder if there’s a dime’s worth of difference between any of those old boys. Fuckers.

  Anyhow, I have a short response to Snell. If it’s OK with you, we’ll send it. It’s attached here.

  Don’t you have a whole bunch of those big shirts?

  Percival

  Percival Everett

  University of Southern California

  University Park Campus

  Los Angeles, CA 90089

  November 13, 2002

  Dear Martin,

  You mystify us, Martin. Who could that Senator be? All we know is that he is an old and valued friend of yours who knows he can trust you, and you him, right?

  Wow. Neither Kincaid nor I know a single Senator, not one. You probably know a lot.

  As for keeping things warm and cozy inside those chambers, hey, why would we want to disrupt that? It’s august, that’s what it is.

  Tell your chubby buddy—is he about to explode?—from us that we’ll treat the subject and his reflections on the subject with all due respect and courtesy, camouflaging as best we can the Senator’s bigotry, manifest shallowne
ss, self-aggrandizing nonsense, and overwhelming ignorance. We agree with Tubbo, and you can say this with confidence, that such attributes are a vital and long-standing Senatorial feature and that we are glad to see today’s Senate embracing them with patriotic fervor.

  Can you get us any autographs?

  Love,

  PE and JK

  SIMON & SCHUSTER, INC.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  November 15, 2002

  Dear Percival and James,

  On an entirely different matter—concerning yours of the 10th, in reference to material sent to you by Mr. Wilkes.

  I do very much appreciate your eagerness to proceed with this project, proceed perhaps more rapidly than Mr. Wilkes, according to your lights, is allowing. That sort of chomping is a good sign, but it can go too far, you know. A certain amount of eagerness, even impatience, is a good thing; but too much—. You know what I mean?

  Academics tend to be quite impatient. Perhaps it comes—you’ll excuse me—from having so few demands on your time. I know you are all doing research and the like, but how many hours a week do you actually work, maybe 5? I think it’s all that vacant time, that sense of hours stretching out before you with nothing to fill them, that gets on your nerves so. It’s understandable, but it’s not always the best thing.

  I think Mr. Wilkes is not sending you “writing exercises,” as you put it, but fodder, preliminary fodder perhaps, but who’s to say? I can tell you that Mr. Wilkes is indeed connected to Senator Thurmond. Why else would this forthcoming book be THE topic of conversation in the cloakroom and dining hall? Of the Senate, I mean.

  My best advice, and I speak here for the project as a whole and the interests of the United States Senate, is “cooperate.” Cooperation and patience will pay big dividends when all the dust settles and the checkered flag comes down. Trust me.

  If I can be of further assistance, do not hesitate to contact.

  Your friend,

  Martin

  SIMON & SCHUSTER, INC.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  November 16, 2002

  Dear Professors Everett and Kincaid,

  I don’t know where to turn, certainly not to my family or to anybody here. I don’t know either what you can do for me or why I am writing exactly, but, as I say, I have nowhere else to turn.

  I am Juniper McCloud. I expect you know already who I am (see letterhead) and how I am connected to this project, but maybe not, as Snell tends to represent himself as the whole firm, the whole publishing industry, eclipsing everyone beneath him (i.e., me) and pretending there is no one above him, when in fact everybody but me is. In short, I work for Snell. In that position, I am largely responsible for the Strom Thurmond project, so-called, though I have seen no evidence to suggest Strom Thurmond is even aware of this book, assuming he is aware of anything at all, of course. But I am the key man on that, or the set-up chump, as the case may be. Snell either takes credit for everything or blames me, depending on whether the project blows hot or cold around here. There’s this guy named Vendetti you wouldn’t believe.

  But I’m getting astray, and I wouldn’t blame you if you were right now saying, “What a madman!” I would myself, I suppose. But please bear with me. I really need help or at least advice.

  Barton Wilkes. That says it all. Unless he’s calling himself Button, Blanton, Billie, or Bubbly. He’s a puff-adder is what he is. You’ve been dealing with him, right? You doubtless know what I mean, but you can’t know it up close and personal like me.

  Well, Snell ordered me to get close to Wilkes, really he did, to fish some personal details out of him, all presumably to see if he was on the up and up but really because Snell is a very nosey guy with odd personal habits and, between us, pretty much an unregulated libido. I think Snell was not using me to pimp for him but maybe he was. Who’s to say? Probably he didn’t know what he wanted, just wanted to see what might happen. He’s extremely nosey, king of the noseys. Some day, if you’re interested, I’ll tell you about the company picnic, which itself wasn’t as bad as the Halloween party he threw, just the two of us.

  But it’s Wilkes that’s the problem here, not Snell, though Wilkes would never have been a problem for me, had it not been for Snell. Trying to worm details out of Wilkes, as ordered, I ended up somehow learning nothing of him and disclosing a lot about myself, very personal stuff. Whether what I disclosed was always entirely true is beside the point here; but a lot of it was true and very personal. Do I have regrets for disclosing? Well, duh. But I did. That’s my fault. As a private dick, I am a bust.

  But what was I to do? And, in any case, I did it.

  So, in the process of getting personal, Wilkes started insinuating that we meet, insinuations quickly turning into outright demands for a meeting time and place. I turned to Snell, which was like eating anchovies to cure a heartburn. Snell said I couldn’t meet him here in New York but HAD to meet him somewhere.

  I should have quit my job right there, you are thinking. I guess so, but look at it from my point of view. I am young, just out of NYU (major in English), and here in my first job, which is a good job, but for Snell, who constitutes pretty much the entire material world of my job and that’s rotten fucking luck. How could I quit? I mean, maybe Snell will be fired and I won’t. Maybe he’ll die or that Vendetti will kill him. Maybe he’ll kill Vendetti and I can rat on him anonymously and get him sent up the river. You see.

  So, this Wilkes pins me down to Atlantic City last weekend. Here’s where I need help and advice. But first let me give you a brief glimpse of what happened. If you need more details, I’ll give them. They’re humiliating, but what the hell. I’ve compromised my dignity so deeply now, the only thing worse would be to jump onto the field at Yankee Stadium, shake my dick at the crowd, wave a sign saying, “I went down on my sister,” and try to dry-hump the second baseman.

  OK, Wilkes gets there—I mean, to the hotel lobby where we arranged to meet. He gets there. Have you seen him? Probably not. It’s not a sight you’d want in your scrapbook or in your mind, believe me. You remember in The Silence of the Lambs where Jack Crawford tells Clarice not to let Hannibal Lecter inside her head? Well, it’s the same with Barton’s body.

  You seen Blue Velvet? You know the smarmy piece of ugly blue velvet Frank keeps stroking? OK, think jump suit. Tight. Here comes Wilkes, like a slut from Caligula’s court, trailing two rolling suitcases and pretending not to see me. Makes me say, “Barton?”

  “Yeaaaayus?” he says in what I can only call a cross between a bray and a purr. If he’d had a cigarette holder, he’d have been Tallulah Bankhead. Not that he was effeminate exactly.

  Well anyhow. You’re thinking I’m going to tell you the details of our sophisticated sexual adventures. Think again. They weren’t sophisticated. They weren’t even sexual, to my surprise. I could have handled that. I’m not gay, though I have nothing against being gay, it just happens that I am not, I guess. Still, I have a good relationship with my body-–I don’t give a shit about it—and wouldn’t have made a fuss about almost anything Wilkes had in mind. I mean, that’s not a problem. You’d think it would be, but it isn’t. That isn’t even the problem with Snell and his Halloween plunges into hell.

  With Wilkes it wasn’t sex. It was, to start with, talk and board games. Then carnival rides. Then we cooked together. Then more talk and board games. Then we put on winter clothing and played “Twister.” That sounds sexy maybe, but it wasn’t. We slept in separate beds. Didn’t even undress in view of one another. He talked half the night. Insisted we cook all the next day, when we weren’t playing board games or riding the calmer carnival rides. You’re wondering how we cooked in a hotel. I would be too. It seems Wilkes carries his kitchen equipment with him. It folds up and such.

  So, here’s my problem. All the talk. Somehow, I ended up not only telling him secrets I didn’t know I was keeping, but, I swear, telling him thi
ngs I’d thought and done I’m not entirely sure I really did do or think. How can that be? Too many board games, perhaps. Still, I ended up weeping, not once but on several occasions. Once I was clinging to him and sobbing, right outside the “Dungeon of Doom,” a funhouse ride that takes you past lunging goblins and through spider webs, all in the dark.

  I tell you this because I have nowhere else to turn. You see, he wants me to meet him again in two weeks. He wanted to do it immediately, but I invented obligations to my sister—like I’d ever really want to see her!—but couldn’t postpone things any longer than two weeks. What should I do? Can you help me by inviting Wilkes to come out there for a two-month stay or something—you know, get material for this fucking book? Short of that, can you advise me? You know him and may be aware of the terrifying power he can exert. I am not ordinarily impressionable, but this is different. If he has another go at me, I am not sure what I might do or what shreds of self I may be left with.

  Help me and maybe I can return the favor. Perhaps I can use whiteout and change the figures on your contract, for instance? I’m up to anything.

  Your friend,

  R. Juniper McCloud

  Juniper McCloud

  Assistant to Martin Snell

  OFFICE OF SENATOR STROM THURMOND

  217 RUSSELL SENATE BUILDING

  WASHINGTON, D.C. 20515

  November 18, 2002

  Dear Percival and James, James and Percival, Jacival and Perames,

  Martin Snell, who is a caution don’t you think?, sent along to me your letter of November 10. In that letter, you (which of you? both?) raised points of clarification—don’t you love people who raise their hands in meetings and say “point of clarification” when what they really want to do is get their two cents worth in and achieve anything but clarity? But your points of clarification really deserve a careful review and, as you are saying right about now, responses that drill right to the mother lode.