“There’s a clear choice this year, and Negroes can make a difference. I know many of you listened in to the presidential debates and heard Senator Kennedy speak about Negro rights. His meeting with Dr. King last summer surely influenced his thinking.”
“But where was he when they arrested Dr. King? Why’d it take him so long to say anything?”
Heads bobbed. News of Martin Luther King Jr.’s arrest at an Atlanta department store sit-in hadn’t surfaced in the Springboro paper, but Gen had read the story in The New York Times at the college library. Kennedy had remained mum about the arrest for a week.
“I’m not going to second-guess the candidate so close to the election,” Frank said. “The fact is, the senator has finally called Mrs. King to offer his help, and that’s good enough for me.”
After Frank gaveled the meeting closed, Gen mustered the courage to speak to him. She had several items on her personal agenda. When she offered her hand shyly, Frank paused before shaking it.
“Dr. Rider,” he said, the use of her title a wall between them.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been around, Mr. Johnson. Work . . . interfered.”
Frank was too much of a professional to point out how she’d fallen short. “I’m thankful you’re back.”
“I have a few questions for you,” she ventured. “The first one’s for a friend.”
Frank leaned an ear toward her, but his eyes skimmed the room.
“He’s in need of a civil rights attorney, a white attorney, and I wondered if you might suggest someone. The only lawyer I know besides yourself is retired and, besides, he specialized in taxes.”
“What’s your friend’s trouble?” Frank asked.
Gen hesitated for a moment and lowered her voice. “It’s . . . he wasn’t part of it, but he may get caught up with the men arrested on Labor Day.”
Frank’s face clouded. “I see. Mrs. Combs’s boy is in the same trouble. I can give you a name, but he’s not in town. Tell your friend to call my office tomorrow and talk to my wife.”
He started to move away, but she touched his sleeve lightly.
“One more thing and then I’ll let you go. I wonder if you might spare some time soon for an interview. I’m undertaking some new research on the founding of the NAACP, particularly on Miss Mary White Ovington, and I’d love to talk to you.”
Frank’s eyes flashed with what Gen assumed was surprise, and she wondered if he didn’t recognize Ovington’s name.
“She was the first secretary—”
“You don’t have to school me in my own history,” Frank snapped, and Gen shrank back from the rebuke. His lips formed a tight line.
“Of course not,” she said.
“Anyway,” he continued, in a slightly less harsh tone, “I wouldn’t have much to offer. I never met Miss Ovington. You’ll want the folks in Washington.”
“Yes, I just—sorry.” There was no easy way out of the hole she’d dug for herself.
“Excuse me now.” Frank brushed past her. “Lamont, can I get a word with you?”
Her cheeks burned with shame, and only the crisp night air cooled her face. When Gen crossed the street to her car, she noticed a couple of white men lurking in the darkened doorway of the barber shop. One was whistling what sounded like “Tallahassee Lassie,” a catchy song Gen knew because Carolyn owned the 45.
“What’s a nice lady doing at a nigger meeting?” the other man asked her as she fumbled in her bag for her keys. He looked familiar. His hand gripped something long.
She almost snapped, “None of your business” out of instinct but remained quiet as her hand located the key ring.
“Seems like a lady should know better.” A baseball bat emerged at his side.
Gen laced her keys between her fingers like Carolyn had taught her. Carolyn had lived in a seamy neighborhood in graduate school, which put her on alert for trouble. “You can poke somebody’s eyes out with keys,” she had said, matter-of-fact.
“Ah, let her go.” The man who had been whistling pointed his chin toward the church. Over her shoulder, Gen followed his line of sight to a group of people exiting the church hall, including Frank and Mae Johnson.
She scrambled into her car and clicked down the lock button. The key turned in the ignition, and Gen sat revving the engine while her mind darted. With little time to ponder her options, she leaned heavily on her horn, letting it scream into the night.
The horn blast did the trick, shifting Frank and Mae’s attention away from their companions and toward the imminent danger across the street. Within seconds, Frank had hurried the group back into the building.
The white man with the bat spat out something she couldn’t hear through the closed window, and then he swung at her passenger-side door. Gen pressed her foot heavily to the pedal, but the car wasn’t fast enough to miss the crunch of contact.
✥ ✥ ✥
On Halloween, the campus rippled with exuberance. From her office window, Gen watched students crossing the quad in cowgirl holsters and hats, ghost sheets with eyes cut out, nurses’ uniforms, and ballerina tutus. She hoped the Aunt Jemima in blackface wasn’t one of her own students.
A girl walking with Margaret Sutter wore a lab coat smeared with gory daubs of red paint. Margaret’s costume gave Gen pause: she was outfitted as a Girl Scout, complete with a beret and sash. Discomfited at the memory of the cookies someone had left for her, Gen lowered her window shade and turned her attention back to the open newspaper on her desk.
The morning edition of the Gazette spotlighted Mark Patton’s purported “ring of perversion” as the lead story. Mark and James Combs now faced sodomy charges. The article mentioned other parties who might face indictment, which made Gen’s foot tap double-time. She tossed the newspaper into her trash can and left for class.
The night before, she had stuffed a slightly bent cardboard mask with gold streamers and black feathers into her briefcase—a leftover from a gay costume party in Richmond she had attended the year before. Now Gen slipped the elastic band over her hair just before entering her classroom. Her students broke into a round of appreciative applause.
“Love the feathers!”
“So cute!”
“You look like Marie Antoinette!”
“Let’s hope I keep my head.” Within seconds, she yanked the mask off in such haste that the band snapped. “I usually bring cookies to class for Halloween, but I forgot to order them at the bakery. I’ll get some for next time.”
The chatter of her students subsided as she wrote the words PLESSY V. FERGUSON 1896 on the blackboard in all caps and underlined them.
“Today we’re looking at a landmark Supreme Court case from the last century,” she said. “This is the case that was overturned in 1954 by Brown v. Board of Education.”
Pens scratched across notebooks.
“This case had its start down in Louisiana, where the state passed the Separate Car Act in 1890. Who can tell me what that law said?”
The girls flipped open textbooks and kept their heads down. No one would catch her eye. Below the name of the case, Gen wrote SEPARATE CAR ACT and underscored it as well.
“Okay, here’s a refresher. The Separate Car Act said that there must be separate railway cars for whites and Negros. And what happened as a result?” Only the rustle of pages and one sharp cough met her ears. “All right, then, what was the Committee of Citizens and what role did it play in this case? For those of you studying French, it was called the Comité des Citoyens.” The words came out slowly and uncomfortably. She’d asked Juliet for the correct pronunciation.
In the silence that continued, Gen’s frustration mounted into annoyance. She placed her chalk in the tray and brushed white dust from her hands. “Girls, I’m getting the distinct feeling you’re unprepared.”
One student’s hand inched up.
“Go on, Lois.”
“It’s just . . . well, it’s Halloween, professor, and everyone’s having fun. Are you really going to
make us talk about old Plessy?” Titters from the other students brought a smile to the girl’s lips.
Gen crossed her arms. “I’m truly sorry to inconvenience you by expecting you to learn something in my classroom. And I’m also sorry you have such low regard for . . . old Plessy, did you say?”
“I didn’t mean it nasty like that.”
Gen nodded, trying not to lose her temper. “All right, Lois, why don’t you tell us what you remember about Mr. Homer Plessy?”
The student fumbled with her notebook. “He was a colored fella—no, wait, a mulatto—who demanded to ride in the white car of a train. And they wouldn’t let him because of the law.” She seemed confident of her assessment of the case at first, then added quickly, “I think.”
“You think? And is that what the rest of you took away from the reading, too—that some Negro had the audacity to want to ride in the white car?”
A few heads bobbed, but most eyes fell back to their textbooks. More pages riffled.
“How many of you did the reading?”
A handful of students volunteered that they had.
“But most of you spent time putting together costumes for today, quite elaborate ones in some cases, and didn’t bother to read the assigned pages? And for those of you who did, your understanding of Mr. Plessy’s case is so rudimentary that you’ve reduced him to an uppity mulatto who didn’t know his place?”
Gen turned to the blackboard and struck out SEPARATE CAR ACT with the eraser, rubbing ferociously at the ghost streaks left behind until they were gone. She wasn’t sure what angered her until her mind flashed to the faces of the white men lying in wait for the NAACP members just days before.
“I honestly can’t believe you, girls,” she said, turning to them again. “Can you even imagine the courage it took for Mr. Plessy to take a seat in a whites-only car?” Spittle gathered at the corners of her mouth, and she wiped at it with her index finger. “This is 1960, not 1860. Negroes still face horrible discrimination and unspeakable violence. If you are the future, you make me despair for this country!”
She’d taken students to task before but never in such a belittling tone, and their faces registered their shock. Gen glared at them for a long moment, then said, “Read your text. I need to get something from my office,” and exited the classroom.
She hadn’t left anything behind, she just needed to rest her weight against her desk and take in some deep breaths. Her rebuke of the students was rash. They were little more than children, clinging to old beliefs learned from their parents. She would calm herself, apologize, and start class afresh with a patient smile. Her class notes always outlined alternate plans for when students were less than prepared.
The breaths soothed her, and in a few minutes Gen opened her eyes. She heard shuffling in the hallway and through her open door saw Lee-Anne Blakeney scurrying from Henry Thoms’s office. The girl wore a flouncy, sleeveless white gown suitable for a debutante ball, with a rhinestone tiara topping her blond ringlets. Gen might have ignored her, but Lee-Anne had nearly tripped into the hallway in her haste, and her chest heaved with exertion. She wore one silver high heel, but the other was gripped in her hand.
“Everything all right, Lee-Anne?” Gen called from the doorway.
“Oh, yes, ma’am, just late for class.”
Lee-Anne balanced on one foot while hiking up the right side of her skirt. Gen’s eyes traveled to her exposed calf as the girl stuffed her bare foot into the spare shoe.
“I hope Cinderella doesn’t have far to go,” Gen remarked as Lee-Anne flinched in pain.
The girl smiled sheepishly. “They’re my mom’s and I wear a half-size larger.”
Henry Thoms emerged from his office and stopped in his tracks, his mouth clenched like he’d bitten into a lemon. He nodded in Gen’s direction, locked the door behind him, and retreated down the hall. Lee-Anne took off in the opposite direction.
Back in the classroom, the girls were suspended in silence as if they had been playing Simon Says and had frozen in place for ten minutes.
“I apologize,” Gen said. “Snapping my mask like that must have put me out of sorts. Let’s return to Plessy, shall we?”
✥ ✥ ✥
Geoffrey Huston, an avuncular Brit who had served as history chairman for a dozen years, scheduled a department meeting the last Monday of each month. The distance between meetings suited Gen. The only woman in the history faculty, she didn’t merit a spot in the men’s club. Most of her department colleagues, although jovial enough, treated her like a kid sister who invaded their treehouse. Huston was the exception. In intermittent spurts of collegiality, he invited her to his office for a chat and a cup of tea. He expressed genuine interest in Gen’s research into the NAACP’s history.
Professors and instructors trickled into the department’s conference room, occupying the same seats around the long oak table every time—creatures of habit, just like their students. With six full-timers, the department was larger than most at Baines.
“Didn’t we just have a meeting? I could have sworn I saw all y’all not a month ago.” Roscoe Babcock plunked his briefcase down next to Gen’s. He made the same crack every month, and by now the faculty barely acknowledged it.
Henry Thoms was noticeably missing when Huston entered at the appointed meeting time. “Anyone seen Henry?” the chairman asked. When silence followed, he pressed, “Roscoe?”
Roscoe dismissed the question with another quip. “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
Huston huffed, glancing up at the wall clock, then launched the meeting without the senior-most professor.
The mimeographed agenda carried the same items every month with only slight variations. Gen often wished she could read surreptitiously, but Huston expected full attention from everyone.
Neither of Gen’s committees was very active in the fall semester. The college-wide Admissions Committee and the history department’s Academic Awards Committee picked up speed in the spring, so when her turn to report arrived, she passed her time to Roscoe. Along with several other important positions like Tenure and Privilege, Roscoe served on the executive committee of the Faculty Senate and required more than his allotted time for substantive comments interspersed with the occasional lighthearted remark.
In the middle of Roscoe’s report, Thoms ambled in, apologizing for his tardiness. “Couldn’t be helped,” he muttered.
“I’m happy you could join us, Henry,” Huston said, his tone dry and clipped. Gen had observed growing friction between the two men, but there was no one in the department she felt comfortable enough to ask about it.
When prompted for his report, Thoms rearranged his papers with exaggerated importance. He chaired the department’s powerful hiring committee, which was accepting applications for the position vacated by a professor who had retired.
“Many fine Renaissance men to consider,” Thoms said. “Damned hard to narrow it to ten. Oh, pardon my French, Virginia.”
Gen didn’t react. She knew there were likely Renaissance women who had applied but who didn’t make Thoms’s cut. He preferred giggly girls to serious women scholars. When Gen gained seniority in the department, she planned to put herself forward as possible chairwoman. If Huston still headed the department, he might be fed up enough with Thoms’s reign to let her run.
Huston’s updates closed out the meeting, as routine as usual. But then he surprised them with a piece of unsettling new business.
“Congressman Duke will be visiting campus tomorrow afternoon.” Huston puffed out his fleshy cheeks. “A last-minute campaign swing, I imagine. The mayor will host him. He’ll be talking to the administration, but he’s asked to meet with faculty at four o’clock.”
Huston twisted his pen in his hands. “Attendance isn’t mandatory, just suggested. If you don’t have time to spare, I understand, but it would be good if at least one of us was there to report back. I’d go myself, but office hours and all.” A flimsy excuse, easily circumvented.
“What’s on the agenda, Geoff?” Thoms said.
Huston cleared his throat. “The dean says the congressman shares the mayor’s concern about deviancy. He wants to talk about it as a problem on campuses and lay out some sort of program to put an end to it.”
Gen’s heart thumped, matching the rhythm of her foot under the table. A legislative committee in Florida was ferreting out homosexuals among faculty, staff, and students in that state. A friend of Fenton’s from his acting days had been interrogated by officials at the University of Florida but kept his job when he suddenly obtained a girlfriend.
“Put an end? As in take out a hit on someone?” Roscoe harrumphed. “Those fools in Washington have nothing better to do than trump up problems and meddle where they don’t belong!”
“Yes, it seems like a load of codswallop to me,” Huston said. “But I was asked to inform you about the visit. There may be further instructions coming down from the dean or the provost after this, and we don’t want to be caught off guard if that happens.”
“I don’t see why this department needs to get involved,” Thoms added. “Nothing but family men and our own lady professor here. Let the other departments police their culprits and weed them out. It’s no secret who’s who.”
“What does that mean, Henry?” Gen’s mouth tightened around her words.
Thoms lifted his shoulders and made a little pfft sound.
“I take it you won’t be going then, Henry,” Huston said.
Thoms leaned forward as if ready to change his mind and volunteer, so Gen jumped in. “I’d be happy to go, Geoffrey,” she said. “I’ll take notes after and share them with y’all.”
Chapter Twelve
Fenton
Dean Rolfe scheduled the faculty meeting with the congressman for the largest space on campus—the theater. When Fenton entered from his office under the stage, the house lights were up and the auditorium was half full, with professors and instructors scattered through the rows. Heads swiveled his way as he hastened up the side aisle and plopped into an end seat behind a row of female faculty that included Gen and Ruby. The bulwark of women soothed him.
Testimony Page 9
