6
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6
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Jue 198 fter twetytwo oth ad twetyeigh core Waye ertra Wilia the twetythree wa arreted for urder That he i ack i ortat ice the Adiitraio of the city i ack ad of the urdered chidre were ack. ig the Waye Wilia Atata childurder cae both a ubject ad rigboard oe of Aerica' ajor writer aee i hi ow ter ad o hi ow viewoit the State of the io i the id1980 Takig hi tite fro St Pau Faith i the ubtace of thig hoed for the evi dece of thig ot o t ee adwi rage over the whole ectru of Aerica life with the focu o the robead i hi oiio cotiuig lightof ack i White Aerica. t i a book about e ory ad the iability to reeber (What oe doe ot reeber i the eret i the grde of oe drea drea about ter terror ror Someme I hn oe child i Atata aid to e ha Ill be omng home fom baeball o fooball pae and omebody a wll ome behnd me and Ill be
6
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Jue 198 fter twetytwo oth ad twetyeigh core Waye ertra Wilia the twetythree wa arreted for urder That he i ack i ortat ice the Adiitraio of the city i ack ad of the urdered chidre were ack. ig the Waye Wilia Atata childurder cae both a ubject ad rigboard oe of Aerica' ajor writer aee i hi ow ter ad o hi ow viewoit the State of the io i the id1980 Takig hi tite fro St Pau Faith i the ubtace of thig hoed for the evi dece of thig ot o t ee adwi rage over the whole ectru of Aerica life with the focu o the robead i hi oiio cotiuig lightof ack i White Aerica. t i a book about e ory ad the iability to reeber (What oe doe ot reeber i the eret i the grde of oe drea drea about ter terror ror Someme I hn oe child i Atata aid to e ha Ill be omng home fom baeball o fooball pae and omebody a wll ome behnd me and Ill be
u fm p
ad ocece about fear d ager t bug age raie cruca queto about baic eatiohi betwee e d woe et ad chidre ack d White adw ue fact d docueta ev dece a a ba for eaig ecuatio d thoughtfu aayi i a cotat ech fo for arger arge r truth truth t i hi hi udate o the rogreor ack of rogre-of the Aerica Drea A uch it deeve a carefu readig by a Aerica regard e of race or creed Jes Bdwin i equay owefu a
ovet d eayt a oet d oei re Next Next cit H ay ay work icude he re me, Go e It on the Mountan Nobody now My Name, ad Govann Room
THE EVDENCE OF THNGS NOT SEEN
O Y J DN Go TeU It on the Mountain Notes of Ntive Son Ginni's Room Nobdy Knows My Nme Another Country The Fire Next Time Nothing Personl wt Rcd Avon) Blues for Mister Charlie Going to Meet the Man eU Me How Long the Trains Be Gone he Amen Coer A Rap on Race wt Mgt Mead) No Name in the Street A Dialogue wt Nk Gin) Oe Day, When I W ost If Bea Street Could Tlk The Dil Finds Work Litt Man Litt Man: A Story of Childhood wt The Story of Sieied
Yr Cac)
BALDWIN THE EVECE OF HGS O S
� HLT, RNEHART AND WNSTN / NEW YR
Copyrght © 1985 by Jes Bdwin rghts rese, incudng the rght o repruce ths k or rons thereof n y fo. Publsh by Holt Rneha d Wnson 383 Madson Avenue New York New York 7. ublshed suteosly n Cada by Ho Rehr and Wnston of Canada Limt Lbra of Coness Catong n Publcaon Daa Bdwn Jes 1924 The edence of things no n. Ms mrder-Geora-Aant 2 Wls Wayne Berr 3. RacismGeoraAtt 4 Atana (Ga.)-Race relaions I Tite. HV6534.A7B35 985 364.'523'09758231 85924 ISBN 0030055296 Fst Edon Pn n the Unt States of erca 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
SBN -3-559b
ath s he sbsace of thgs hoed for, he evdece of hgs o see ST. PAUL
A dog sarv'd a hs maser's gate redcs he r of he sae WILLIAM BLAKE
Fo vd Bldwn te te nd te son
PREACE
Walte Lowe of Plyboy wote me-to my home n ane-suggestng that go to Atanta to o a stoy oneng the mssng an (as it evove) mu ee hien ha been foowng the stoy-what thee was that s n the foegn ess to foow t s not so easy to foow a stoy oung n ones own ounty om the vanage oit of anothe one. om one may iagne that one eeives the atte An one may ut as one s not haenge o moe eisey menae-by the etas the atte may be nothng moe than something one magnes one sef to be abe to emembe An te what emembee-o iagine my sef to emembe-of my e n ea (befoe eft home) was teo An what am tyig to suggest by what one mgnes onesel to be ble to emembe s that teo annot be emembee ne bots it out The o ganism-the human begbots it out ne vents o eates a esonaty o a peson eneath ths a umuation (ok of ages) sees o hoes to see that teo whih the memoy euates et it neve seestht teo whih is not the teo
of eath (which caot be imagie but the teo of beig estoye Sometmes I thnk oe chi i Atata s to me that Ill be comng home om (baseba or ftba pac tce and somebody's ca wll come behnd me and Ill be thown nto the tunk o the ca and t wll be dak and he'll dve the ca away and Ill ne be ound agan. Ne be ound agan that teo is far more vivi tha
the fea of eath Whe the chi s that to me trie to imagie the tomtom siece of the tuk of the ca the akess the siece the see the corkscrew oa trie that is to imagie this as somethig haeig to the chi My memoy refuse to accommate that chi as myse ut that chi was myse o ot remembe eve emembe how howe a screame the st time my mother was cae away om me My mothe was the oy huma beig i the wo The only huma beig eveyoe ese existe by her emissio et what the memoy reuates cotos the huma beig What oe oes ot emembe ctates who oe oves or fais to ove What oe oes ot emembe ic tates actuay whether oe ays oker o chess What e oes ot emember cots the key to oes ttums o oes oise What oe oes ot emembe is the seet i the gae of oes reams What oe oes ot emembe is the key to oes eformace i the toiet o i be What oe oes ot remember cots the oy hoe age ta iexoabity of oveoy ove ca he you ecogize what you o ot emembe
xi
ee
An memoy makes ts only ea aeance n ths fe as ths fe s enng-aeng, at last, as a n of gue nto a conton whch s as f beyon memoy as t s beyon agnaton What has ths to o wth the muee, mssng ch en of Atanta? t has somethng to o wth the fact that no one wshes to be unge, hea own, nto the toent of what he oes not emembe an oes not wsh to emembe t has somethng to o with the fact that we al came hee as canates fo the saughte of the nnocents t has somethng to o with the fact that al suvvos howeve they accommoate o f to emembe t, be the nex oabe gut of the suvvo t has somethng to o n my own case, wth havng once been a ack ch n a Whte county My memoy stammes but my sou s a witness The case agnst Wayne Wams contns a hole so wie that the nsutably aet Abby Mann has ven one of hs many tanks though t To scuss hs ocuama emans anothe essay entely-nvolvng the Ame can sense of hstoy, fo exame, o Commece, the ev gown by the tee of the octne of Whte Suemacy the Tee of Manest Destny, an the many shaes couson o colaboaton take s ocuama, futhe moe, an by no means ncentaly, emans the se ces of my ole fo whom have the geatest esct meey ont out, an beg my eae to emem be, that hs otts of the May, an the Chef of Poce
Preface
e to ut it with the utmost estaint iesonsibly wie of the mk an that the ole of the White co is a nec essa ecan ivention n the othe han, the scene in which the boy cas the ask oce which i not aive s tue ths stoy was to to me by one of the chien. Ms. ell nd Ms oste who otays he e moe comex than the ocua can iagine o convey. The ea meaning of the boie exosion at the housing oject is not con veye-fo the eason that the ocuama is t sef seg to be abe to convey the eality of that moment i Atlanta Geogia is ne fo an English ng an entes is toy as a convict coony which is to say that the eoe who settled Geogia ha no choice but to become Whte thee This is one of the keys to that monumentaly self seving fabe Gone wth the Wnd an to Scett as two most evealing lnes As God s my wtness, Ill ner go hungry gn an ove an ove, I cn't thnk bout tht now, I'll go crzy I do'll thnk bout tht tomorrow!
stoy conten is the esent- wth evey beath we take evey move we make re stoyan what goes oun comes oun -James Baldwin April 2, 985 Atlanta New York Amherst St. Paul de Vence
xv
THE EVDENCE OF THNGS NOT SEEN
I
was never said in so many words bu eveyone appeared o suspec ha his parcular com puer had had is own reasons for selecng his paricular judge Each of us kows hough we do no like his knowl edge ha a courroom is a visceral Roman crcus No one volved n his cones is or can be mparal One makes he aemp or magnes ha one does bu i is in any case and srenuously an aemp. Or in oher words he abliy o suspend judgmen is n each of us sus pec-o leave i a ha whou ha is going so far as o say ha he suspension of judgmen is mpossible For o suspend judgmen demands ha one dismiss ones percepions a he vey same momen ha one is mos cuciy-and cruely-dependen on hem. We perceive by means of he kaleidoscopic mror of his life Ths means ha our abliy o perceive is a once yr annzed by our expecaions and a war wh hem. Our expecaons are revealed in our habis, our manner our defeas errors genuine or magined rumphs risk being more vsible o ohers han o ourselves for ha mrror
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mrror, on he wall! hears n quesins and answers nne The ligh is ways changing in ha mirrr This ligh n permi us frge ha we are mra whch means ha we are cnneced-whch cmplicaes he judgmen. I s ne hng be par f he audience a he cur rm Rman crcus, and quie anher maer be n he ring The audience is here disrac r jus iself wh quesins f righ r wrng The gladars knw nly ha ne f hem mus wn They are n suspending judgmen. They are creang judgmen : urs The circus and he audience are absluey ndispens able he hygene f he Sae The judge ha he cmpuer seleced is a yung and very likable Black man, Clarence Cper. He s ne f he many Black leg ens nurured by Disric Ar ney Lews Slaen. Slaen is a Whe nave Alanan, and he guided he Prsecuinhugh, accrding sme f he peple I me, guided" s n he wrd Judge Cper, he yunger f w children, was b n May 5, 92, in Decaur, Gergia Decaur is a su burb f Alana. Bu, a suburb" f Alana in 92 s n a he sae eny as a suburb f Alana in 982 which may be why Cper was rased in Cincinnai Hs birh place is, n any case, abiguus I means ha he can r cann claim, as d s many hers I'm om Alana . I'm no rom Georga Ths claim sruck me as a subb and sunning de lusin I is as hugh I shuld claim, fr example ha
2
Th Evidn o Thing Not Sn
m om Hm m not om New Yok. The inenion or he meang of he claim is clear bu Harlem is no an dependen eniy or naion I exss and is con roed by he ciy and sae of New York. Or, on anoher level I should proclaim in Europe-or in A ca-o be om New York bu no om America one would be jused i worryig abou my sany, o say nohig of my relabily I do no mean o go so far, as conces my ends in Alana, bu his has been heir posure sice we rs me-i 1957-and may be one of he keys, keys here are, o he ciy Alana is a raioad own comes ino exsence ha is, around one of he riumphs of he Indusrial Revo luon-he raoad-and i was rs called, bleakly enough Termus. This was in he 1830s, when he suon of slavery had a few more years lef in i han ds he presen cenury. I is inland which is why Gen eral She had o march o he sea desroyng a cru cial segmen of he Confederacy's rsporaion sysem He ddn' desroy grea works of ar, or he opera, be cause hey weren herehere was nohng here There was, probably a lle more han nohig," bu Alana's emence was and is as a commercial hub, a wheelng ddealg ransporaon cener and one of he world's busies and mos inenable aipors has aken he pace of he raioads. Bu Alana's high vsibily and commercial impor ance do no me ha Alana is no in he sae of Georga This is one of he reasons-he principal rea son-ha, during he plague years of he child murders,
3
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and, hen he ares and hen he r, Alanas le mo was he presence, and responsby, of he Black Admnsraon The presence of a Black Admnsra on-as dsngushed, perhaps om an nconesable acuayproved ha he cy oo busy o hae could no be accused of admnserng Souhe jusce (I proved nohng of he sor no only because Alana be longs o he sae of Georga bu because Georga belongs o he Uned Saes.) Cooper's moher was a mad and hs faher drove a ruck Hs faher was dsabled n 966 when Cooper would have been wenyfour. He was wenyone a he momen of he March on Washngon, n 963, and he same age when Medgar Evers was assassnaed, earler ha same year, and when Kennedy, he only presden o whom he could have fel any aegance was mur dered wenywo when Mcolm was murdered and wenyve when Marn was blown away I me he Judge only once, hence canno clm o know he man Hs major, n Clark Colege, n 964 was po lca scence and hsory. He was wenywo hen, and fory when I me hmas a judge-whch suggess a swf and srongwlled passage on a rocky road. In J ne 1981 afer wenywo monhs and weny egh corpses Wayne Beram Wllams, hen wenhree, was aesed for murder Tha he s Black s mporan snce he Admnsraon of he cy s Black and a of he murdered chdren were Black. I s also mpor ha he was no chaged wh wen egh murders bu wh wo he las wo, hose of Jmmy Ray Payne and Nahanel Caer 4
Th Evd o Thg Not S
These las wo, owever were no children, bu grown menno maer how alcoholic or rearded" hey may have been and anyway, a he boom level of povery and despair i is hard o judge who is rearded I was old ha, because hey were rearded," hey were per ceved as children I found his unconvincing. Though, as I was abruply forced o reize I had no he fanes noion as o wha impelled a man o murder children, i ye seemed o mehopefully, perhapsha his im pulse had o be special A man who murdered children was no likely o perceive a male adul as a male child This mean hough ha I was approaching he quick sand of my ignorance and judgmen had o be sus pended Alanas reacion o he ares and al of Wayne Wil lams (as disinguished om he naional reacion, in sofar as here was any) suggess boh he bier and bewildered apahy ha succeeds exhausion and he in sincive aemp o calculae he meang of he new mension suddenly gven o an old dilemma Runaway children e nohing new nor is he slaughered Black manchd Chden become unuly hey ro he sees hey run away-ha's one hing boys will be boys (Though wo of he murdered children were girls, which would seem o me o violae he pae" ha Slaen clms proves he guil of Wayne Wams) Bu, hen insead of he phone c or he leer or he elegr or he visi o he precinc or he visi o he hospial, or, even o he morgue he missing children begin uing up deadn he weeds by he roadside in abandoned sies in he iver is very clear ha whoever is mur 5
A M E
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derng he chdren wnts hem o e found as hey e found: hs ruly nderen reamen of he chds corpse s lke spng n he faces of he people who produced he chd. The magnaon s poorly equpped o accommodae an acion n whch one nsncvely, recognizes he or gasmic release of selfhared The magiaion is poorly equipped o dea wih his acon ecause selfhared s so common and akes so many forms i is no a loca or a racial or a regional maer In he presen case given he oomlne rea ies of e in hese so amiguously Unied Saes, he missng, menaced murdered chdren were menaced y color and locy hey were-visily-Black whch n his Repulc is a knd of doom and acuy poor which condion elcis om he land of opporuniy and he work ehic a judgmen as merciless as i s defensive The Souh, however and he naon are ful of people who look Whie and e Black: some cl he ancesry and some sea o wih a change of address; nor e he new neighors likely o chlenge he ideny eng so unceran of he own n he Uned Saes as in Souh ica, one's color is a maer of he legal def nio and/or experience, and/or, nly, choce The Colored of Souh ica, for example, are-or were-a lega creaon: lbeeds or multtoes o use he elegan and civzed erms of he Cvlzed-people pae enough o hope o e reaed as Whie Or surren dering he hope of an earhly paradise, a leas no o e reaed as Black This aspaion during he purga
6
Th Evdn o Thngs No Sn
rys i was hped and inended-wuld cause hem ly hemselves wih Whie Pwer insead f Black insurrecin This pcy fled when he Clred, ying in he face f Law and Order, and repudiaing he def iniins f he Sae declared hemselves-quie ile gly be Black And in his cunry, smene wh lks Whie and wh refusing deny his Black ancesry, declares him sel Black, has made a genuine and, smemes, a gen uinely mra chice (I sae he maer in his smewha enaive way because he chice, especily given he chices his cunry ers, can smeimes be merely expedien r pica. In any case his cunry in m Alana Bs n, Texas, Califia is n s much a vicius racia caldrnmany n ms cunies, are ha-as a paranid clr wheel. Sme peple wuld ke sep u f he Whie skis and sme peple lahe he Black skins Sme peple hae hei Whie kinflk and sme ple fear he Black kflk And, hwever we cnn r fl cnn his ms crucia ruh cnceing ur hisry-Amecan hisry-everybdy pays fr i and everyby knws i The nly way not knw i is rerea in he Suhe madness: indeed he inabiliy face his ms paricular and specic ruh is he She madness. Bu, as smene ld me lng ag The spirit o the South is the spirit o America. Whever was murdeing he children, hen, cud, erly, have been anyne, f any clr m he eacher he preacher he cp he bus drver yur neigh
7
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bor o you al would or could, have had he same move Underlying he remendous unwiingness o believe ha a Black person could be murderng Black chdren was he specicaly Souhe knowledge and experence of how much Black blo s in Whie veins-and how much Whie blo is in Black veins Thus, i was slowly and relucanly decided ha he murderer had o be someone dark enough o pass un noiced in Black neighborhos jus as some of one's cousins or brohers or sisers or nieces or nephews had been ligh enough o pass as Whie Some of he chdren have been sho some sabbed, some srangled Some are naked, some are clohed, some are decomposing You don' know al of hem, bu you know some The las ime you saw his one or ha one, he was in he kichen wih you chd You begin waiing for your chd o come home Under he bes of cicumsances, d in he mos ac commaing of places i is impossible o keep an ado lescen male chd a home And he cuew n he sb designed o ge Black kds in o he srees before eleven PM., never had he remoes possiby of being enforced Boys w be boys indeed, and wih a vengeance, and, for many a poor boy he mos percepble derence beween he srees and home is ha home is danger and squalor wih a blanke and a roof And Mama someimes Daddy, and he oher kds, and he chokng, incoheren, inol eable sense ha he mus do somehing! And no young person has ever heard a wing Ant nobody gong to mess wt me he els you belevng 8
h Edn o hng Not Sn
i-of course, all chidren doand hen he doesn come home I realized, afer he rs few days in Alana, ha I choked on, could no ask he general cheerful, universal queson, How'e te kids? Wihou rezng i one sough he answer o he unasked quesion in he eyes of he ma or he woman one was facing I ws supised one person old me, t te bsence o te Blck presence t te til We ust weent tee It ws s toug we didnt wnt to beliee tt tis ws ppening tt one o could do tis! O yes said anoher, it mens we in te Whie sit now! Tey got us Tey winwen Blck peson cn do tis! The Black man who has been ried for wo murders and-for he momen-condemned as he mass mur derer of Black chiden is an d creaure bu so would you or be, siing on he winess sand, under such an aura He is no eray or legay, ccused of being a mass murderer bu he is he only suspec, and he is ssumed o be a mass murderer Once under suspicion, and so dreadful a suspicion, evehing he person does is inolerably suspec-be ginning perhaps wih his inolerable assumpion ha he has any rgh o be bo I is much, much spler r a, and more considerae for he accused o agree, a once, o be guiy Wih his agreemen, we are released om he ordeal of mposing or suspending judgmen This creaure, rapped, a bay, looks oward us as his only hope-and we e his only hope Beneah he microscope of he inquisiion evehing 9
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his creaue ds-sg or no smiling calm or panic srcken belching or no belching sweaing or no swea ing smoking or no smokng, shouing or no shouing is suspec This is because he is suspec, havng had no beer sense or beer luck which comes o he same hing han o force himse on he exasperaed public and sorely red democraic aenion He wans o leave his place, and go home and so do he people who have been dragged here agains hei , o si in judgmen on him. Thei ask is no sipled by h· fac ha he case agains hi is compromised by emoiona mora and legal confusion The ciy oo busy o hae has undergone he ordeal of wenyeigh-he ocial coun-volenly publicized murders Black deah has never before elcied so much aenion The aenion he publciy given o he slaugher becomes se one more aspec of an unfor givable volaion I have dismissed he naonal reacion because cerainly did no va he Amercan reacion o he fae of he hosages n Iran-or for ha maer, he raid on Enebbe No one made vows or l candles was evenuly, jus anoher news spo conceing he ls of a endly bu disasrously underdeveloped ea Bu some people sold green rbbons for he children of Alana and money om eve descrpon of pvae cizen came pourng ino he ciy some o he Mayor's oce and some o he Sop he Murders Mohers' Com miee headed by Camlle Bel (We discuss his ve iporan commee presenly The money issue was o
0
Th Evdn o Thng Not Sn
precipiae-hough was no responsible forsome bierly revealng exchanges) Alana became for a season, a kind of groesque Ds neyland Prophes soohsayers, mediums, poliical as pians, and poliical ins had her say, along wih a couple om-I believePhiladelphia who rse hun g dogs and had brough some wh hem and who wen ou wh he sech py every day and some of he young men who, under oher cicumsances, had aken i upon hemselves o be responsible for he safey of New York subway passengers There was of course in of his, somehing humi iaing and inolerable and, as usual, his groesque acivy submerged or nely submerged, more serious eors made by for exple, M ohammed and Smy Davs, Jr and Frank Sinara nd Dck Gregory hei bize heores d no seem so unspeakable o me Bu we will reu o his aspec of he Alana ordeal. Whie was going on a end of mne described i, wih a cera bierly ippan accuracy, as buckdncing on the grves! The case agains Willams sruck me as so dubious ha I wondered how and why i had been brough ino cou H ha somehg o do wh he pssure brough o be by of people, he FBI Why has o do wih he fac ha he commercial vabily of he ciy oo busy (makg money) o hae was in danger The Alana rings and sngs of wenyeigh mur ders Bu his s no he rs ime such a devasaon has cued is he rs e ha Auhoy h been forced
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recgnze he devasan as ccal and ncnes ably s hs resnance ha has brugh abu he ral Bu Wayne Wlliams s n legally accused f weny egh murders, even hugh I repea s he climae creaed by hese murders whch has plaed hm n he winess sand Wayne Wliams s accused-legallyf two murders Bu he s assumed be guly f weny egh murders and whu beng charged wh hese cres s beng red fr hem Fr he Prsecun n sss ha here s a pae" he murders f he chl dren whch, when Wayne Wlliams s fund guly f he w wll lnk hm he her wenysx. Nw hs labyrnhne apprach jusce mus pre sen sel he layman- say nhng f he accused as a smewha unprecedened bass fr a murder ral Eher he accused s beng red fr wenyegh mur ders r fr w. If he s not beng red fr wenyegh murders can nly be, afer all, fr lack f edence Hw, hen, des happenlegallyha a man charged h two murders can be red fr wenyegh? The Prsecun, havng, busly n pn has bas s case n crcumsanal edence Ths speces f c cumsanal edence (he ber edence, be cn sdere) s self unprecedened n he legal hsry f he Uned Saes. N nly s unprecedened s als, scientic Ths can be aken mean ha he lay man (n hs case, he jury) wh may r may n be able undersand wll cerainly n be able undersand well enugh be able challenge r refue . And mus be added, hwever ne may wsh avd
2
Th Evdn o Thng Not Sn
his or deny i ha he hisory and he siuaion of Black people in his counry amouns o n indicmen of Amer icas legal nd moral hisory Quie a wichs brew and he principal acors in his drama are (as far as he naed eye can see) Black And Wiams is eiher a mass murderer-a fairly rare species, er a one dismisses he aspiraions of he miliary or a kind of LoebLeopold baske case in living color One is forced o conclude hen, ha Wayne Wiams has been aesed, and ried because of wenyeigh murders nd been found guily of wha us ou o be indeerminae number. No one who was in Alana can say ha his had he eec of causing Alana o sleep more easily The judgmen did no release bu exacerbaed n inolerable ension Camille Be for ex ample ued herse ino a onewoman defense com miee for he pens of he accused, and along wih mos a he oher mohers, repudiaes he verdic Only Ms Mahis moher of he sixh vicim eey Mahis welcomed he verdic sayng ha le was oo good for he murderer of her son and ha her only regre was ha Wams had no been condemned o he elecric chair Bu Ms H moher of Timohy Hill one of he las vicims, cries "Wy, tey ust done orgot about Tmmy! To repea, hen, for his is imporan Wams has never been accused legay of having commied weny eigh murders and he has no been ried for weny eigh murders He has been ried and condemned for wo murders nd even for hese wo he evdence is far
3
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om ovewhemingly convincing (because of an FBI screwup but we wi retu to the FBI) The nature of the two murders for which he has been condemned ds not really call to mind the other twentysix it ds not demand a suspension of udgment to reaze that a mur dered man is not a murdered chid It is the emotona climate of Atlanta to say nothing of the power of the State-by which I mean both the state of Georgia and the Republic to which on the basis of its histoy and its testimony Georgia so reluctantly belongs-that creates permits this link or without this link it is perfectly possibleindeed it is likely-that the last two murders of two anonymous dters would not have been noticed at all especially I must repeat in the Deep South Hence the connecton of the two murders with the previous twentysix has absolutely no lega vadty. No one has been tied for these murders and no one there fore can be condemned for them In the ordinary way of the Law the People would have been enoed to concentrate on the two murders and forget about the twenysix to study the legl accusation of two murders not twentyeightbut this is not what happened The beleaguered and aso unhappiy divided Defense could �cacely have avoided fng into the trap so cae fuy ld for them The lega obligaton was to defend the clent against a double murder chage But the Pros ecution had absolutely no interest this double murder and it is doubtful furthemore that they had a case Ws was on tria as a mass murdere which chage havng no lega vadty could nd no ega defense The Judge for exple allowed the contestable prin 4
h Ed o hg Not S
cple of pror acts" to be used by the Prosecution against the defendant. Pro acts" s meant to establish a pat te" The accused, that s pror to the events that have caused hm to be accused, and havng no direct rela tionshp to the accusaton has, nevertheless been ob served to be capable of, or addicted to, certain habts or styles of behavo. He may, for example, have been ob served playing chess o Monopoy at mdnight with fourteenyearod boyso fourteenyearod rlsor hs motheo aone. He may have been observed stanng on a steet coer o in an alleyway or hs tchen or someone elses ktchen, o a ba, or a toilet tng to a boy or a gl or a man or a cat or a woman or your wife or his sster or hiself: there s nothing that won't under pessue establish a patte" and, once one begns lookng for a patte ths patte" prove anything you want it to prove. The reasons Wayne Wams gives for example fo being on the brdge at around four ocock n the moing when he allegedly dumped a body into the rve do not make much sense The Johnson woman with whom he had an appointment ater that same moing, and whose address he was attemptng to ver would appe to exst only in hs agnaton In any case it seems an odd moment to undetake such an eand. As he was not aested on the bridge and his c was not searched we eay must take as hesay after the fact, the nyon cords the c, and the blood on the seats. (The flure to aest Wayne Was, at that moment becae known as the FBI screwup.") I do not kow how a murdee sounds, just after s 5
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poing of the corpe or how I wold ond eplaining my preence on the bridge at that hor of the moing Bt I know that I might have had many reon all of them om my own point of view gilty or private thee two word being very often a ynonym among I o know that I might not have wihed to eplain anything at all to the cop I wa certainly ke that when I wa yong and I am not o very derent now In any cae aogance lonelne and yoth may or may not ndcate the capacity to commit mrder ince everyone in principle i capable of mrder Bt thi capacity can be recognized (mo, mo on the wall!) only ater the fact Wayne Wiam i the only child of Faye and Homer Wi bo long ater they had topped hoping to have any chldren He wa th a a me a dobly pecial chld and the only apect of hi le on which there ap pea to be general agreement i that he wa terribly poled by hi paent hi wold eem on the whole to be tre and how ever nfortnate probably inevitable bt it i jt a we to bea in mind that the contry to ay nothing of the world catatrophic with poiled chldren and that we wold not be dcng th one-wold never have head of him at all-were it not for the circmtance that have forced hm on or attention hi fact doe not aord any cle a to whether or not he i capable of mrder he heir to the throne of England ae all for eple poled brat e of blotaned conqer or-which te omething bt not enogh abot the rince of We 6
he Evdene o hng Not Seen
Andrew Young met Wane Wiams and some of his iends when Wane was about twelve or thteen the a looked about twelve," And sas-when Wane wanted to intervew him for his radio station Not having the ftest idea of what he was getting himsel into, Ad went ong The station tued out to be a com munit stato operating ega"-that is wthout a cense-out of Wanes basement Some of the most ipressive kds d ever met itervewed Andrew Young for about hal hour Something in Ads tone, as he spoke of this en counter struck me wth great force: his tone coveed hs ove d hs respect for the oung The oung are the communits sacred-and onl hope d i s the responsibit of the elders to guide d protect d rse the oungwhch means, so, ad above a assumg the authorit to coect the oung. The oung do not rem oung long. f the nd no coection durig the brief and bant moment of their outh the whave great trouble ndng t thereafter, ideed, the ever manage to nd it at a With this md-ths touchstone-d ookng around this countr, one trembes: for the oung have been aban doed to the things that the Republic, their elders, have told them to bu. am speakng, in the main of the people who agine themselves to be Whteas the Re pulc ages tse to be White-but a plague is no respecter of deusons Or, in other words, am sang-and running the risk of beig accused of chauvnsm, especia b that mer cess trbuna c around n m own head-that there 7
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was something in Black tlantas reaction to its pro longed orde that made me very prod know that sonds an easy thing o say-1 dd not go throgh it, ter a Yet stand by that satement spite ofor, even perhaps, becase ofthe dsptes, he accsations ad conteraccsations the genine economic chasm and the presmed soci dvde, the very re weigh and conndrm of the power of he State and for the State a nigger is a nigger is a nigger, sometmes Mr or Mrs or Dr Nigger), becase those strident voices were, at botom, controed by the terror englng heir chidren, and therefore, themseves the commnity They were forced to recognize something that, on the basis of the evdence is no longer re or vvd for the blk of the Repblc that agines itsel to be White they cold not lve whot their chidren any more han their chidren cold lve wthot them They had not yet stck the bgan that ned the bthright Yet, or generation"! am eaning on ndy again was awe, mainly of he lmits Wayne was never awe of any lmitsinsof that is as we can de to speclate conceing the man as distingished om the accsed Or generation, therefore, lke the generation before s, tred to gve or chidren a that we had never had d someies forgot or sometimes lost sight of the fact-again, paphrasing ndy-that the battle or forebes foght wth the ts" gave them the strength to raise s to be men and women Ths strength is or rea iheitace, and it mst not be betrayedcertainly not for the YankeeWeste mess of pottage The W ams fay went bankpt in order to help 8
Th Evidn o Thing No Sn
thei Icus to y Oly he ever, it would sem, led to love hisef. Somethg curdled that eergy somehg hemohaged what mght have bee ge ius. Somehg blocked his path to hiself therefore evtably, the path to ohers It is ulikely, as well as eleva hat he is homosexual e is f more prob ably, ot sexual at all e nee leed to love msel s chill, as I read is the key o hs mercual per oces o he wess std, d idated the juy as deed i mdates you ad me A perso so au thoiative ad puy, so demdg ad remote, is oth g ess ha teg-though he mght o be let me haste o add you kew h as we or as little as you kow your bacheor ucle or your slightly kiky ephew. You have ever had to sudy hem o he wess stad There is, accordg to Ady a dsease peculi to the Black commuiy called sorriess I am o a South eer ad I had ever hed this term before It s a dsease that atacks Black males. It is trasmtted by Mama whose stct-d t is o hd to see why s o protect the Back mae om the devastatio hat threates the momet he decles hiself a ma. of our mohers ad all o our wome, live wth this sm, doomlade bell i the skull sile waitg or resoudg evey hour of evey day. Mama lays his bde o Sister om whom she epects (or idcaes she epecs) more ha she expecs om Bother; bu oe o he resuts o his too comprehesble dy aic is ha Brother may ever gow up-in whch case the commuity has become a accomplice to he Repb.
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Now ths dilemma has everything to do with the sit uaton of the Blak man n the Amerian neo, s pos itvey the most ru and angushed aspet of the Bak Amerian reaty. One s ononted, rst of a, wth the unvers mys tery of men-as we are, of a man, as he s; wth the egend nd the reaty of the masulne fore and the masue roe-though these last two reates are not ways the same. Men would seem to dream more than women do-ways have, t woud seem, and very prob aby ways They must, sne they assume that their role s to alter and onquer reaty. women dream ess than menfor men kow very lttle about a womans dreamst s ertanly beause they are so swtly on onted wth the reaty of men. They must aommodate this ndspensable reature, who s, n so many ways more agile than a woman Women know muh more about men than men ever kow about women whh may at bottom, be the only reason that the rae has managed to survve so ong In any ase the male annot bear very muh humil aton and he reay cnnot bear t, t obterates hm men know ths about eah other, whih is one of the reason that men an treat eah other wth suh a vle, relentless, and endlessly nventve ruety Aso how ever, t must be added, wth suh depthless respet ad love, onveyed, manly, by grunts and blows It has oten seemed to me that men need eah other n order to deal wth women, and women, God knows, must need eah other n order to de wth men Women manage qute brllantly on the whole, and .
20
Th Evd o Thg Not S
to stunning and unforeseeable eect to suvive and su mount being dened b others The dismiss the de nition, hoever dangerous or ounding it ma beor even someies nd a a to uize itperhaps be cause the are not deaming But men e neither so supple no so subtle. A man ghts fo his manho thats the bottom line. A ma does not have sipl, the eap ons of a oman Maa must feed her chdrenthats anothe bottom line; ad there is a level on hich it can be said that she cannot od to ce ho she does it But hen a man canot feed his omen o his ch den, he nds it litea impossible to face them The song sas, Now when womn gets the blues Lod I She hngs he hed nd ces I But when mn gets the blues Lod I He gbs tn nd des Fo the acon of the White Republic in the ves of Black men, has been and remains emasculation Hence the Republic has absolutel no image o standd, of masculinit to hich an ma, Black or White can hon oabl aspie What White men see hen the look at Black men-insof as the de or e able to peceive a Black as a man like themselves ke al men-1 do not have the he to conjecue But hateve this vision o nightme is it coes the ife of the Republic on ever level. A strage to this plet might nd the fact tht thee e an Black people at al sti alive in eca soething to te home about I mself nd it emk able not that so ma Black men ee foced (and in so m as) to leave their faiies but that so man e mained ad aded their issue o go and oush. Yet at bottom and expessed in man derent ht 2
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g ways it was this question of soiness as complcity that most disturbed the conscience of Atlantas Back community. This so argey inexpressibe dsturbance hadhas-been fermenting for a very ong time now and it has latey been precipitated by the microbe of integtion For it is i s the fse fse qu q u estion ofintegration that not at paradoxcaly has set the White and Back communities more than ever at a dvsion and rsed to so dangerous a pressure the re price and meaning of the history responsibe for this dvsion Let us backtrack and tryng to be fai remember that the Back demand was not for integraon Integration as we coud testi simpy by ookng at the coors of our sks had ong ago been accomplshed (As an od Back woman sd to me standg on her porch in A abama White peope dont hate Back peope-if they dd we'd al be Back) The Back demand was for desegregation which is a egal publc soci matter a demand that one be treated as a hum hu m an being being and not lke a mue mu e or a dog It was not even a d dec ectt demand de mand for for social j u s tice desegregati desegre gation on was a necessary rst step the Back jouey toward that go t had absolutely nothing to do with the hope of becming White Desegregation demanded simpy that Black peope and especiy Back chidren be rec ognized and treated as human beings by al of the stutions of the country in which they were bo. Since I ve done te Stte some seice nd tey know t
desegregation demanded that the State recognize and act on this iefutabe and ieducibe truth
22
Th Evdn o Thng Not Sn
As both M ac colm olm and Ma M artin in their not after so vey dierent ways stated it-erceived itthis action was a necessity for the actual and siitual health of the eican State And furthermore om the vey begin ng of this the atest of the many struggles of Back eole here the questions of comcity and doom were raised I'm not sue I want to be integated into a ing ouse
White Ameicans however bess their generous itte hearts are quite unable to magine that there can be anyone anywhere who does not wish to be White and are robably the most abject vctms of histoy the world has has ever ever seen seen or ever ever know (Yes (Y es in sit sitee of Iran Ireland England Russia and Jerusalem) The Amei cans decided that desegregation meant integration and with this one word, smashed evey Black institution this count count with the sge exceon of of the Black church And, in this Black eole were certainly accomces though I think the reco shows not oy how ittle choice we had in the matter but how deely and even dan gerousy it sometmes dvded us was ivng Washington for exe n 1955 when downtown Washington had been desegregated for about a year. Aost none of the eole I knew had yet tested these waters. I was wth one of the rst arties to go downtownto "see what would haen I had not long retued om Pas where it had taken time for me to e to walk through a door without feeng that I was stormg the Bastie It was vey strange my own county to fee so menaced an interloer
23
A M E
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Eventually, one began to be accustomed to going "downtown (This is partly because ones White busi ness associates bece accustomed to it) or those who could-narrowlyaord it, going downtown was not so much a mk of status as a kind of vengeful trumphant oblgaton of the energy of a powerfu Republc had kept those doors locked in our faces for a very long time. Men had died in order to break down those doors And, we could now walk through them and sit down at a table and be served, lke any other citizen it was not because the Republc had desired it but because we had wed it. This was true enough, but the triumph was also, a delusion, as many Black voices, at that hour, procled. It cost the Republc nothing after all, to soothe the ruf ed feathers of the headwater (who might have been Back) or to nd a new one this "minglng didnt (yet) cause sts to fall on Alaba The reassurig conjunc tion tion of glass and c u tlery tlery contaned not a hit of what was to happen shortly, to our children, just down the road in North Colna, when, in less exclusive establsh ments, they were to ask for a cup of coee No. Nor was it as cle as it was shortly, to become that the Republc, havin fought for and sustaned the sepation of the races for so long would transform the vsibleas distin guished om the realresults of the Black insuection into a propagan prop aganda da medal me dal for for itsel it selff. Our presence presence,, "down "dow n town, resounded throughout the globe as proof that the leader of of the th e "ee world was wa s uncompr uncom promis omisingl inglyy devoted to eedom
24
h Evd o hg No S
Integration was never considered a twoway street Blacks went downtown but Whites did not come u town This heled Black restaurants in Alanta for ex le, to go bankutwe ust ween't thee such wealh as had been controled by the Black citizens of Atlanta drasticly and disastrously dminished And be in mind that we e discussing only the Southe city Black wealth has no real resonance in he cities of the North The relationshi of the Black "midde class to the Black center of the city seemed to become with ine gration less and less organic. Though were we ds cussig a Northe city we would not be dscussing his lationshi at l in New York for examle, this rela tionshi had ended by the time of my adolescence Two "race iots a war economy and "rogress moved those Blacks who could move into the Bronx or Brookyn or Jaica and then into suburbs much farther om the city than Atlantas suburbs are om Atlanta. Or so it seemed then he Blacks were deseraely trying to u a dstance between themselves and misery. So it had seemed to a revous generation when hey had been driven om the land into what they thought of as the cities of refuge and what the late E Franklin Frazier anatomized as the "cities of desruction. When I was in Atlanta in the fties hough some Blacks rode buses (some tryng and failng o be arested for dng in the on and some drove taxs and some drove cars-and many walkedwe seemed to be in hailing dstance of each other and in sigh of a church
25
A M E
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or a poolroom or a bar But now, neither Buter nor Au bu Street for exampe, is what it was and it seemed to me, the faces there, now, convey a pained and bew dered sense of havng been abandoned The wetodo Backs are f om the city's center in the nearest sub urbs The Whites e in suburbs farther out surround ing, encrcg these so that Black midde class is in a knd of lmbo They cannot move further out and they cannot move back in. I had never before realzed how simple a matter it is to create a suburb. Though I suddenly remembered how durng the voting crisis Aabama had gerrymandered Tuskegee-since no one in Tuskegee had any dfcuty with the teracy test-out of every known city except perhaps, the New erusalem We have a I remember a weary Black educator tellng me suddeny been given a country place. In Atlanta, as other cites the land on which the Blacks had lived was reclaimed for shop ping mas and luxury hotels In these instaations, the gratefu poor would-ke ther acestors-clean base ments scrub toet bows, conquer ktchens, and carry trays. Nor e the Amercans at a reluctant to describe this state of aas as progress. Th optimistic ferocity of this cosmetic job is the prn cipal not the only reason for the presence in some cities of the Back Mayor It is absolutely safe to say that this phenomenon is, on the pt of the Repubic, cynical It is a concession maskng the face of power which re mais White The presence of these beleaguered Back men-some of whom after a putting it brutay, may
26
Th Evidnc of Things Not Sn
or may not be for sethreatens the power of the Re pub f ess than woud their absene Ces in any event are ontroled by states and these Unted States are ontroled by the re aspirations of Washington. l govements wthout exepton make ony those onessions deemed absoutey neessa for the mtenane of the sttus quo; and one realy wshes to know how highy this Repubi esteems lak eedom one has ony to wath the Amerian perfor mane in the word. At the very begnning of what we now a the Teor, it was instntivey assumed that this was but yet another onvouon of the Ku Kux Kanwhih woud dy perhaps have been reassuring ut the fat gobaly resoundg of a ak Admiistration ren dered this assumpon not ony untenabe but raven In the eyes of the wordto say nothing of the eyes of Ameria-Amerians had behaved wth honor and tered upward the status of the darker brother Ameria had in fat and wth an unspeakabe vengeane done exatly the opposte but the word had no way of know ing this and Amerians had no reason to fae it The stuaton of the ak Amerian ority on nets wth the situaton of the soaled emerging or Thd Wod nations These ested, until ony yester da merey as a soure of apita for the deveoped naons The "vita interests of the Weste word were the rhes extorted om the oones wthout this world wide punder there oud have been no Industri Rev ouon. The oonies so had a therapeuti vaue for the
27
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colonzing societies in that these societies could and did, dump ther unruly youth and ther other mists and rejects overseas thus lessening the tensions or possibil ties of rebellon on the mailand and partcularly in the newy industralized and volatile metropoles No colo nizing power volunty suendered this angement, and independence (ke integraton) merely set in motion a compex legal and poltical machinery designed to couage and mntn the status quo. None of the emerging nations has arrved at eco nomc autonomy and this is not because they are in capable of selfgovement or are unable to count. One hears for example, of the faure or the difculty of their export market-which is not surprising since this market is entirely controed by the economic interests and angements of the West On the import market their situation is yet more precarious since they can pay for these imports only in the Weste currency that is being extracted om their esh A pound or a mark or a anc or a doar or a diondor even, a bel of ol-does not in an ican vage have the meaning it acqures on the stock exchange (Just as my ancestors did not have in ther vage the meaning ther descen dants were to acqure on the stock exchange.) No one can eat or otherwise use or consume a anc or a mark or a pound or a doar or a diamond (or a bel of ol) except perhaps as a bribe these must be ivested be placed in the situation n which they multiply in which they recreate each other a situation in which moey makes moey. White South ica for exple, is the
28
Th Evid o Thgs Not
most poweul naton on the dark contnent (n good standng wth the IMF) exportng hourly day t ns of gold and damonds and mnerals extorted out of the esh of ther Black saves And to whom s ths plnder ex poed? To those who can pay for t and t can be pd for only n the currency of the West The source of ths cuency beng to put t kdly cheap labor those who produce t can never hope to benet om t It s ocked the vaults of other ctes and at the dsposal of another peope Or as Wam Buckey who should certany know approvngly ponts out The dolars beng pad . are of no use whatever to the oregn coun try . . except to buy thngs om Amerca gvng Amer cans jobs Iteatioal HeraldTribue December 18 19, 1982)
If honest to and the magc of the marketplace-to quote our qute magc and nestmable presdent Rea gan-reay created wealth the Black people of ths par tcular tme and place and hstory woud be among the wethest n the hstory of the human race. Hoest toil ad te magic of te marketplace sums up Back Amer can hstory wth a teng precson and s the key to our contnung demma. Our rst sght of Amerca was ths marketpace and our eg exstence here begns wth the sgnature on the b of se Of course t s tre that many Wte peope ncudng certanly the ancestors of many of our presdents en tered the county on smar termsshpwrecks cm ns and ades eeng to Salt Lake Cty to be marred but these managed and speedy enough after to
29
A M E
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beome White They knew at a glane what would hap pen to them they did not beome White d by no mes metapholy on whih side suh bread as they mght hope to nd would be buttered I say to "beome White for they had not been White before thei arva y more than I in ia had been Blak. In ia I had been pt of a trbe and a lguage and a nation Just as the Native AmeColumbus did not nd a passage to India but he knew how to sell a prut-had been foed by and was pat of a tbe d a language and a naon The onept of the naon though for those who had now, been disovered had absolutely nothing to do with the reent and evolvng European onept of the naon state We thought that the nation was sared as sared as the ld. Tey thought that the nation was plunder We thought that we belonged to the nation Tey thought that the nation belonged to them. Our anestors were rea to us and so was our religion; but to Europe both appeaed to have been seaed in great stone vaults. Thus neither by the anestors nor by thei region ould they be orreted They ertaily ould not be orreted by Commere the ony region by whih they vedboth Chrsti and Jew-as dstguished (and how!) om that whih they professed The European-a athal te refer ng rely to the dooms of Capita Christanity and Color-beame White and the ian beame Blak for ommeria reasons The prie the White Ameran pd for his tiket is not only in the so romtiized
30
Th Evdn o Thing Not n
rupure beween he socaed Old World and he so cled New bu n he erred oaly of hs divorce o he os oenous creaon of Aercan e, hs darker broher Ths divorce enaces when does no desroy any possby of he exed, or he ora e-snce we are l brohers, and us le o each oher-and weakens one's grasp of realy. I s possble o look on a an and preend ha hs an s a ue. I s possble o couple wh a Black woan and descrbe he chld you have boh creaed as a ulao-eher 's your chld, or a chld or sn. I s possble o preend ha you are no her o, and, herefore, however nade quaely or ungly, responsble o, and for, he e and place ha gve you e-whou becoing, a very bes, a dangerously disorened huan beng Ths h less dynaic aords soe key o he disaser of he Aer can prvae, soc, and polc e o say nohng of Aercas foregn lcy Man canno lve by pro alone. Bu he suaon of Black Aercans has been creaed, and s dicaed by hs ove, and here s no oher sngle del of Aercan e ore revelaory of Aercans and absoluely, no evel of Aercan e does no coup. Blacks have never been and are no now, rely con sdered o be czens here. Blacks exis, n he Aercan agnaon and n relaion o Aercan nsuions n reference o he slave codes: he rs leg recognion of our presence rens he os copelling. Ths s why each generaon has been forced o nss, a oun ng pressure-and hgher cos-on cvl rghs a re
3
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vealng demand indeed, om a citizen! Only the Native Amercan (lo, the poor ndian) has been more bittely blasphemed "tryng as a White iend of mine once put it "to get into the hovels the Blacks e trying to get ot o One speaks of the Blacks as ming into the cities, as though this action were, somehow, both tdy and per verse. But Blacks have been in the cities for a ve ong time, ong before for exampe, the rsh immigrant ived lookng for one potato And one kes to say that each immigrant, as he ved encountered great obsta cles and that each rose in his tu This species of folk loreout of which Horatio Alger among others, was to make a kng-does not iply, but ve clely states that Amerca is the land of opportunity and that Backs therefore deserve their situation here no longer rey ce why the authors of this selfservng fantasy cng to it so ignobly t is, nevertheess, worth pointing out that this fabe tells us, sipy that the economic d potical base of the city was deteined entely by imigrts who were in the process of becoming White Americans Whatever derences the Ish, Greek, Pole, Itan Fnn, Noegian, Geanas well as Jews om over the wordmay have had between themselves they never, as entities, dered among themselves conceing the role and the utlty of the Black. They could not aord o: those who ded were hounded out of he White com munity (for it became White whenever Back was men tioned) as beng worse han niggers-as being trtors that is to the Amercan Dream (And that there were
32
Th Ed Thg N S
Blacks who shed this dream havingquite inevta bly-deluded themselves into belevng that they could be a pt of it is proven by the fate of the West Indian Mcus Garvey who was hounded out of this country wth the approval, not the cousion of some of the then Negro leadership) The White defector or dissident peshed between two communities anathema to the White and distrusted by the Back That community that was in the process of becoming White could-and didalways bu its dierences long enough to make certa that the Black could not se to a place of sufcient recognition to threaten the structure of the labor union or the city or the state And the saddest thing about this is that even by the time came along, seching for a wateelon in the streets of Hlem, there was nothing wcked about the White people who st ved in Hlem But they could not see to what extent they themseveshaving been manipulated into becoming Whitewere beng manpulated by nterests that ced no more about their ves than they ced about the ves of niggers. The Second World W forced the last of these European remnants over and out and H lem became an aBlack enclave. This reaty was en forced by Mayor La Gudia (who had been bo an taan) La Gudia decled Hlem omts except eect for those servcemen who had the ght or no choce but to ve therewhich was lke decling n a poxysm of honesty, that Amecan democracy was an item for export only. When Whte Americans then speak of the Blacks
33
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"movig ino he ciy they are reay referng to the city's rs overt poica recognition of the Back pres enceor the rst overt potica recognition that was not (directy) accompanied by boodshed (It was preceded by the bndng buing castrationthe ynching-of Back Americans retung home in uniform) After the Second Word War-and guided perhaps by La Guardas courageous exampe during itthe city began to create ghettos deberatey instead of more or ess haphazardy and this was considered a vicory for democracy Thus for exampe, when Metropotan Life buit Stuy vesan Town on New York's 14th Street (ir 1948), it was considered quite righty shamefu that Back peo pe go enough to de for Ameca were not go enough to ve in Stuyvesant Town Metropotan Life's commt ment to democracy was not so excessive as to cause them to open the portas of Stuyvesant Town to Backs But in the inerests of democracy and socia peace and with the cernty after a of tuing a prot-they had not been seng insurance a those years wthout discov ering that there was aways anoher dime to be ex traced!Metropotan Lfe buit a housing project for Back in Harem caed Riverton. This prompty be came a part of the dsaser area in which it had been buit and various ones among the merchans buit more hate to think how many there are now (but the ghetto's probems are not addressed sti ess resoved by causng anguish to reach into the sky). In any case the ghetto oveowed and Backs began occupying more and more
34
The Evidence of Things No Seen
of the cty encroachng secton by embatted secton the housng projects had fed to ect the expected grat tude The Whtes ls bes hope of erh) ed om the lack or the nonWhte face-pleadng heroicy and revegy enough that the lack presence would de mosh property vaues. Ths same Whte people sd not a word while Robert Moses and some ends of hs tued New York into the dangerous and decrept pary of a metropois that t s tay. They ed om the nggers to the suburbs Now they want to come back and they willas soon as they have devsed a way once more to get rid of the nggers Or-as they would more gently put it-to keep te ngger n hs place It is terrbly borng to have to say it-agan-but it is the Whte ight and not the lack va that aters or demoishes property vaues. Ths va and departure is pure heaven for nanciers and speculators a ghetto is a source of great prot. No power under heaven can force the landord to invest a penny in the upkeep of his propery and you thnk you cant get blood om a stone watch saesmen of every description operating in the ghetto uy a bedroom suie n Harlem or anything else on the nstent plan dare you anything in cludng e nsurance Or just go shopping A lack neighborhood is a highrisk area becuse t is lack and becuse the bulk of the populaton is trapped there. And w they moveas for example when lacks moved nto the ronx-they have created smply -
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other hghrisk area A hghrisk area is intolerably e pensive because the oney spent by the ghetto never retus to the ghetto. This eans that those who batten on tsalesen and landlords and lawers for exa ple-ust tu thei prots wth ruthless speed for the tertory occuped by the Blacks or the nonhite pr, swiftly becoes a knd of devastaton Ths eans that the citzens of the ghetto have ab solutely no way of iposg thei on the cty stil less on the State No one s copeed to hear the needs of a captve populaton Thus the ghetto s condened for the garbage n the streets the condton of the buld ngs which they do not own the dsaster of the schools just as though the Black battles wth the boards of ed ucaton never happened, just as though schools exist ndependent of the neghborhs i whch they are found, and as though a Black person can walk into a bank and take out a loan or nsure hs property or hs fe on the sae tes avalable to hte people Furtheore t s perhaps, worth riskng the obser vation-to ake vivid the nterlockng series of para doxes that e the Black person's fe ths country that ths partcular aspect of the econoc stranglehold is-or wasless tue n Southe ctes than n Northe ctes (The econoc subjugaton of the rural Black re ans very nearly tota.) This is not because the Aerican princple dered o the North to the South It is because n the cites, fo a long e, the South had or seeed to have a sb populaon That is the South was certai that the ngger
36
T Evidn o Tings No Sn
"knew his place the boundies of which were pre sumably xed forever by the existence of the Black "mid dle class This class had an exceedingly complex usefulness in the Southe city whereas it had vtually no resonance in the North: the Northe city demol ished simply any meaningful relationship at between the Black and the White communitiesindeed it is not too much to say that the Northe city demoshed communities In the N orth we ved neighbor hoods The uselness however of the Black mdde class to the Sou the city-that is to the maintenance of the White sus quo-was and had to be so dubious a matter that it is f to say that it existed principally in the agnation of the White South (And at that it is important to repeat ony in the city Im from An. Im no from Georgi)
But this class was not created by the White agi nation but by the Black apprehension of their Black history and by those institutions that the ancestors had forged the spt not the form of which they were to hand down to their chdren They were mels all right but not as the White South supposed of the imits they were witnesses to endess possibities So heir elders had informed them and hey were the elders now The performance of this class therefore when cononted wth the brutity to which the chidren were sub jectedthis above all-tued the White Southe ro mance into an unreadable nightmare and the results of this uneasiness are vndictively visible in Atlanta for example or in Brmigham which did not a few years
37
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ao before inteation) have so many sections of town so visiby and vindictively resembn the wasteland of the Northe hetto Finally think it is worth questionn the myth in this count concein Black wealth. Wealth is not the se thin as uence Wealth that is is not the power to buy but the power to dictate the terms of that so maical marketplace-or at the ve least to inuence those terms Wealth is the power to inuence or to che the ciys onin laws or the insurance rates or the ac tuaial tables they appy to Blacks or the textbook in dusy or the fathertson labor uons or the composion of the and uries and the boards of education Wealth is the power to make ones needs fet and to force a response to these needs Thouh the erican ewish communiy for exple can exert reat inuence over erican pocy toward srael Backs have no overt in uence at all on erican poicy toward South ica To be f we can of course say that some drs appea to have opened for some Blacks Without more carefully scrutiniin these doors or what they open onto) we can say certnly that doors appear to be open for those who can ord the luxu items This is why some erican socioloists ae beinn to sist that the problem is not race but class"-meanin: those who nd themselves on the bottom belon there The most visible of these are in the hetto and the city's only real interest in the hetto is in its speedest possible deterioration Hence the Black Mayor interim caretaker of a valu
38
Th Ed Thgs N S
able chunk of real estate is in limbo. He has been placed we say in the streets in a trick bag attempting to defend and represent a people who do not for the state est The state intends to reclm the land which is why the ciy has been abandoned for this moment to the Blacks Thus for the moment whatever happens in the city is the responsibity of those corraled there Brng out your dead Edwrd Hope Smih 1 Repored missing uy 20 1979 Found ded on uy 28 of gunsho wounds ong rod in wooded re
Brng out your dead Afred ]mes Evns 1 3 Ls seen ]uy 25 1979 wiing o cch bus Poice idenied Evns's body Ocober 13 1980 fer i ws found juy 28 ner he body of Edwrd Hope Smih Srnguion
Bing out your dead Mion Hey, 1 Ls seen Sepember 1979 Found ded November 1979 Cuse of deh undeerined
Bring out your dead: Yusef Ai Be, 9. Ls seen Ocober 1979 Srnged Ange Lnier 1 2 Ls seen Mrch 1980 Found Mrch 190 Srnged jeffrey L. Mhis, 10 Ls seen Mrch 1980 Found Februry 1981 Cuse of deh: undeerined Eric Middebrooks, 1 Ls seen My 1980 Found My 1980 Cuse of deh hed inury.
39
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Chrsopher P Rhrdson 1 1 Ls seen June 1980 Cuse of deh: undeermned Lony Wson 7 Ls seen june 1980 Found Oober 1980 Cuse of deh: undeermned Aron D Wyhe, 10 Ls seen ]une 1980 Found]une 1980 Asphyxon Anhony Berd Crer 9 Ls seen juy 1980 Found Juy 1980 Sbbed Er Lee Terre 10 Ls seen Juy 1980 Found Jn ury 1981 Cuse of deh undeermned Cfford] ones 13 Ls seen Augus 1980 Found 1980 Srnged
Before we begin to speculate as to what i the fore going can be sd to constitute a patte it is important to point out that it was the thiteenth murder-that of Cord Jonesthat precipitated the (ocia) hue and cry Jones ke Emmett T in 1955a comparison I wsh neither to force nor avoid-was an outofstate s itor om what we st quntly ca the North Had he been a Mississippi boy his bones might yet be ire coverabe at the bottom of the river or nourishg the eth of vious and celebrated Mississippi pantations to speak only of Mississippi and sayng nothing of sub sidies and wthout isisting on the ofcia and letha power of the Southe states in the august and mble hals of Washington. The ony reason after a that we have hed of Em mett Ti is that he happened to come whistng down the road-an obscure country road-at the very moment the road found itse most threatened: at the very begin
40
Th Evidn o Things Not n
ning of the segregatondesegregation-not yet integra toncrisis, under the knell of the Supreme Court's ll delibere speed when various moderate Southe gov eors were asng Black people to segregate themselves for he good of boh rces and when the President of the United States was, on this subject so eloquently silent that one knew that in his heart he did not approve of a mongreization of the races n this harsh lght and harsher silence the murder of the boy became a spitual and patriotic duty t is im possible to know what might have happened had Au thority felt or dared suggest that the darker brother has every right to be here and nothing whatever to prove No erican president has ever unequivocally stated this-certainly not for example Lincoln who was sim ply determined to presee the Union with slavery or wthout it; nor Kennedy who addressed Mississipp on the nght that James Meredith was carried into Ole Mss as though there are no Black people n Missssppi nor Rsevelt who could not "take [the] chance of ghting for an antilych law. As conces all the other presidents wth the possible (but meaningless) exception of homas Jeerson Blacks have never had any human reality at a (Carter is another exception-a real exception and so was Johnson in entrely dierent way but both ar exquisitely, the exceptions that prove the rule.) The moral vacuum of any society immediately creates actual social chaos. This vacuum is that space of confuson in which the word is not suted to the action nor ntended to be-in which the action is not suited to
4
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the word nor intended to be It is that space in which eveyone, helplessly, has something to hide in which evey mans hand-helplessly-is against his brother that space in which we dare not recognize that our birth right is to love each other. he real meaning and histoy of Manifest Destiny, for example, is nothing less than calculated and deiberate genocide But American folklore, which has seduced American histoy into a radiant stupor, transforms this slaughter into an heroic legend. Since the legend has obterated the truth, and since the legend controls what is left of the American imagination it is l but impossible for the ite North American rely to understand why, for example, in Salt Lake City, such Indins as may intrude on his/her attention are to be found in ont of the state iquor store Nor does he question the vdity of or reason for a se lquor store, nor why he/she ee, white and over twentyone, can drink, legly, ony at home or in one of the many many many "private clubs that ourish in the Mormon capital His presumed dom ance blnds him to the rigors of his own captivity He cannot possibly see himself as others-the subjugated see him He understands an Indan uprising as lttle as he understands "cme in the streets crime in he srees being the action entirely of the irresponsibly ds contented and ungrateful Negro. he moral vacuum results in the betrayal of the soci contract and when this contract is broken Chaos is at eveyones door his chaos, ike a plague, is no respecter of persons,
42
Th Evd o Thg Not S
tribes or aspiations-so one must recognize (agan that it is not in itsef enough to be Black Or in other words it is no longer necessary-d very shortly no longer be possible-for Blacks to dene themselves merely in opposition to the European vocabulary This vocabulary precisely to the extent that it cannot encompass the Black experience fas to conont stil less translate the White experience and the Black experience lives outside this language and i spite of it If I wrte you a letter for example I am trying to tell you somethig or ask you somethig-whatever the message it can be naly ony myself hoping to be devered f I speak to you I want you to he me-to he -and to see me Speech and anguage however ceremonious complex and convouted e a way of re vealig one's nakedness and this revelation is rely our only human hope But this hope is strangled one or both of us is lying Most White North Americans e always lying to and conceig thei dker brother which means that they always lying to themselves Who doubts me has ony to consider the state of the Union. White North Americans ve in a country that in the generity and emphatically i action beeves that nothig is more portt th ig White. Black North erics apped on the same tetory and under what c perhaps best be described as erent conditions of servitude also concluded that it was important to be White-nothig could have been more obvous. The question was how to go about it.
43
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So one watched the people made Whie by a voyage the Savage ced them the people om heaven And they were many colors but they were not Whte Wh were they then? What they were was at once a menacng overwhelmng nescapable Presence and an echong ntolerable Absence. Ths was the mel the Word made esh-that one had no choce but to emulate please outwt pty despse hate and some tes and sometmes love as long as the sun rose and set. Every hour was lved n the shadow of death not only or merely one's own Mother daughter neces the womenfolk uncle nephew, brother the father and the son And these relatons realtes havng no soc recognton or leg valdty had dly to be caressed lke contraband or staked out as hopefully as a clam It s a very grave matter to be forced to mtate a people for whom you knowwhch s the prce of your perfor mance and surviv-you do not exst It s hard to mtate a people whose existence appears manly to be made tolerable by the bottomless grattude that they are not thank heaven ou One s cononted wth a chasm And ths vod s not to be compared-for example-with the Irsh stuaton n the hands of the Englsh for they both at least as the Irish supposed looked lke the chldren of the se God Who could possbly have wed the Irish of the price they were to pay for an Englsh monarchs b of dvorcement? Nor s the Black stuaton n the West and more partcularly n North America to be compared wth that of the Jew Germany The German ew had no reason to suppose that he was not German
44
Th Ed o Thgs Not S
any more than he had any reason to suppose that Ger many was not Civzed White people are by de nition Civzed He had fought and ded for the Fatherland his blood was in that soil as well as his honor and his chdren's hope. He could not possibly have imaged that a social contract of sacred dmensions could be so vcously broken Mene, mene eke uphrsin had not yet translated tse into so unspeakable a con ontation between the Chosen People and the Master Race. The social contract smashed in Germany rank forever quite beyond times power to obterate or the human or dvine power to forgive among the most abom inable moments in the history of the human being It lso exposed forever and exploded the moral authen ciy of the J udeoChrstian ethic and mks the end of the moral authorty of the Weste world (Yes mark my words) The Weste world understo the German Chancellor's need for Lebensrum very well and dd nothing to thwart it unt his vng space interfered with heir vng space. The decimation of the dssidents the bung of the books the incarceration and subsequent prolonged slaughter of the gypsies such lacks as the Third Reich could nd the homosexuals and the Jews ecited nothing more om the Civzed world than a o of crocode tears and a reexamination of trade agreements The West went to war against the monster the West had created in sedefense and for no oher reson
The auction block is the platform on which I entered
45
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the Civlized Word Nothing that has happened since, om South ca to El Savador indicates that the West e word has any rea quarre wth savery Since we, the Backs dd not ook White we coud hope to arrive at this state oly by imitation (The idea of becomig White by foication came, by precept and exampe, later The fact that Black men and women sur mounted this most incredibe passage of the diaspora is the subject of another essay, or, as I believe, another pen) One c imitate one thng ony-reiy. One c mime the wind or the eects of the wind or re, but one must kow that wnd and re are merciless. To imitate other human beg is to translate, interpret, the confession conted i eve gesture, eve ck d tone of voice that is what every human beg is about that is what love is about In the case of the Black attempting to imitate the White it became cear, at once that they were cononted, merely, with a surface They could im itate oly this surface but this surface was not the per son There was no reason, and, ndeed no way, to imitate the depths They recognized the depths at once, in the same way that one perceives the dierence between one chd d another Furthermore, the Back man/wom ved with, and n those depths, day, seasons the lfeime og a vast amount of the precision of the Back North American's style comes out of hs appre heson that he was imtag imitaion He had amos cery ever seen for eampe, the ristocrat whom Scetts daddy, f om home, had
46
h Evi o hg Not
aken as a model bu he knew ha Scarles daddy was no arisocra (He he Black, was no sranger o arso cras; perhaps he had been sold by one Scarles daddy was jus a displaced-perhaps mosly drunken, perhaps mosly sober-peasan who could hardly any longer do a days work hs lfe had depended on i and Scarle was jus an unloved-or loved-unlovable or lovable hysercal or wnning chd Her broher ended o pss n bed mgh or mgh no grow up o be a man (bu he ds were no in his favor; her cousn was always sn ing around he slave quarers n which he msress saw, dy, her husbands chdren. And eveone preended ha Black people were blnd and could no see he realy around hem-n spie of he fac ha his realy held over Black people dy he power of lfe or deah There was no way o ae his cushing physcal presence ha was ruled by a oal moral vacuum, jus as Blacks dd no ee Chrsians by iang slave holders Wha evolved was wha appeared o be a sraegy for safey Whe people read hs seemng subservience as ndicang he Black need for accepance bu Black ople descrbed as bowing mighy low. Or, n oher words, he ruh conceing he Whe Norh Amercan experience is o be decphered in he hieroglyphic lashed ono he Black mans back-here and n he connung fae of he las of he Mohcans d his ruh canno be overcome un s cononed Therefo, when I say ha presenly no be enough o be Black I am no only aempng o sugges our immnen and global responsbes as he mos no
47
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orious and important of can contributions o he Wes, am also stating hat our actual and moral alter natives have never been, and are no now, simply a the mercy of the North American infeo The adolescent, Ti, was murdered by two White North American maesthe issue of European emigrants, bo south of the Canadian border-for whsng at a Whie woman Now, in some other place and time-in that universal beginnig ad wonder of ves-hey might have been able to recognize themseves in the boy, have laughed with him, and at him, and been abe to correct him by remembeg how they themseves had wsledi that time now so iecoverably behind White North Ameri cans when a woma w not merey White, but a woman, and no boy was merey Black, but a boy when boys were the responsibity of men or the boy was crowig ke a cock and signaing that he was proud and happy to be, and have onewhich is the very denition of innocence and terror, as men should know Bu the boy was Black and so they had to k him-of course. They were judged by a jury of thei peers o be innocen Nor did they lose thei jobs: hink tha one of the brohers was promoted T e good Lord aone knows what happened o the womanhood of the so indicvey przed woman Yusef Be, age nine, was he fourth ictim and it as his mother, Ms. Cile Be, who began the Stop he Murders Mothers Committee. t was she apparently, who rst perceived not so much a "pate as a mortal threa ad she who rased the hue and cry 48
Th Evd o Thg Not S
Authorty, and/or bureaucracy, responded at is usual snaike pace the mssing chidren were, for a whie lumped together as runaways, or hustlers This de scrption, or more precisely, this reaction, reveals enor mties conceing what is generay expected of the chidren, to say nothing of the pents, who fa beneath he economc level that in prciple, makes possible a measure of social autonomy It must also be added, to be fai, that a missing or runwy chid does not, im medately, translate itself, in the mind as a murdered chid (not even when the chids body has been found No degree of imagination or dsciplned power of re hesal can prepe anyone for the unspeakable d there can be nothing more unspeakablenor alas, very probably more common-than the volence inicted on chdren It is absolutely impossible for Authorty or bureaucracy to scent danger as swftly as does the menaced human ing Authorty can scent danger only to itself. It de mands a crsis of whatever proportions before the prvate danger c be perceived as menacing the publc safety or you or for me, for example, the missing chid distorts, totaly, the universe, but, for Authority, it is a staistic and, for bureaucracy a detail Only when these deails and staisics begn to multiply is a publc danger per ceived. urtheore, in the presen case, the Black people of Atanta found themselves, today and under the intol erably brutal d indierent publc lght, lvng nothing less than the ancestral, daily, historcal truth of Black lfe in this country (Anesrl and dily e synonyms 49
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an hsorcal oes not efe to that sotess mio in whih the buk of White Noth Aeians iagine they see thei faes) t is an eo to uneestimate the ivate an oe tive memoy of the most buta-an unti tay o onge-of human isesas o iasoas t was ony the ay befoe yesteay afte a that ak hien beonge not to thei ents but to the utuations of the stok exhange inee one ooks oun this ounty o this wo tay that ast statement may stike one as being inefensiby otiisti n the assumtion then that Authoity in Atanta is ak it ou be assume by that ivate an o etive memoy eisey whih egistes that it was not ony bought o kinae but sold that ak eoe wee inieent to the fate of the hien an e sone when they i ess out of a one fo the hien than a one fo the ontinue ommeia viabity of the ity too busy to hate. Thee is nothing new about suh ioities no o these ioities have a oo ine. think it is iotant to fae this tth an it beome steay gobay moe iotant as this entuy nes its en n the othe han in the esent ase-Atanta- must te you that o not she this ausatoy assumtion o not she it beause it eveas the iensions of that ta in whih the White Noth Aeian quite heessy an inee quite as it wee without maie intens to kee the ak. e has no hoie To fae the ak man is to be foe to fae hise Thee is a stiking ieene of emhasis between the 50
h Evd of hgs No S
hers of Europe and the hers of ca I say emphasis because the human inhertance is simply that human and universal posing on all human beings the neces sity of treating each other as sacred Though boh read he Bible, day and nigh and both beeve in conquest one beeves in safety. The proof is in our songs and in the ves we lead and the price we pay. The crisis in Atlanta cannot for exple really be compared to the situaon we encounter in Thomas Mann's Deah in Venice Deah in Venice is not merely the study of an aging egoridden European artist suendering in Venice to the nscrutable passions of his unved life. This life would appear to be inscrutable and unved be cause of an appallng lack of witnesses the artist is ad med and to a crushing extent but no one has ever coected the man His unved e takes its revenge and surfaces in the form of an adolescent boy who exists ost entely in the mans imagination. Compelled by s ouey toward his receding miage he lingers in Venice and es. The story is centered on a self not so much dmnshed or irrecoverable or unknown as saic he never sing The ery day I hough I was los my dungeon shookand my chains fell off And the hor ror of his uved e and unloved love is conveyed by the fact that there s a plague raging in Venice and every hour he spends there bgs h closer to death He ds not as you or I mght do pack his bags and pick up his bed or his boy and walk no he expres elaborately on the beach supine vic nally of the icy worngs of the chber of commerce. For no one in Vence s about to announce a plague 51
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t the very height o the seson. o recognize nd declre plgue wi bring bout the ruin o the city, ruin by no mens metphoric xi drivers wi not drive, mids hve no unction cooks not collect letovers or thei ilies, wters not wit nd wine wi not be poured It does not, in Mnns be, pper to be portnt tht o these people my be stricken nd die hey ppe to beieve tht they w, somehow, outve it, nd they e, probbly ter right they hve be ore A plgue my be no respecter o persons, but tht mens, only, tht there re two sides to every coin he derence o emphsis tht I m trying to situte would seem to me to result inor is, perhps pruced by- chilg vew o humn isoltion I not t tempting to deny the truth or the enormity o this iso tion ech o us is unique replcebe, nd pssing through ut it seems to me tht it is precisely our re plcebilty, uniqueness, mortity tht is the spendor o the humn connection ht isotion nd deth re certin nd univers ces our responsibility. Love, le nd deth re not s some would put it hed ges." I remember, or exmple, point in my le when I ws sked to consider involving mysel in the prution o ply bsed on Oedipus Rex The me or updted, script cued Polish concenon cp during the reign o the hid Reich Oedipus Rex is the py tht the cps thetric troupe w perorm or Christms he princip role, Oedipus, is to be plyed by n ctor who is the son o mn nd womn who re prisoners
2
Th dn Thngs Nt Sn
in this same camp. But none of these three know this each one of them assumes that the other two e dead The Commandant, who knows thei identities, has de cided that it will be amusing to have these three actually live, unwittingly, the Oedpus drama The son is set up to attempt to escape by g the one guard on duty on a certain night This guard is, of course, his father, who has been instructed to keep his back to the prisoner and aow him to escape The prisoner knows only that he must shoot him. The mother is informed that her son is alive and though no longer as well as he was is lvng in this place She is aso informed that her son be brought into her pitchblack cell and that she dsguised, pretend to be the whore he has been promised. If she thwarts the copulation by y deed or sign not she, but her son wll be put to death And, then the son is cononted with what he has done as the play is about to be performed I dd not believe a word of this play I was repeled by the intelectua aogance of the conceitan aogance that reveaed it seemed to me, an appang contempt for the hum being. (The ogce of the author seemed very like that of the Commandant.) I dd not dsbelieve the horrorwe live in an age the horror of which can scarcely at all, be descrbed-but I dd not believe this report I dd not believe that human beings could be, unwttingly so manipulated I dd not beleve that my father or my mother or thei son could become as wit lessly ruthless as a goat Though I had seen horrors, and horror enough, madness suicide, heard the junkes
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how ad eouered may forms of murder I had eve eoueed ayoe who did ot somewhere dee wthi the iaessibe ave know somehig of the deadful geba of the ouey-he that had bought him/her to the ae om whih there was o delverae d oe wshes to say-true eough f eough that I was uabe to see his beause I was uwig to age it this meey bgs us ba to my sttig oit whh I have suggested iey eough ehas is the sg dieee of emhass-ad I deb eraey avoidg he wod erconbetwee the hes of Euoe d the hes of ia the dieet vatage oits om whih our ves e areheded Fo a ife is otoled ad a ivizato deed by what eah taes ife to be d wha we ae ife to be is what our ves beome Veie i ay ase aed o the oe had lata's beleaguered a dsao d o he othe hd erhas eve more iy t aed Ms Came e I met Ms el twe o thee es bey d ub y ad I foud her to be a imressive ad vey movg wom She was but ad hdsome eaheaded out gog could ot iteview he beause I sy did ot ow what to say to the mother of a murdered hid stl ess wha to as was etai tha some d of ghoush uosity was i my eyes d i my voie I maily steed e oe was what she too to be he ofi idieree to the saughter of the hde whih o eted for her wh he eoom status of the vms
54
Th Evdn of Thng Not n
had o hoe but to sused udgmet ( have eve
all my oueys, felt moe of a terloer, a stage tha felt tlata, oeto wth ths ase, ad sometmes ursed the edtor whose basto ths had bee oweve, she ew f moe about ths ase ad ths ty tha -ally f more about the ty d have desbed her as outgog, whh s etaly the mes so she made o me ut also felt that she was holdg hese together wth a safety was fog herse to be le tulate, atveto ee movg, oe ste ahead of the sledgehamme of ge Ths s really why ouldt as her aythg but ths quslve teso vested her testmoy o, more auately, her ot of vew, wth great authoty She was det ad ould be extemely aus, but she wast setyg ad she wast mea ad he gef was ot hes aloe e gef oeted he wth the othe mothes ad fames, o eted her t seemed to me, wth resosbty ut due, o doubt, to her aust togueshe e feed to the Mayor as the fat boy-she was f om beg the most oul lady tlata No oe sad ay thg detly agast her, tly, ally deded be ause o oe ew ve muh about he e was allowed to assume evetheless, that she was msguded ad esosble ad ot above tug her so's murder to a ub ad aal tumh for herse must say that foud ths slet suggesto to say the ve least uely She dd't mess me as havg that tul d of stama o as beg aable of h
55
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borng such a motve She mpressed me as meanng exactly what she sd And ths gener reacton to Ms Be caused me to look not at her but around me I was astounded for example that so many people appeared to beleve that Wayne Wams was gulty-were reled to thnk of hm as gulty. It was precsely ths relef that cased n me a steady chlled wonder less conceng the accused than those who were so anxous to accuse and condemn h The accused may be gulty for I know but I fal to see hs gult as proven. Others may see Amercan progress n economc rac and soc ars do not I pray to be proven wrong but I see the opposte wth murderous plcatons and not only n North Amerca The economc dvdng lnes among the people trapped n the Atlanta nghtmare may ny on a comng day nterpret t For reasons nvolvng gult terror and be wlderment the economc dsparty between the run away chldren and those relatvely more secure economcy-began to be eaned on as a means both of avodng and conontng the nghtmare Indeed I thnk t s probable that never before had ths queston so bruty menaced Atlantas Black communty Up. untl and durng that betrayed and coopted n surrecton that Amercan folkore has trvzed nto "the cv rghts movement the porter and the banker and the dentst knew that they needed each other. Eco nomc and socet rgors beng what they are t cannot be sd that they were ntmate but each knew where to nd the other The soc detals the habts of nte
56
Th Evidn o Things Not Sn
graion reated not a dvore but a distane One not gve a endy n to the porter whle dning ou at he Peahtree Plaza beause the porter wont be there Of ourse the povery of the porter eventually preipi tates the bankrupty of the banker and the dentist but what am saying now is that the myth of integration attaked and began to unravel a tighly woven soi fabri And there ould be no more devastaing proof of his assault han the slaughter of the hldren. This is ertly among the prnipal reasons hat Camie Bel seemed for so many an embaassment. I had the feeg ha this was less beause of her tran sigent posion than the fat that she had presumed to take any position at all. Her position however one udged it was onsistent "The pents of the hldren who e murdered and who are ssing ontend that no one has the rght the au thorizaon or the authority to olet funds for the p ents exept the ommttee that the pents themselves have set up. This is a ve le statement whih is unforgivable enough. It is so se none of the mothers rose up to repudate t subversive-as subversive say as the a tion example and prese of Antigne It was being addressed to some fodable people and otions some Whte and some Blak but this statement also addressed d deed the sovereign state of Georgia and the Re pub for whih it stands SE I AKE T PEUE FU S A is the headne of a June 1 1981, New k
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Times aticle And the Goveos Oce of Consume
ais had indeed wed the Committee o Stop Ch dens Mudes that they wee lable to posecuion on both civil and cmna chages The state of Geogia had neve befoe exhibited so intense an inteest in Black lie o Black deah And ths theat coming om the Goveo of the state was not eally aimed at the paents of the mudeed chden but at the Administation of the city of Atlanta I nd it fas cinating futhemoe that it should issue om the Of ce of Consume s-an oce not ceated pesumably to involve itsel with mude o the afte math of mude The Oce of Consume s is in pnciple as emoved om such bloody mattes as the Depa tment of Agicultue In pincple howeve by all accounts, a vast ount of money poued into the state and the city duing this ime ceatng havoc and em bassment. Not only fo example fo the people who did not quite know how to look o dess o behave at the Sammy Davis J benet Who in the wold can blame them nding themselves unde the vey ea oblgaion of buckdancing on he graes You pesence is e quiedthat is eally all tha you know A holocaust is no specte of mios You act as you can o as you must But you must be pesent This was not howeve the conce of the state The state held that the Commttee to Stop Chdens Mudes violated Geoga aw as conceed chable solcita tions. Ths may stke one as a somewha callous posiion to take conceing such a devastation- in
58
The Evidence of Things Not Seen
deed !-bt it makes perfect (f somewhat chilng) sense For what Cae Bells committee had done was to ert the nation and the world to the fact that there was indeed a page raging in the city too bsy to hate. Years ago after the slaghter of the for ttle grs in the Birgham Snday school Rby Dee Ossie Davs ohn 0 Killens Odetta the late Lois Lomax and some others incding me rented New Yorks Town Ha to demand that Chstmas that year be decared a day of moig We held that a Chstian nation had no ght to ceebrate the birthday of the Prnce of Peace before it made an attempt to atone. The parents of the chdren were onstage with s They were not there on hoday thogh we hoped cer tainly that they wold see some of the sights of New York-wold have as we clmsy pt it a good time. Perhaps they did manage to see Radio City or Madison Sqare Garden the prosct did not appear to them They were not there on holiday. They were there as wt nesses We hoped that we cold do whatever was h manly possibe in the brtay bef time that we had bt they were enged by a sence that no one cold enter And of corse dong a ths cost money. No dobt some of the parents boght something hope so The committee broght the Atlanta Administration nder attack-for there appears to have been no re reaction to the mrders before the committee was foed-not so mch om those on the bottom whose cry is rarely heard bt om the top From the state of
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Georgia in fact which ultimately controls the city of Atlanta More than that Georgia is controlled by Wash ington even or erhas esecially when it can seem to be the other way around Thus the imenetrable meeting at the Goveors mansion-or at any rate with the Goveorcomes about When rst arved in Atlanta I knew nothing of this meeting Then I encountered so many eole who had nt been there that I reazed that this meeting must have taken lace Slaten is not among the eole who were not there for the reason that DA Slaten who was exceedingly cordi, made it very clear that he was not going to dis cuss the case with me at a Nevertheless as in an ancient Boris Karlo movie such a meeting aarently took lace Bereft as I am of witnesses I can only conjecture after the fact But it was after the meetng with the Goveor or simultane ously that President Reagan VicePresident Bush and the FBI entered the case We never asked for any money excet om Reagan one ofcial tells me and: We asked for the FB Which a end of ne tells me seems a little odd you remember the FB and us during the civil rights days We Yes and no t deends on how one reads the motive I do not read the motive as havng anything to do with any conce for the dead children-or for that matter the lving I read the motive as being dictated by the necessity of stiing an incient scandal in order to
60
Th Evidn o Thn No Sn
protect the magic of the marketpace There was I am tod, "zero fao' in business: conventioneers contin ued to rive in thei cheerfu thousands ng up the hotes the bars, and the shopping mas. Somewhat ess convenienty money came poug into the Mayor's of ce om fty states and seven continentssometimes nickes and dimes and pennies om schoochidren and the Mayor's oce acknowedged every contribution and kept an accounting of every penny They were forced to use a tripe accounting system and the money went to or was the coerstone of, the Atanta Chirens Foun dation. In pite f all thi then Atlanta ha ppeed ha gwn Wee an Ameian ity Ou mtt i eugene
And the chdren were so cosey watched For ex ampe, a ack man, drivig, happened to stop beside a car contning a ite coupe and a ack chid He gave chase shouting and in one way or another the car was forced to stop. ut the boy and the coupe had perfecty vaid reasons for being together: everything I was tod tued out to be noa The issue says another ovetook our ves This I think, cannot be doubted. am a partia witness to the truth of that statement When the athazar chd disappeared one of the ast peope to see him was his bber. The chd was running an eand and waved as he passed by the barbershop window and was never seen agn ave. And the barber tod me how much he had oved and admied young Patrick thazar who had come om New Oreans to ve with his father.
6
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Yet tked to the father t who was utterly dev astated by what he took to be the ofci inerence to the le and death of his son. Gef as we know translates very easly into rage-rage in fact at heaven. But just the se his face and his voice made me remember someone else teng me that Atlanta has White neigh borhos Black neighborhoods-but not thee neigh borhos! For the chldren ce manly om Atlanta's lowest econoc stratum This means that they were strangers to safety for in the brut generty only the poor watch over the poor The poor do not est for others except as an inconvenience or a threat or an econoc or some times ssiony or sometmes genuinely mor oppor tunity The pr ye have with yu alway indeed but never in the mn to be seen and never certnly as we should kow by now to be heard The poor do not awaken to breakfast They wake up to whatever there is. They do not necessarly step into a shower or take a bath the plumbig of the poor is as unpredictable as the poltc fortunes of an emerging nation They may or may not dress and go to work they may eventually nd it intolerably coosive to look for work unch may or may not happen Your pits and your socks and your feet may stink You are never ab solutely certan that they don't no matter how cleverly you manipulate the faucet with what industry you lay your underwear out to dry; and emptying ones bladder or one's bowels can present monument problems This is true for the father which is the pncip reason he is so often absent and it is te for the son If I say that 62
Th Evidn o Thing No Sn
the r are srangers to safey, i is not only because others look on the oor th such a defensive dsdn it is also because the oor cannot bear the condescension and ity they see in the eyes of others. Or imagine that they seeit comes to the same hig You smell your or as it were, in the others eyes And this is intolerably comounded you are oor, young, and black No amount of sueilance could have saved the c dren om the Omn for examle-sice i was there The name ( have reorted elsewhere) is scarcely more bitious than the lace which is a knd of ozen en closed suburb t is about ve mnutes away om a srawg, oor Black neighborho, cled Vine City A chld can walk here om his home in less than ve mutes; some of the murdered chldren were last seen n this lace. One enters through a galaxy of showindows sellng clothes that your momma and your aa can buy the entre lace is honeycombed with overriced tourst items was about to say overriced toursts. There are several evels One nds onesef standng beneath an enormous dome and the buildng stretches above one, tier by tier Among the establshments on the ground leve there is a rench bakery and a nb, vdeoge arcade-a sace that contans a staggerng ay and vaey of game maches n he center of l this is a tremendous oen iceskating rk (ine led and at the oosite end of the oor, facing the arcade, is the move house a comex contning, beleve, six the atres This vast sace is nothing ess than a magnet for children and for those who rey on chldren And in 63
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spite of the curfew, here were the boys-lookng for a narcotc, for money for the moves for the pinball ma chines for the skating rink: lookng for change Lookng for a change For the only "patte I could disce in the murders was that the vctims were young Black maes-there were aso two Black femae children-vng in the pur gatory or the eteity of poverty To be poor and Black in a country so rch and White is to judge onesel very hashly and it means that one has nothing to lose. Why not get into the iendly ca? What's the worst that can happen? For a poor child is aso, a very lonely child. There were, I am told no other cases that "t the patte once Wayne Wiias was arested There were no murders that "t the patte while he was on tra But as was not told that murder in Atlanta had ceased wth the arest and tria of Wayne Wiiams, began to be more and more disturbed by thisfor me-increas ingly elusive "patte. The poce had been lookng for a Vetnam veteran type, but once the FB entered the case, they kept getting eads according to Slaten, that poited to Wayne Wiiams. But what was one to make of a "patte that in cude, as cause of death gunshot wounds sangulaon head injury stabbed, asphyation, and undetermined? Partculary this was assumed to be the work of one man One boys death for example, was attrbuted to as phyxation his body had been found in the weeds be neath the raroad tracks t had been suggested that the
64
Th vin o Thngs Not n
y had fallen o this vaduct whle walng on the edge I walked this vaduct It dd not seem to me that a fall om this height would necessaily be mot The ang o the ledge was of heavy thick metal wde enough fo a playful d to walk on This bie ce just below my shouldes The boy had been smalle than I and would have had to make a vey detemned eot to cimb up on that ledge. His fily said howeve that the boy was teed of heights and would neve have deed of using hmse that way Someone then would have had to t h and thow him ove Assuming that he was still ave when he landed in the weeds one can agee cetly, that he was asphyxated; yet it seemed to me a somewhat inadequate way of descbing the cause of death On the othe hand oci language ealy has no choice but to be that and is not meant to eveal so much as to stact and as it wee console It is so unde the necessity of attempting to pesee the social contact and the pubc peace But in the pesent case this itation meant that the ocial eassuance that thee wee no mudes that t the patte once Willams was ested was met with a pofoundly uneasy and not always sent skepticism Wen I st ce to Atlanta the people unde the geatest suspicion wee poicemen and peaches This is not had to undestand (so I ted to eassue myse given thei authoty and (vsible eedom of movement in the community Yet thee was something eee about this eacton and infectious, ke catching a end's cold
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Having grown up with preachers and hang been one myself I can claim I think to know something of the hazards (and the beauty of the ministry. In my youth and during my time in the pulpit though we knew that Reverend SoandSo was not exactly what he claimed to be-for exple he played the numbers was a lttle t fond of the wne and the lang on of hands-we never really doubted the realty of his ministry He was never suspected of doing any delberate ham to the commu nty-even though for the most part it seemed beyond his power to do us any particular good or the most part there were some who dd a great deal of go for us includng for example Adam Clayton Powell Jr. and the nevertobeforgotten ather Divine They mght have had haems of boys and gils and monkeys for all we caed they tred to help us and they dd and they paid for it. lack polcemen were another matter We used to say "If you just mus cl a polceman-for we hadly ever dd-for Gods sake try to make sure its a Whie one A lack polceman could completely demolsh you He knew fa more about you than a White polceman could and you were without defenses before this lack brother in unorm whose entire reason for breathing seemed to be his hope to oer proof that though he was lack he was not lack lke you In the case of the Atlanta polce force I remembered when the rst lack polcemen had been hired in At lanta-in the late forties-and remembered that they had not then been permitted to aest White people I
66
Th Evdc of Thgs Not S
spsed that they had acqired this power by now thogh as f as I cold see, this power cold be exer cised only on the poor White (who wold not take it meekly there being virtally no other Whites in what we have come to call the inner city Some of the Black Atlanta poce force were my gides very strange tertory and nd that I dont, yet, really know how to do jstice to their patience When tried to compare their sitation in Atlanta, now with the sit aon I remembered om my yoth, in Hlem, I fond mysef facing a void icier than the mere passage of time. The cops I remembered had known what the commnity felt abot them and it hadnt seemed to matter Here, they knew too that many elements of the commnity distrsted them bt the knowledge seemed to sting This is de not only to the fact that policemen also have chdren, it has something to do wth the cissi tdes of the Black commnity, North and Soth in time I was bo in Hlem, in time for the Hlem Rens sance, the Jazz Age, and the Great Depression-all of these preceded by the War to End War Black soldiers foght in this war, to wn monmental and niversal honors No less a gre than WEB D Bois had pro claimed that never agn cold the American Repblic eat the dker brother as less than a man. The people who prodced me had jst like the Isra elites left Egypt had yet to sing (eventally accom panied by D Bois Lrd I ih I had f died in Egypt land
I was bo in 1924 It was not ntil started going to
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school which would have been I suose ound 929 that I began to be aware of the "Hi The Hi was Sugar H where weltodo egrs ived I began to be awe of it because many of my teachers ived there It was not so very far geograhicaly om 33rd Street between Fifth and Lenox avenues where my famiy and I ived but it was a dierent world. It tued its back on the Harlem River which ends Hlem on the east and a raded majesticaly westwd rising on hs and seemed to stretch endlessly utown farther than the eye could see into Canaan The buidings were handsome and sotess the doormen arrogant and tal My teachers in cluded the noveist Jesse Hu Fauset for examle and Countee Culen did not know who they were yet and others less ceebrated but art of the same world Some of my teachers invited me to thei homes some tes for tea and cooes or eanutbutter sandwiches or doughnuts and I was very grateful very shy d thoroughy bewildered My rincial at PS 24 was Mrs Gertrude Elise Ayer the only Negro schl rincial the New York City ubicschool systemand accord ing to Dr Kenneth Clk until 963 anyway the only one-and for me she was a breathtangy beautiful wom a led woman I was ucky Mrs Ayer and my teachers lack and ite exected something om me (Harem reeat was not an allack community then I did not know what exacty they exected but a chid reacts to the value you lace on it t was rey sd dectly to me (though overheard grownu conversations) but it was
68
h Eid o hig Not S
made clear that I could-and therefore, must-become a great help and credt to my race Lord he words sound, now, so beautfuy nave, so trusg For we felt, then-or, rather, the people who were handlng me felt, thenthat we had ony to prove our worth and no one coud deny our rght to lve n our country, as ee as a other ctzens I say we but ths was the ll, not the oow, st ess the factory or the ch gang. Prove what hw t whm d ally, assumg that ythng an be proven to Whte ercansassumng that we have not fur nshed sucent proof already hs was certanly the atttude of Marcus Garvey and the people who became a part of the Back to ca move ment-a movement that my father seemed to hold n hgh esteem hs movement, as we would now say, was destablzed and smashed, and Garvey ter servng tme a federa pententary, retued, broken, to a mca he oca Negro orgzaons had opposed h, and, as has been suggested, may have helped the er cn govement to break hm. Ironcay Du Bos a Pan canst, was one of Garvey's most mplacable foes Ironcay, too-after the Second Word War-Du Bos parted company wth the NCP; apparently became a Communst ke the ate Pau Robeson and the late Can aa Lee, was hounded vtuay to exncton by the gov ement he had so trusted; and ded n Ghana, at the age of nnetyfour, the day before the March on Wash ngton n my part of the ghetto, then-n the oow-pre
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ping for the new day acoming we scrubbed ourselves merclessly wth hard brushes soap and water and Vase ned our ashy faces elbows hands and knees and har. Our clothes however strngly provised were clean. We minded our manners We respected our elders To be caed Black was an sult. That word could lead to blows and blood and even death. And yetnone of this atered our stuaton any way whatever. When we went downtown outsde the ghetto we were niggers No one had any hestation about letting us know t and not only n speech When I began some tes to pck up my mother out of the White ladys tchen downtown I hated that Whte lady with all my heart and when I sometimes went downtown with my fathers union dues in an envelope I hated those lthy smy cgarsmelg Whte men and longed for the wer to k We wanted to be on our way we were eager We were ready But no one else was ready except with a blow And as began to reze who some of my teachers reay were I began to hear another tone in their swift gd natured asides to each othera knd of shorthand which it was not meant for me to translateand with my fam ily deng with the hdeous results of my fathers work ng day and week and when I began to hate myself or at least profoundy to doubt my worth because was a ngger I began to understand the Black cop of that te and place. My father worked wth Whte people all day and a week long: that was why he hated them And I really do not beeve that Chrst Hself beseechng or
70
h Evdn o hng Not Sn
the threat of ete damnation, could possibly have erad icated this hatred my father would have fed on it in Hel He couldnt reach the White people he hated, he couldnt strke them so he struck us And so was the Black cop for hs Whte coworkers, just another nigger He couldnt strike them, but he could take it out on us This self perpetuating rage and anguish is because the man who wshes to bless is forced to curse and the hand that would caress is forced to strke Though there was a community in Harlem, then, and a re connection between the elders and the young, it was a captive community destned to be smashed a long long way om Canaan. Death took the elders Then, drugs were dumped into the ghetto, to take the young The Black responsiblty for the Black condon is more cruci now, and more visible, than it has ever been be fore There are some Whites-there are manywho un derstand this very wel, and welcome it; but they do not form a majorty of the White populaton. The poce spoke very ttle of Wayne Wams, vol unteered no opinons conceing his character or his gut This is of course, profession responsibilty and I was operating after , furthermore as a joualst but I was grateful for the since The was wicked with speculation One senio sugested for example, that the father Homer Wams, a eelance photographerwhom I must certnly, therefore, have encountered during my prevous our neys to Atlanta-is as fed a man as his son that the mother never forgave the father for being a fure, nor
7
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B A D I N
dd the sonlstening, alegedy to the mother Further, that the father, subsequent to some gim scda in voving boys, ost his teaching job d then, sodomized the son thus giving the son a letha backm power over him this accounting for thei (alegedly) icy rela onship-om which gaudy sequence of events, one is to concude, the Atlanta murders occued Of course anything is possible and, perhaps I too, woud love to beleve it It would make it easier to le the case away, and cose it ut though I have never been alowed to meet the son I have met the father and the mother. The fact that the suspension of judgment may be impossibe does not release one om the re sponsibiity of percepon And that anything c happen is proven, perhaps, by the mere exstence of this vin dctive and selfseving egend designed to destroy and to justi the destruction of three ving human beings. No one in the streets as f as I could dsce beeved it for a moment it was too brutaly and cey beside the point. For even it were ue it is a universa not to say dly event and has nothing whatever to do th the saughter of the chidren of Atta The cowdce of this time and place-this era-is nowhre more cley reveaed th in the perpetua at tempt to make the pubc d socia dsaster the result, or the issue of a singe demented creature or perhas, haf a dozen such creatures who have, quite incomre hensiby, gone o thei rockers d who must be mur dered or ocked u Thus, for exampe, these present days to descibe a person or grou of persons, as ftit
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T Ed o T No
guerrillas or trrorists is to dsmiss their claim to human
attenon we are not compelled to think of them at all ymore except as the ven that must be destroyed Or another way, but for the same reason, we are still attemptng to expla itler away we do not wsh to see him i our miror. Or Franco who could not have ter rorized Spai so long without the support of the ee wold Or Mobutu a puppet of the West, one of the people directly responsible for the murder of Lumumba. eing aware of the lbel laws I am not suggesting that they ever somzed anyone; but, they had would ayone in the ee wold care? And, in any case, how can their quat domesc habitswhatever they may beac count for their ruious power i the world? The mother and father pointed out to meand no one has contested this-that in spite of the (seeming wealth of ber evdence, there were no ngerprints anywhere not i the house, not on the walls, not i the car And, though it is claed that the murderer changed his pat te once it was leaked-by hostile White polcemen, dsmssed by the lack Admnstration-that ber ev dence was being used and began dumpig the bodes in the river, you have observed that I have had some diculty locating this patte While I was in Atlata, bes were beig found n all nds of places ncludng t river, ad some were decomposing If the murderer changed his patte upon leing of the probable use of ber evdence, t would be interestig to kow in what me spa this dscovery occurred since som of the bod ies wr foun in the river before that famous splash on
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the bridge and some of the bodies were not found for something like a ye. One can live quite wel in Atlanta for a action of what lie costs in New York, and this is true-or was-even for the very oor The wretched of Atlanta do not, of course awaken every moing rsing G that they e not among the wretched of New York comarative overty exists only for those who know nothing of ov erty But one can live quite wel in Atlanta on f less money than the same liestyle would require in New York Thus just as the oor are thrown together, so, though with somewhat more breathing sace e the comatively welo (The Judge and the Wilis f y live on the same side of town-inevitably, since they e not in the suburbs ) And this means that Atlanta gives the imression of being a hermetic city, seed and vol canic conaining it seemed o me, some of the loneliest (and most gaant) eole in the world. have never seen so many bachelors living one in houses that in New York, would be considered mansions indeed, even in Atlanta, they resemble mansions) A city dominated by the mddle class is a city domi nated by churches and this ticul inevitabiity in the case f Atlanta means many things in a cty where so much must be hidden, t is feed, eretually, that everything is known. This means that the Terror did not so much ter the cate of Atlanta as revea or, as it were, ehanize it Theres a erson going ound indeed, not taking nes this time, but chdrens ves and this erson may be
74
h Evdn o hngs No n
anyone you meet or there was a moment when Atlanta was by no means certn that the murders were beng comtted by a m Or by one m or you cnot, it seems to me, quite have it both ways. Either you have a maniac (son of Satan) stalking the city, intimidating or seducng young boys into hs (alegedly and for the most part green staton wagon or you have a member of the community who manages also to spirit away d murder two young grls-one, out of the house where her parents ay seeping The police report does not indcate any evdence of sexua volation accordng to the police report none of the crmes was sexual. Yet, a great dea depends on what one makes of the word, -what one supposes sexal to meafor, also accordig to the police report, the chds by was stripped ad bathed then in one way or aother (case of deat) murdered and left in some vsble place to be found Evething anythng is possible Yet I nd it some what beyond the t of probabilty that the fled Wayne Wlamssomewhat young after to be described as a flure-son of the (possiby faled Homer Wlams, could have been so energetic. He presses me as a chubby weak, aogant boy all ogat people are weak He presses me too in spite of hs seeng energy as a profoundly azy boy the key to the despar never qute hdden in the faces of hs parents. It has been known to happen that aogat chubby weak d azy peope tu themseves nto ta
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ent scouts, which aegedy, is how Wayne Wiliams met his vctims But we e not dscussing the mortty rate of Hoywood, or Broadway we e cononted wth the bloody events occurng in what is, by contrast or compison, a very sma, sealed town. It can be sd that Wayne Wiams was being a "talent scout when, at the age of twelve, or thereabouts, he and his iends inter vewed Andrew Young. This interview would have placed them, as we put it, "on the map. For a "talent scout is exactly that, a "scout, and he does not, consciously or delberately, destroy his bread and butter. It is possible that the younger Wiliamss vndictive ness is dected agnst his pents, and is the key to thei performance in the courroom Accordng to wt nesses, they never acknowledged each other, or he, at least, never seemed to recognize them. There can be many reasons for this an anguished pride being not the leastthe refusal to weep, or react at a, in publc It is possible that he bamed his parents, as they had aowed him to do, and that they blamed themselves as he had always insisted that they should. And, I suspect, though this is hazardous speculation, that his relationship to his parents, which would seem to be is only rea relatonship to anyone, is the key to his performances on the wtness stand on the rst and second day of his estony. On the rst day, he was a "nice boy, knowng that his parents would do anything for him hey always had On the second day, he rezed tha there was nohing they could do He was on his own. "You want the rea Wayne Wiams? You got him right
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here In terms of the publc response (to a presumed mass murderer) the eect of this performance was di sasous But I agree with the ite mn who said bleaky If hed been White it wouldn't have hurt him Much has been made of the fact (assuming it to be a fact) that Wayne Wams denied knowing any of the victims yet was photographed in proxmity to some of themholding hands somebody said This crucia piece of evidence has failed to be as ruthlessly pubcized as it should certainly have been Furthermore neither the denial nor the holding of hands can prove murder or the intent to murderto say nothing of the fact that in Atlanta proxmity to the victims is completely unavoid able I may have been photographed with some of them they were al over the streets and they stalked the Omni. The idea of Wams as a talent scout would have spread like re through the streets of this waled city chdren bring the ews home Yet no one appears to have as sociated Wayne Willams with the Terror until he was placed under open sueillane It is a lethal legal prin ciple so to mark a man before he is accused of any crime and so to rest him and bring him to tria It is im possible for hm to have as the quaint Amercan jargon puts it a air trial he has aeady been condemned There was also speculation that Wayne Wams was part of a homosexual ring that seduced into a certain Atlanta house young boys That such houses exst in Atlanta as elsewhere is beyond question yet Willams seems a somewhat unkely recruiter. In any case the place to which a mae chd may go for sexual release is
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no lkely o be he place om which he ds no reu: rumor spreads quickly in he srees (Quie ap om he fac ha he houses e no indspensable: any bus sop or moviehouse oile or alleyway wil do If your iend goes o T Hos of t Risi S and ds no reu you never see him ave agn hen you wil never be able o ener i I is he awakening of desire in his somewha obscene culure ha precipiaes guil and guil wch precipiaes he fe of deah d sner or laer he child ell sombody he need speak only once and he news is ou I can be sd ha he raci eor obscured he prvae one Bu le us for a momen aemp o conon he mean ig-he weighof racial eor I is imporan ha I ry o make you undersand ha refuse absoluely o speak om he poin of vew of he vcim The vcim can have no pon of vew for precisey so long as he hnks of himself as a vcim The esimony of he vcim as vcim cooboraes simply he reay of he chs ha bnd him-cons and as were consoles he jaier he keeper of he keys For precisely as long as he jaier hes your moaning he knows where you e The soun of he vcms moaning cons he auhory of he jaier he keeper of he keys hose keys ha de sgned o lock you ou inexorably lock him n He is he prsoner of he deluson of his power o which he has suendered any possibily of ideniy or he pvae life and he glmpses his somemes in his mirror or n he eyes of hs children His only re hope s deah Tha s
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why he cannot love hs chldren the proof beng that he dare not consder hs dreadful legacy ths rebombed earth: hs only real achevement To reaze that one s, oneself, and om the moment of one's brth both subect and obect of the human cowardcefor that s what t s-of what translates t sel, n acton-the Word made esh ! of racal terror, demands a ruthless cunnng an mpenetrable style and an ablty to carry death lke a bluebrd on the shoulder Thus when I suggest that, n Atlanta the racal terror obscured the prvate one I am speakng of a reex of habt Thus, nevtably and especy consderng the bloy record of the hers of Manest Destny Atlanta's rst reacton to the murders was to assume that ths was an acton of the Ku Klux Klan-ave, my ends and wel and lvng n the USA Then when t began to be clear that ths latest pogrom was rooted n our hstory and demanded Black/Black colaboraton, one found one sel standng on a steep heght Our countrymen have never loved us, nor ever ndeed consdered us to be ther countrymen. The proof, and chenge anyone ave to deny t s n every sngle Aercan nsttuton om the schls to the labor unons to say nothng of the churches or yesterday's Lberals, the Neo's ends who have now become the Neoconseatves My old runnng bud ds some of whom I trusted wth perfect condence wth my fe One may add for would lke to have ths on my record that the Reagan vote was an antBlack/Black vote-absolutelyand one may also add (and I would
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welcome being challenged on this that less than thity percent of the Amercan people voted So much for the resounding mandate I said the child must te someone; but, appaently no child did He may have spoken to his peers But I spoke to some of the children Obvously, they would not tel me either and children can be devastatingly devous Still the question of sexua disaster, so vvd in the minds of some of the elders, seemed not to have troubled the minds of the children When I say elders I am not referring to the paents who were mainly speechless as was I Yet, I wll remember, until I die the face of the father of Patrck Bathaza and the after noon I spent with him, and his eyes, and his voice, and Camlle Bel and Ms Hll Whatever happened in At lanta has nothing to do with The House of he Rising Sun or A Sreecar Named Desire. It has far more to do wth Ghoss I am making a very deliberate eort to make you put two ordeasthe Black and the White-side by side The rea and unanswerable disaster of that hstory that calls itsel White is that rst of all in the world in which we live, there is no other history History s a hymn to White people and all us others have been discered White people who may or may not (they suppose permit us to enter history This history can, for exampe, be sd to reach a kind of cuination in the unspeakable and in descbable combinaon of aogance and medy that maks those cousins, the English and the German is con tained in the extraordina assumption that the key to
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Th Evidn of Things Not Sn
Czaon s n ther hands Ths s to assume that the summt of human amton must e to ecome the Kaser or ctzen of a looddrenched paranod tertory or kng or queen of a damp and claustrophoc sland nhated manly y the most notorous vctms of the war etween the Church and the State and the rst orphans created y the ndustal Revoluon Nether the Europeans nor the ercans are ae to recognze that they merc essly enslaved each other efore they attempted a pas sage to nda or hosted sa for ca And that has unted Europe as Europe or Europe and erca untl today s not the color Whte ut what they perceve as the color Back They do not care aout each other at , never have and t s nconcevale that they ever . The Englsh treat the Ish and the Scottsh for example ke dogs and they treat each other the same way to open your mouth n England s hazardous your accent reveang your ogns and therefore your human value. The Europeans never dreamed of a Common arket untl t was conceved as a means of mantanng slavery and even under that pressure were qute unale to cease argung over tars orders wne sheep and automo les and never dreamed of uyng a Japanese patent exacty as they would h ave ought any European patent ecause the Japanese are not czed" And the West qute fas to see the unforgvae enormty of Hro shma-repeat: unforgvale-nor snce t eeves n a hstory that s entely ts nventon does t have any sense of the dreadful tenacty of human memory what that memory records and how every l must e pad
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Speaking as a creation of te ancestra memoryot erwise neiter nor any oter Black Amercan woud be breatingI can tel you not only tat my soul is a wtness but tat wat goes around comes around A people wo trust te istory do not nd temselves mmobized in it Te Weste word is located some were between te Statue of Liberty and te pilar of sat At te center of te European orror is te religion a religion by wic it is intended one be coerced and in wic no one believes te proof being te BlacWite conditions or options te orror into wic te cowardly delusion of Wite supremacy seems to ave transformed Aica and te utterly intolerable nigtmare of te er ican Dream I speak wit te autority of te grdson of a save issue of te bondswoman Hagars cild And wat te slave did-despised and reected 'buked and scoed te Europeans paranoid vision of uman lfe was to acemize it into a force tat contained a uman use Te Black preacer since te curc was te only Cilzed institution tat we were permitted searateyto enter was our rst wrior, eois or gueilla. He said tat eedom was rea-tat we were rea He told us tat ouble don' las always He told us tat our cildren and our elders were sacred wen te Civlzed were spitting on tem and acking tem to pieces in te name of G, d in order to keep on making money And furtermore we were not so muc permitted to ene te curc as corralled nto it as a means of rendering us docile d as a means of forcing
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T Eidn o Ting Not Sn
us o cooboae he nscuable of God Who had deceed ha we should be slaves foeve Wha a cowly, no o say despcable vson of humn e wha a deadful concep of dvny Ye wha he Blacks acheved-and canno, now be undone, excep by blowng up he unvese, whch he Cvzed wold s que cowdly enough o dowas o dg hough he ubble, n ca n he Cbbean, and n Noh Ame ca, o nd he ancesos he gods, and hemselves. hee e many gods no One and, hee wee One He would no be Whe. hs s ealy he news we ae ecevng om wha we cal slam om he sammeng Pope, he Bank of he Holy Ghos and Chase Mnhaan and Soweo, and Jehovahs mos nooous censae sael houghfully undewen, howeve, by Wese capalmoe han we can say fo Halem whch bngs us back o Alana he Black mans s encoune wh he Wes-by whch mean manly, he Chsan chuch-bough hm devasaon and deah we ae only now, begnnng o ecove, ae begnnng ou of he mos momenous daspoa n human memoy, o edscove and ecognze each ohe hs s a glob mae, and he denouemen of hs encoune wll be bloody and sevee pecsely because demoshes he moaly o say nohng of he denons of he Wese wold. s by no means amus ng o ealze ha my nephew fo example may be caled upon o lbeae El Svado-o Poland-long befoe he can se foo n Souh ca Ye, my nephew lve o see he yea 2000 when he be abou hy yeas
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younger than I am now nd the present kngs and queens of England for example be feastng on mlk and honey-a typcay ndgestble Englsh det-and lead ng chos n song at an ete banquet at whch, thank our ancestors hs presence wl not be requred The Whe man someone told me, dscovered he Cross by way of he Bble bu he Black man dscovered he Bble by way of he Cross Ths has somethng to do wth the style nd the an gush of the Atlanta conontaton Ths has somethng to do, n fact, wth beng cvlzed to be cvlzed demands that one recognze and respect the human jouey the long march or the short walk. hoever cannot do ths cannot for example treat every chd as sacred-cannot beleve n God, or n any gods whatever. He/she beleves n safety, that deluson whch s deathnlfe and whch permts, ndeed compels, my unhappy countrmenwho do not dare thnk of themselves as other than hte and who, therefore cannot thnk of me as other than Black or, at best, ther doomed or fortunate mtatonto have nherted Spns ttle The Naon wh he Bloody oo prn The padox of what we react to as the Amercan Dream and a the Amercan dlemma s that t s a space-t s certnly not yet a naton, whatever that concept may come, n te to meanruled by htes and domnated by Blacks Washngton, the Amercan" captal, s known as Chocolae Cy t s perhaps the very denton of the nner cty the Blacks beng entely enccled by the
8
The Evidene o Things No Seen
Whtethe revere age but the very ame pcple a that of the wago tr whch you remember the Cvzed formed themelve to a ccle clog the Heathe outor perhap more accurately ad more early cotempory a kd of latterday Cogo Square that pace whch the lave were alowed to worhp uder the eye ad the gu of the mater. ke aot a Black Ameca evet t wa ome what udeated ad yet t worth potg out that the Watergate cad" wa precptated by a Black por ter who wa the oly ocrm th ordd a ad who wa merely dog h duty. Uke the Whte cr he ever made-out of the executo of h dutya gle how book dme or pulpt he faed qute to recogze that t wa ecey to be bo ag Nether the extg or the eterg predet o much a patted h o the head or dreamed of oeg h ay recompee Yet t wa he who blew the whtle that tued a glob potght ot oly o crm but o the curou tate of aar th curou ad cruc coutry d a way ot after a dmar-ce moher ca aume that they have dute toward ther ue whether that ue be preet or abet me or feme lvg or deadt wa a Black woma M. Came Bel who blew the whtle Alata That whte forced Authry to eter cotrol ad cloe a cae coceg laughtered Black chdre mot of them me a baalty wth whch (ad I am a wte they had ever prevouly bee retey cceed.
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On the contar neve in all m eas on eath have expecte White powe, wllingl, to potect m Bac e, though those in powe have sometimes foun them selves coece-fo easons of their owninto oing so (White power is to be istinguishe om people who happen to have been bo as we put it, White, an I owe m le to some of those people The wo's e nitions ae one thing an the le one actuall lives is quite anothe One cannot allow oneself no can ones famil, iens, o loves-to sa nothing of one's chil ento live accoing to the wols enitions one must n a wa perpetuall, to be stonge an bette than that) I was not in tanta when Dic Gego spoe but I thin I can escibe us as iens an we saw each othe when I came in Now is not the moment fo me to attempt a setch of Gego I ma not now him well but I have nown him fo a ve ong time, an I amie an espect him ve much He can be accuse, pehaps, of an excess of intensitthough this accusation is almost alwas hure b peope incapable of an intensit at allbut it is ve ae that one is pvlege even om a istance, to watch a man transfom himsel om within an pa the sil�nt pce for that That man has a cetn aiance-that is to sa, a certn authot That one ma agree o isagee with him is not important One stens because, whateve he is oing he is not ling, an one of ou ma be wong Or both of ouwith a man e Gego, ou can pursue the conunum nwa, he ha upset tanta
86
Th d o Thg Not
or many peope n Atlanta He had suggested t was no as I was aowed to assume, at the pressure of an ausaion) that the key to the eor was n the nature of a scentc experment a beng very delberatey vague, but the nature of the experment was based on the pos sbity that the tp of the Black male sexual organ con tained a substance that mght be used to cure cancer. People found ths an appaling suggeston dd not I wondered why they dd It was durng my letme after a, and n my country, somewhere n a prson n the ercan South, that Black men wth syphs were aowed to de whe beng scrutnzed What scentc strdes were made because of ths experment I do not know, but the experment was made And who n a Republc noted, after a and ndsputably for the energy of the genocdal wManfest estny!can and wth what authorty come fod to assure that remnant called the ercan people and especaly me and Uncas that our lves are now held so sacred that such an experment s unthnkable? I tend to doubt cks suggeston becauseapt om the fact that I wan to doubt tt seems such an untdy way of carryng on a scentc experment But, then one s forced to reaze that a scentc experment mus be untdy that s why t s caed an experment I have mentoned a cty domnated by churches whch brngs me before the decdedly dsagreeable necessty of attemptng to suggest somethng of the nature of the dlemma n whch the famy of the ate r. Martn Lu ther ng, Jr , lve If I had my way I would not menton
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he Kng famy a all. I care oo much I may say so abou hs fay have oo deep a respec for her orde and hey could lve I a sure beyond doomsday hou havg anoher word wren abou hem. Bu he suaon of hs fay has somehng o e us abou he Black Amercan jouey and he naure of our presen cononaon or crossroad here s really nohng o be sad conceng he lae M. L Kg Sr who arrved as a youh n Alana n 1916 and by means of rs neher Horao Alger nor Rond Reagan s even remoely equpped o magne creaed a fy n a church o lose wo sons and a wfe n a roar of bues and ve of blooda he hands of hs counrymen Nor s here anyhg o be sad con ceg he mos vsble of he wdows s smply none of our busness A he rsk of belaborng he obvous-whch may no however be ssble he narcoed vacuum ha Norh Amerca has become-I would lke o pon ou ha M Luher Kng r for he people whom he loved and served was no a (pous myr We he Blacks have no confused hm wh Washngon eerson or Abra ham Lncoln; we have lved wh ha nherance for a whe Nor was he a vctm He was no even a hero. hese erms e mean o dsrac one om and as were just he obsceny of he publcly and prvaely wed even ha ransformed hm no a corpse No more han he slaugher of Medgar Evers can be charged o a lone( lunac n Msssspp can Marns deah be se down a he hreshold of one deranged unhappy cowboy
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Martn s dead because he was our winess s, for that matter hat s why he was ut to death. For he was pu o deah -he was assassinaed the cowardce of the Amecan eoe and the w of those who con tro whatever can be sad to remn of the Amercan e ublc Mrs ng ut on my wst the ony watch I have not ost, or broken. Martns face s on ths watch and the words I have a dream I have a dream Ebenezer Batst s not very far om the Martn Luther Kng, Jr, Center for Socal Change. I have walked t more than a few tmes I vsted osea Wams at hs headquarters and went to alh Davd Abeathys church, and sent some tme wth Andrew Young Ebenezer was my focal ont, n Atlanta, twenty eght years ago when was thtythree, and when the men I have named (who were my gudes were younger And, n abama, I saw Reverend Shuttesworth, and sat down besde hm n the Montgomery couthouse whee a certan J. B Stoner was on tal for havng been re sonsbe for at east two of the fty unsolved bombngs n abama alone n that year, neary a quarter of a cen tury ago, one of them beng the bombng of Shuttles worths church, and home-that year that dstant year, when the Reverend Shuttlesworth and hs we were neary murdered n the streets of abama by the law enforcers, when four Bak gs were bombed out of a Sunday schoo nto etety, and when dogs and hoses were tued on hdren by the guards of Cvzaton d the eades of the ee word Shuttesworth was
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alo my gude had never been outh beforetha year that dtant year If theyd boght somebody to tia hen d Shuttleorth, it mght have made a diffe ene. It makes no diffeene now Soner had many end n the courtroom, and he and he Judge ere very endly th each other do not have the tamna to decrbe the tral Stoner receved a tenyear uended en tence hch to ay hat he alked out a ee a lghtnng. Shutleorh and ad not a ord to each other durng th ndecrbably obcene mockery of hat ever t may mean to attemt to become a human beng and hoe to be equal to human reonblty On the oher hand t ll, no doubt releve my counrymen to be nfoed that th a n fact, and n Alabama!, a deegregated courtroom Fred Shuttleorh and ere ttng next to, not to ay ere urrounded by, exceed ngly cheerful Whte men ho menaced u th not the fantet col and ho ore the Ku Klux Klan ngna on the debar of the eyeglae. I have a deam. Th drea mut, ala, be dentangled om hatever nghtmare control th fearfully Whte Reublc Dcul t to make brck thout tra We may be doomed to dcover that t not moble e may, ndeed, be on the edge of the recognton that mak ng brck thout tra , recely our htorcal and actual ecalty. Who ater ha ever gven the Black eole of h country anythng? Certanly not fory acre and a mule Certanly not the rght to love and be re onble for our men and our omen and our chldren Certanly no the rght to le and to act on hat e
90
Th Th Evd Thg Nt S
l Crtanly not th rght to rpudat th mposd ml and and crat, and act act on our ownno ownno t has alway alwayss bn assumd that th Blacks only possbl aspraton would b to bcom Wht Whch s a curously loadd conundrum whn on consdrs how many Wht mul ttuds found, and nd, thmslvs n ca bcaus thy wr bord wth bng Wht and hopd to bcom Black as t wr, panlssly and wthout layng down what Kplng cad th Wht Mans burdn Or, n othr words, although Wht popl dont wsh to b Wht ( he bea generaion) t s vry mportant for Wht popl that lak popl should wsh to b Wht England and Franc, for xampl, to nam two locts wrtchd wth furously mbttrd popl who nvr rcovr om havng bn forcd to lav Algra, or Knya, for xampl, om havng bn rctd by a po pl thy clam to dsps And thy dd, and do dsps thm, of cours; t was ncssary n ordr to ust sanctth uss to whch ths humans wr put Ths s a dcddly tng vw of ons own hu manty and th possbts of human lf Ths cvl zaton has provn tslf capabl of dstroyng popls rathr rathr than har har thm th m d dstroyn stroyngg contnnts contn nts rathr than than sh thm, and ar capabl for th sam rason of dstroyng all lf on ths plant Ths not happn But a dradful day s upon us, and, as nob no by yss gong to gv gv us any straw-Irland straw-Irland was rapd, and th Irsh wr aowd to sta o deah n ord ordrr to protct th prot pro tss of Brtsh mrchant mr chants-pop s-popl l w bst mak ourslvs rady
9
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B A D W N
I hae a deam Ebenezer and the M. L. Kn, r, Center are as I have sad wthn walkn dstance of each other The Center s a monument and so s Ebe nezer the Center comes out of the passon that created Ebene Ebe nezer zer Brcks wthout wt hout straw straw:: there there was no phone phone con nectn us to the Whte House but there was a rumor controln us om the streets Brcks wthout straw people who are nether whores nor fools (I am speakn of Black people opted for for the present Admnstrat Admnstraton on n the hope of ettn a ltte straw G knows that I am not trn to mnze the anush. But there s no straw straw n that stabl sta blee for the Sout So uth h Acan Acan mner-t mner-too use use smpl, the most vvd defensble exple-then there can be no straw for us-or such straw as ma have been hoarded (ter havn been, n fact fact extorte ex torted d be used to brbe the natves of the Carbbean nto becomn the new ners of the New World. That n fact w not work ether, the hour s t late, the facts too blatant and there is no straw. Or put t another wa we the Blacks, the North Amercan Blacks who were capable of prucn other crops and desperate to feed our chldren, were forced to produce a cash crop crop cotton The The nsttuton (the pecular pecular nsttu on! of slaver whch mht otherwse, have _ ceased to be protable, was saved b El Whtnes n venton of the cotton n Ths dd not make the slave's work easer, whch was, n an case not the pont, but t made t faster one excepts the Pramds t was probabl probabl the words most momentous assemb a ssemb e. The people who pcked the coton and who sold t, at prces
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Th Evidn Evidn o o Things ot Sn
dcaed by ohers also evenaly bogh her man facred rodcs back as a weddng gown or a sh or a shrod a rces caed by ohers Js as he bans who may have refeed growng co or swee oaoes were forced o he ene sland no a sgarr sgarrcg cg lanaon-he cash cro -whch sgar hey sod o he ee" word a rces dcaed by he Free Word and hen bogh back a year aer a rces dcaed by he Free Word Now we are decdng o boy co Ncaragan Ncar agan s g-n orde orderr o save save he naves om om commnsm-and for he very same reason exhbng he same nshakabe noby of rose do no dream of boycong anyhng rodced by he Soh can economy an economy based on slavery On Back slav ery We he ercan Backs hen are execed o mag e ha a Reblc ha has no been abe afer some hng lke for hndred years o magne or delvr or eedom here somehow caoe Soh ca no leng or eoe go. The Reblc can brng rnos ressre o be on Cenral erca (mare nostrm) b he Black Soh can slave smy have o w-as we have. Unl he hor ha he swea of hs brow-he brow-he delvery delvery of he cash cro-s no longer needed n eeded and he can be dsached dscreely or oherwse o hs esors For that s realy he Aercan Dream. The docrne of Whe Sremacy-whch n Amerca ranslaed self no he docrne of Manes Desny havng re ed o Eroe and ke a lage carred by he wnd
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nfess ll he ces of Europes l h now unes he socled Old World wh he soclled e. Ths plces he AoAmercn n sunnng nd ver gnous plce. Immedely upon he verdc, Lee Brown he Polce Commssoner one of my gudes n Aln nd ve wnnng mn, closed he cse levng however, seven oher cses unsolved) nd moved o ouson Texs, o become polce commssoner here Rher lke he Goveors meeng whch so mny people ssured me hey hd no bee presen h I re lzed h mus hve occurred, he deprure of he Polce Commssoner, alredy, fer ll sufcenly srk ng, begn o press on my mnd becuse so mny people were nxous o expln o me Eve se n he Unon hd been fer Polce Commssoner Brown nor do I doub h hs s rue e would no leve Aln un he cse ws closed I do no doub h, eher hough when I ws forced o hnk bou I relzed h would hve been vrully mpossble for hm o hve lef Aln- les, o ke noher posbefore hs cse ws closed To hve lef Aln befoe hs cse ws closed mgh ve we hve resuled n he run of hs cree I would cernly hve compromsed hs cred by n he Blck communy nd dmnshed hs pos sble uselness o he Whe Repubc for he one dends on he oherhe densons, precsely, of he rp Or o swch mephors he enson of he ghrope In ny cse he hd ued down eve oer unl he phone om ouson rng, nd cceped ccordng o
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Th Ed o Thg Not S
one of my informants because somebody made the riht phone ca at the rght me I dd not as I say reay think about this until I was forced to think abou i hen I began to think about it I rezed tha I had been doing wha every wrer un conscousy is always dong a wrer is never senng o wha s being sd he is never stening o wha he is being tod. He s lsening o wha is ot being sd he s lstening o wha he is ot being tod which means ha he is tng o dscover he purpose of the com muncaton As far as I was conceed Lee Brown was an ndis puably honorabe even gaan man conontng an enormity and it had not occured o me that he needed to be defended Then I realzed ha was not he who was being defended bu the case sef and he verdct and he was moved on up and above a out. Fingerprn evidence appears o be one of the many Orenal conrbutions to the es rst beng hed of as far as have been able o dscover in Persia in he fteenth century and then, a he nversiy of Bo logna in he seveneenh cenury. I had come o Brish atenon by 1858 in Inda and by 1877, a certn Dr H. Fowles used ngerprin evdence in Tokyo appes to ave enered he nited Sates in 1882 by means of a ceran Gilber Thompson and by 188 Mark Twan s writing abou ngerprnt evdence in Le o the Mi iippi and in Pddhead Wilo Someone named Francis Galton has wrien a book about ngerprn ev
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dence by 1893 t was st used n a mude case a Pata, genta, n 1892 and was st used a mude case n te nted States n 924 n eavenwot wen two Back men, l est and lliam est, wo not ony answeed to te same names but wo ooked, ap paently, exactly ae, wee dsgused om eac ote by means of ngents. Tee s sometng mng about ts decdedly m pe stoy, movng, as t wee, om dak to back, and suggestng sometg n te natue of an expement wt o on te natves. Fngent evdence as, by now, n any case, become so competey unquestionable tat te lliams family ctes te lack of ngent evdence as poof of te nnocence of te son A appy med end of mne ecounts s dscov ey of be evdence A end of te famly, a edaed woman, came to vst, and, dung e vst, took a bat Se, ten, went on e way Subsequently, my end took a bat. As s wfe was elpng m, o watcg im, dess, se no tced one o two ed as n te on s cest (My end as on s cest. ell, se ddnt know ow t got tee and he didn't know ow t got tee, but tey nally· ealzed tat t must ave been a leftove om te ygienc eded woman Some of e was stll te tub wen my end took s bat. Tey dd not ave a quel o decde to be divoced. Te vagant ed dd not pove tat my end ad slept wt te lad � o taken a bat wt e o, even oged e n te soap suds t poved only tat at some ndetemnable pot,
96
Th Evidn o Things ot Sn
ey ad been n e se baub-or you ke, en ronmen dd no and could no prove a ey ad eve seen eac oer ceranly dd no prove could no pove-a ey ad eve made love o eac oeoug my end's we wee we dscussng a moe odny ecan couple could ave used s sngle ed n a su fo dvorce, and won e case Te eye of e beolde Tee wee seven undred peces of be evdence used o pove a ayne lams was guly of an n deeae numbe of muders wc skes me as a less bludgeonng of e People epresened by e ju f we ake e oc coun of iry corpses we mus subac e seven cases closed: e seven muders a s fo wc no one wll eve be accused Ta leaves wenyee Bu ayne ls was aresed on e bass of two muders-avng been s wo pong ou aleady placed unde open suelance an ne esng leg peceden and a volaon of pvacy o wc s unkely a any e czen of No eca would ave been exposedand en ed fo weny eg mudes of wc e ad no been accused He could be ed fo muders of wc e ad no been accused because e Judge aowed e pncple of"po acs o conol e us esablsng e "pae degned o prove ayne lams "capable of murder Ts pae could no pove s guil ence e seven uned peces of scenc evdence A People wo can beeve a el and Julus Ro senberg coeced Davd Greenglass no seng e se
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cret of the atomic bomb om Los amos, thus owng the Rosenbergs to sell this "secret to the Russians an who sent them to the eectrc chai for this "trea son-are poory equippe to examine scientic evi ence, or, nee, any evience at None of the jurors woul speak to me-which I think I unerstan-but the juy consiste of a cunning ar rangement of eight hites an four Blacks-mosty women, which may or may not be a cunning arrange mentin any case, accoring to a en "hen Blacks are outnumbere they (the jurys Blacks stan up be cause they think you are menace But this is not so, an they thnk youve one wrong they'l sen you up Inee. In any case, the inventoy ayne ams was ar reste for the murer of two grown men Once he was pace on tral for these two murers (if they were mur ers he was accused of twentyeight murers (of chil ren an, once he was conemne to prson for le, seven cases were cose, eaving him guilty, then, of twentyone murers murers for which he was not ar reste This is untiy It also estabshes a preceent, a prec eent that may lea us, wth our consent, to the barbe we an the gas oven Now, to repeat myse, anythng is possible, an the man may be guilty, but I smel a rat an it is mpossible to caim that his guilt has been proven, any more than it can be proven that the murers have cease For one thng, murer never ceases, an it is absoutey mean
98
Th Evidn o Things Not n
ngless to say that thee have been no mudes that "t the patte. hat patte? In Geoga? Some yeas ago afte the dsappeaance of cv ghts wokes Chaney Goodman and Sche n Msss spp some ends of me wee daggng the ve fo the bes Ths one wasnt Sche Ths one wasn't Goman. Ths one wasnt Chaney Then as Dave Den ns tells t It suddeny stuck us-what deence dd t make that t wasnt tem Wat are tese boies oing in te river? That was neteen yeas ago. The queston has not been answeed and I dae you to go dggng the bayou Thee s a chllng subtext to rener unto Caesar It s not fo example tue that the ews klled Chst but they suendeed hm to Rome As they wee uled by a State that the man om Gallee so pofoundly ds tubed t seemed ease on the whole to collaboate wth the State. Ad that geneatons unmagnable and un bo pay down the ages fo ths abdcaton s poven fo but one example by the state of ou heted esa lem- whch no ohn these pesent days can make mse eady to walk. No can Yusef o May: and what good thng these pesent days comes out of Nazaeth? Black people dd not nvent the legend of colo but only Black people c destoy t Blacks beng the only people who do not need t One of the easons-the pcpal eason-that ths s so t woul seem to me s that the denton of people tes of colo s humy possble Human does
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not refer to the tues but the possibities or lits, of the human being People can be dened b their color only by the behoder who in order to ive at this def iiton must himsel/hersel bnd And this is ab solutely true: there is not a racist ave who is not a iar and a coward the proof being that they imagine reaity to be at the mercy of their wi-or rather, of their terror I remember a vey ceebrated American patriot for ex ampe proud issue of Ye, who after a somewhat stormy intervew on which we had both appeared upon dis covering one of my brothers and mysel ad a end in the elevator hurried, with his iends down the strs. He say, of course chalenged that the elevator was crowded but I remember the spit second-the twikling of an eye-in which he looked at me and he saw me loong at him Okay But I would have got on the elevator The concept of color as a human reaty, as a quantity dening the person and seang that person's fate is only beginnig, at this late hour, to penetrate Guadeloupe say, or Seneg, havng been brought there by bankers and missiones. It becomes cle-for some-that the more closely one resembles the invader the more com fortabl one's le may become. Ad even at that the question has f ess to do with Color/color than it has to do with Civization/civzation to be bo in the col onies cited is to be taught that one is French But one is realy controed ad identied by one's father and mother by ones acestors The question of color as iden tity erupts when one ives on the mainadwhere
00
Th Eid Thig N Sn
oe is ot Frech where oe becomes ad with o wig a worthess gger a thig-ess tha a thig a thig cotg after a the potetial of hoorable use. It is a curousy loaded fact but oe I thik worth poitig out that eve-or especiay-i South Aca he tbal idetity is f more crucial tha uaces of color. I this paradocay may be foud the root of the South Aca hope sice trbes ca make peace but delusios ca make oly w. Ad it is time to reaze that urope-the est-which out of a uspeakabe poverty creaed the deusio of coor has always de peded o Back trbal dvisios i order to dvde and ue I this edeavor they have quite overlooked ad forgotte the uggeaut of the tbal dvisios ad othig s more dagerous tha to have oe's history reetlessy pursuig at oe's back. Georgia bega as a covct coloy ad a the waste ad terror ad hope of love ad fe ad oy ad fear of death ad dreams of everlasg ife were loaded oto that beast of burde the Back eye of the !ad i that dk face that wa ad iescapable presece the orpha of the Od orld saw every hour of every day a that he oged to be ad hoped that he woud ever become For to de to hope to -to de to trust the chag i ght-is to surreder the dream of safety It meas doig oes utmost ot to hide om the questio per petually i the eyes of oe's overs or oe's childre It meas acceptig that those who ove you (ad those who do ot ove you see you f better tha you wi ever see
0
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yoursel It means accepting the terms of the contract that you signed a birth the master copy of which con trac s i the aults of Deah These ruthless terms t seems to me make loe and le and eedom rea who eer fears o die aso fears to e hoeer fears to die also magines- magine-that anoher can die in hs place hence he compusie hackng o of the Blacblack mans sex and he enforced serization of Blacblack women The dream of sey can reach culmiaton or clmax only in the nghtmare orgasm of genocide Dont ake my word chdren bu check out your shees as soon as you ge them back om Mr Clean. Mr. Cleans anecedens iclude Thomas Jeerson and Tarzan and he is cousin o our presidents. If you hae not yet bleached he shees delered to you om orea and Vietnam ca on Mr. Clean o bleach the aundry you are beginning to recee om for example l Saador gie him a rase and hae hm make hmsel ready o wash he bloody shees eady on her way to you om Braz Argenna and Meco-and Mia and Ha and Soweo and Har lem and Chicago and Taahassee and Phadelphia and Boson and Memphs and S. Lous and Newark and Jacksn and New Orleans and Bimngham and Selma, and Nachez and Nashe and Los Angeles and San Francisco and Oakand o say nothing of Haana-to say nohng for tha matter of what was once caed opode or what was once caed Rhesia. Cec Rhes for whom Rhoesa was named, was Mr Cleans ec ancesor whch probably explans anything can
102
Th Evidn o Things Not Sn
the feful energy e expended cleaning up te kitchens of tis unimaginably dty old Mr Clean assumes tat you have a kitcen in ic you ae noting better to do tan lsten to m Mr Clean assumes tat you ould be quite unable to keep yourself or your loed ones clean itout is stunning d entely muscular ty Mr. Clean ies exing them muscles and grnning tat grn to deler you om te disaster of your lt-ic e cartably concedes is not your fault. You just don't kno no better-don't kno at e knos Just gie m a cocne or a mis sile as or ush and he clean it up for you in no me at a and-you can pay ater You certnly oeer payfor his expertise. For hat this species of foreignd expert does not t you to begin to suspect is tat te soe shoes there are is on te oter foot We dont need Mr Clean no by in te ente orld needs Mr Clean We te retced of Mr Clean's et ae been scrubbing kitchens-to leae it at tat-for generations out of the deptless endeaor caed loe That is hat kept our seles and our children cle Freign aid lke a te Great Society programs means only that Mr Clean as got to dump on somebody for money someere a tose abomnaons e is forced to create nd hy? For ney nd en e stop buying baby not e but he goes under. Te orld can le itout yet another telesion com merci anyere Te commerci designed at considerable expense to persuade you tat your (pur
03
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chased) aroma or our (purchased) eans or our (pur chased) hair orour (purchased) ine orour (purchased) Scotch or Canada Dr or bourbon or our (purchased) aguar or our (indsputabl purchased) diamond to sa nothing of our (purchased) toothpaste cheng gum beer ine or toilet paper-designed to make ou beiee that these purchases make ou an irresistib sexual creatureis the er root and branch of hat this des peratel dirtminded Repubic means hen it talks of poograph Adertising i poograph But no one is about to attack a biiondolar business because (to t out of context Wo Aens er mong coda) the need the eggs. Wel To need the eggs is on condtion. To be com peled to attempt to make brcks thout stra is another and it ould seem that the to condtons do not easi translate each to the other It is one thing to hae some thing to sae. It is quite another matter-another reit altogether-to be forced to recognze that one has noth ing to lose The conontation beteen that person ho must be iee that there is something to be salaged and that person ho has been compeed to act on the assumption that e has nothing to lose is the root and branch of the diemma of this White Republic It is ronicI scarcel de sa saagel so That man ho knos he has noth ing to lose runs the rsk it is quite true, of coming to a dreadful end; but b the time he comes to reize this the tuing point is f behind him and there is nothing he can do about it een he ould It is ronic in that his life begns to belong to him, 04
Th Evdn o hng Not Sn
or the rst time-because he rezes that it is not his and so f om becog hat the uropean ocabulary oud descrbe as a pessimist he nds himself nourished by the koledge that the chdren must be fed He reaizes that a chd cannot be fled to lie to a chid is to betray the chid In the oices of the chidren he he his ancestors: Ke yor hand on plow Hold on No hoeer and precisely for the sake of the chi dren let us attempt to reconsider the foregoing om another and contradicto point of e The State has faed certainly to proe Wayne W liams guty ut this chaic incompetence cannot be said to proe him nocent or the State his gut or nocence is a matter of conenience but for us this queson-olg as it ds complicity-must more urgent and more personal Wayne Wilis is certaily the creaton and the object of a racist ciiizaon culture histo and State but so is dre Young; and it is absolutely crucial that e beg to choose our ictims to say nothig of our itnesses-for ourseles s cannot be done by suenderng to the State's apuaton of the deusion of color We cannot alo ourseles to be engulfed by the delusion that has brought the Czation hich denes itself as Wite to such an abject place o scruze the performance of the Prosecuton is not for example enough to absole the Defense It is perfectly te that the Defense as crppled at the outset by the fact that the entre case depended on the prnciple of pror acts thout the intruction of this principle there could hae been smply no case at al A trap 105
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however diers om the marriage bed there are o cojuga rghts or duties ad it is imossible to strke a comromse wth or with, a tra The Defese owed the Prosecutio to force the ac cused to aswer questios that should ever have bee asked Are yu hmsexual? Did yu eer strike yur father? e berevidece wtess (om uot bore wtess (testied for three hours, without a objectio, or aaretly, a questio-this accordg to oe of the lawyers volved i the case I do ot doubt this, for the case could be brought to tral oly o the basis of the cile of rior acts the outcome of the case de eded etrely o the weight of the ber evidece (e woders what the courtroom must have bee lke the rst time gerrit evdece was ever used, ad the oe reazes that oe has ever eve remotely questioed the vadiy of gerrit evidece-coceig which, I for exame kow absolutey othg This dubious case focuses crucially, o the quesio of the date of the urchase of the gree care i the Was home the bers of which aaretly became lethy ubiquitous Mrs Wams rst testied that the caret had bee bougt 968 ad the sad that she was i error i had bee bought i 97. oth she ad Mr Wams sisted that the later date was the valid oe ad clamed to have a receit to rove it. This receit seems ever o have surfaced durg the trial ad the receit that was aaretly, used to rove that the caret was urchased 968 was actuy, a receit for a aicodoer
06
Th Evidn of Things Not Sn
aodg, ha s o M ad Ms Wams The dae of he uhase of he ae s ual beause have udesood he evdee, hs ul ae was o o he mke 968 Ts queso s st lef hagg, a leas as f as aye ad ome ad Waye) Wams e oeed d hough s obably safe o suose hem aable of ejuy ode o save he so s also woth og ou ha hey do o, eessly feel ay om ulso o el he uh o a Reub ha has old hem ohg bu es Cealy fo examle, do o, ad s a eve he he uh. I y o e he uh be ause s smle ad moe say-ad ely less she-ha yg o emembe whee you sd you wee las gh.) Ad hs Reub has deed old sel ad Blak eole ohg bu es, whh s he vey deo of he beayal of he soal oa Teefoe befoe ould beg o deal wh he queso of whehe o o aye ad ome Wams wee lyg had o emembe ha a Sae, ha fo examle ould da Moo So bel ou of Mexo dsgusg as a deoao ad slaughe he Rosebegs by ssg ha a able bough om Mays was auay a g om he Russas; a Sae eay aable of beevg ha me, wome ad hl d oe day ahead of deah by saao, osue a Commus meae a Sae absoluely omulsvely deemed o desoy a hose dk wehed whom hey ao buy, o use ad ha mudes so may eole dly domesay, ad globay, ad in he nae offree
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-ys -y s this Stat Sta t is i s quit qu it caabl of ral ralro roadig adig a ma ma to riso ad to dath, by mas of a fals documt. t would b th days uxctioal work A hotograh, rsumably tak by Homr Wilams who is, as hav sd, a lac hotograhr, was ord, to rov th dat of urchas of th cotstd gr ca c at his is a hotogra hoto grah h of th Wl Wlams amsss liv livig i g room this hotograh th cat is big or brow ad Homr Wiiams clms that this is bcaus h usd th wrog ltr which sms fa ough ol u drstad as much about ltrs as thy do about brs "But you kow somo sd to m somthig i that ictur which wast brow? which was green h Christmas tr Ad, whi th Dfs should crtly hav foud a way to rotct th accusd om such lthy lthy ladig qustios as Did yo er strike yor father? it, i fact, aars aars om o m th tstimoy tstimoy of th ighbors ighbors ad a d of ay ay o who kw th famy (who aar to hav fw i tmats that Way ruthlssly tyraid his ts ad that thy quarrld loudy th tm Sc hs ts cd cd him, om th tm h was bo, th ma mac c chid c hid ad wt w t to t o bakru bak rutcy tcy i ord ordrr to rov rov th dth of th fth i him, this s ot hard to bliv Ad ths maks it difcult to dismss th tstimoy of th arkgot attdat who swars that h h Way Wlams curs his fathr ad saw Way Wiiams stk him Ad, om absoluty accou acc outs, ts, th dma dmaor or of th famiy-fathr, mothr sowas th courtroom, icy.
08
Th Evidn o Thing Not Sn
He dd ot ook at them. They did ot ook at h Nohing haeed betwee them Ad thouh coceivaby the Defese shoud have foud a way to have eveted the questio of homo sexuaity om bei aised at -eithe the cimes fo which Waye Wilams had bee ested o the cimes th which these two cmes liked h wee cassed as sexua cmes-t dd ot he to have a testi before the tia that she ad Waye Wiams had eve bee oves Subsequety, dui the tia, she testied that they hd bee ovesad the, i a coud as t wee of bes she disaeas. No does oe kow wh to make of the testimoy of the you mae who cas to have bee i Wayes ca uzii his touses at Wayes equest The momet the boy uzis his ouses y o dey eouh thee be i tis testmoy as athe o hit of meace-Waye emembes that he must et some th om the tuk of his ca-ylo cod? aothe beathi boy?-wheeuo, i ay case the uzied boy zs u ad zas out. e feels feels taed taed i the slave slave qu q u ates of the Sou So u the othic omace-othe voices ote ooms-ad, e has i tut oe is The Wiams tia was occu i the teath, the oud suf of a ecet double ae, i Decatu two lack me had aed two Whte wome thout howeve eetati thei Wte sex o cotamia the ack hus They eetated the wome wth tee stums ad oe of the wome ded th a lack foot i he face ad, the o he chest.
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A D W I N
There had bee other slaughers i Columbus Geor gaoe however you be relieved to hear that t he attead here was egedy egedy a veied theat om Slae o coec Waye Wiliams wth hese. There had o have bee a whole lot of sweaig gog o ha courrm ad o oy o he wtess sad. galty accordig o a Atlata lawyer kow s whater you say s legal Common law s what eryone agrees s legal A aea be grated or ot grated
deedig o whether or ot the Court has committed a lega eor-o whether or o the Court ca be cha leged o a lega techicality. The fate of a aea has ohig o do wth he questios of ocece or guilt. There ould scarcely ever have bee a case more re letlessly techia or you did ot beieve the ber evdece it was ossble to be ersuaded of Wayes guilt "The ber evdece go me over over the hurdle hurdle some oe old me ad "That ury held hads ad ried ad rayed-rayed that they woud be guided to the rght verdic. do doubt it ad they were ot aoe. the wgs awaiig he verdit was the questio of the fuure or demise of the Secia Task orce as we a the robabity hat the ubiquitous ad ide able "atte would be cha ch alleged The death death of Edward Edward oe Smith for examle was "liked o the "atte whereas the body of Aled Evas discovered about four moths ater ear Smith's body was ot "liked. Ad here was Mrs. Wiams ia ms's 's coeo that there there had bee fouree murders while her so was i jl
110
Th Eidn of Things ot Sn
Ad thee may have bee ideed foutee o foty they ee ot to be eckoed ith uless they "t the atte. They had ot i fact happened uless they "t the atte Ad this eletlessly iscutable ietal "atte as the ceao of D.A Slate ho oly yes teday ould have efeed us to "olice gues. We ke Slate assued us i measued toes "he e ested hi that thee ould be o moe [cimes that t the atte] Thee have bee o moe. Cetaily ot The thee as Waye Wilams himsel as big ad tasiget ad uy as e. a sese he as aat om the be evidece (hich ca be cosideed ma made God's gt to the Posecutio am thaku ot to have bee o that juy Someoe descibed Waye Wilamss -fo hich ead -as teg. ould have descd it vi dicve somebody as the old Sly ad the Faly Stoe hit uts it youd ust love to bu This is a akd ay to feel coceig someoe o the itess stad have studied him oly o tele visio-but the huma ace ca dissemble othig be foe that tcul camea hich is moe obg tha a docto ad f moe uthless tha a mo The boy seemed to me ossessed by a blid ivaid aogace ad evey huma beig as his eye icked ove o iched agst them became immediately as meable as his mothe ad his fathe. This is the easo as have sd that eay do ot beeve hi guilty He is f f too idolet do ot beeve that fo hi othe
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eoe ae suciety ea to eicit aythig so dageous as assio Passio may e the ovice of ightmaes ut it is fa om the ad of deams Wiams stuck me as a soied, ost ad vidictive chid, sheteed somehow om the stom of uety fo whom othes exsted oy as a meas of ovig his owe to maiuatewhich ca e cosideed afte , the story of his ief life ut to e hoest this statemet which efes to his tay ove his ets immediatey coects fo me, wth a image of some of the chide eig sted ad athedas Waye may have ee fo fa too og efoe eig mudeed t is coceivae that Waye was comeed to make the doomed attemt to smothe the chid his aets smotheed A hoie thought ut this is a hoe case, ad vegeace takes may foms Some eoe agued that Waye hadt ee such a smatass he mght eve have come to tia at e wast aested o the idge te ad it mght have ee dicut to ove his esece o the idge. e may have oeed his ig mouth oce too ofte whe, i �sose to the questio, Wat wee you doig o the idge he asweed was o the idge to get to the ote side Thus, we kow ow, om the testmoy of this fully codescedig aistocat that he was o the idge as cled. The easos he susequetly gives to exai his es ece-that he was veig the addess of the hatom Johso woma with whom he had a aoitmet late that same moig-ca stike oe oy as e
2
Th Ed o Thgs Not S
strous or dsrat on tinks of t sall y caugt it is ands t cook jar brazng stonlling it out Mrs. Willis sists tat t Jonson oman as an BI plant-tat Wayn as dlbratly lurd to t bridg-but tis is unconincing only bcaus Wayn ds not claim to a ad an appintment it anyon on t bridg at tat or any our But it ss to alost ually improbabl tat ould slct tat our and tat plac to dispos of t by Bodis as I a said r bg found all or Aanta It ould s to a bn uc sar and simplr, to a drin a f ils and dupd t by in t ds And t rir as cosn bcaus t urdrr ad discord t trat of br idnc tis stll ss an d ont and an unncssarily public plac. Toug t rir as bing atcd no rir can b atcd along its ntir lngt T bridg as a stakout-toug tis last dtail ay not a bn kon to Wlis But non of tis lps us to dcid Wayn Wlias innocnt or guilty Tr is spculation tat Catr and Payn ad to b kd bcaus ty ad lpd Wayn it t prious urdrs. Tis is a conciabl sc no toug it las bgging t ustion y ty didnt dcid to kil him But it is crtainly conciabl tat Wayn Wlis at so pot panickd and d cidd to silnc is accopcs. (If accopcs ty r.) If kn of t br idnc ould cr tainly a gon to t rir-r ic ould a don just as l ould also a posd too any az
13
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ards This sceario would accout for what ca be read as the icoheret aic of his behavior This remai, ow however forever i the rem of seculatio, there beig othig i life coectg Cater, aye, ad Wiams, ad, i death, othig but a uliely ad utidy murder caseor more recisely, a uely case ad a utidy tra tidy ideed ad, i erformace, aaretly, very ofte uleasat. Mary Welcome, who is the lawyer cho se by Wiams, brought with her Avi ider, a White lawyer, om Mississii, ad Toy Axem, a lac law yer om Atlata. show busiess, this to would have bombed i the boodocs, far om the roadway ghts ider e deared himself to o oe, articularly ot the ury, by wodeg Lee row soe the Egsh laguage, or by cig Waye Wiams a "boy He did ot edear himself to Toy Axem, either but Axem, a sardoic, goodatured, sefcotaied ma, who mressed me very muchhe has, as the old fols say, "good sese had ot exected ider to be edearig. He had ot exected ider to be there at . t was Mary Welcomes idea, ot his, ad o oe aears to ow what gave Mary elcome this articular idea As for Axem he had exerece ad ss as a ta lawyer that Mary Welcome laced, ad told him that she laced. Ad, here, we come uo aother asect of this case, a asect brutal ad obvious oce oe this about it, but oe doest thi about it before oe is forced to thi about it
4
he Evidene of hins Not Seen
Waye Wams s at the cete of ths dama, ad ul may of the strgs but hs fate s ot the oly fate at ssue. The Jude, fo exame ma ossby d hse a ow stuato: the toducto of the oacts cases cn be cheed the othe had, to have thwted ths tucto would have bee so seousy to damage the Posecutos case as to have vtuy uateed defeat ad the Jude could aso, the ce have bee accused by the jury of with hod fomato Yet futhe to comoud the d emma someoe who kows the law oted out to me that "th idnc ws so incrdibly fvorbl to th Pros cution s to b [lglly prudicil.
The Law s ot the oy eaty a awes life Law yes have et to ay status to acheve, o mata, cdre t feed, ad hehts to scae ths costs moey, ad costs much moe tha moey The key to the e foace, o the vaue of the awe s to be foud what he takes as ea I was ot be macous whe I metoed the obabe fate of ths "to show bus ess. I was oy sues that their dveeces made t mossbe fo them to oeate a a team Axem left st to the eat joy of the Posecutio (Pehas he tel hs story o aother day The Bde left ad, y, Waye Wams dsmssed May Wcome aor she resged, these actos occuri vrtuay sutaeousy May Welcome s the adoted dauhte of Vea Wel come, seato om Mayad met Vea Wecome may yeas ago, Motgom
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ry, Alabama h ss of h fdra corhos i fac, om which lga sacary, ad dr h Amr ica (as disigishd om h ofdra ag, h Shwas forcibly rmovg s, dsi h rsc of h Jsic Darm, ad h F Nihr of hs rrsaivs cold do, as hy laiivly iformd m, "ayhig abo i. Mary Wlcom cold o go log oicd aywhr, ad sh did o go log oicd i Alaa Sh had b marrd o somo "om o of h islads, has a so, ad cam o Alaa r sh ad hr hsbad wr divorcd-i h arly svis, wh sh wold hav b vry yog "Sh was wam, accordig o o of my iformas "ogoig Very araciv. Sh bcam a ar of h law rm dy, Samso, ad Edwards, ad, h, was aoid ciy solicior, a foryar aoim, drig which im sh rid mis dmaor cass ad bcam somhig of a clbriy A h d of his rm, Jss , chaia of h board ad rsid of h Alaa L srac omay, is isrma, aarly, i hr bcomig ar of h rmi Mississii law rm, dy, Samso, ssy, ad Edwards, ad, havg wo hr srs, sh is, by 980 i riva racic Sh was o "Nighi, sh was o h shows, ad r was v a craz for "Mary Wlcom shads bcas Ms Wlcom wars (ad, o hr, hy do o sm a acaio ormos, sqar dark glasss Sh was romi i o of hos cahciy cam ags, crg o bahhoss ad rosiio, ad
6
Th Evd Thgs Nt S
achieved a d of stomcete otoiety with he co tadictoy hadg of two ae cases the st a lack daceh girl accused a lack olice ofce of havig focibly sodomized he, ad Ms Welcome defeded the gl, ad wo the case She also wo the secod case i which thee Mois ow studets wee accused of havig gagaed oe loe lack girl, havig dagged he if my otes e ac cuate, to the emty gymasium fo this uose She was, i ay case, aed o did the boys make ay at temt to dey it they seemed athe oud to be ifomed of the laceatig owe of their tools Pio acts gued vey lgely i this case, the io acts beig those of the gl, ad ovig that she was ot (o had she claimed to be a virg Not oly that, but oe of he assats swoe that she had touchd hi "i the goi ea about a week befoe the gagae, which made it dicult esumably to kow what she was comlig about (Ad someoe quotes Ms Welcome as sayig i cout "You wat to codem my cliet because he had sex with a bad gl! This is the lawye Waye Wias chose to defed him a told that Waye Wias would obably have met he while she was city solicito ad whie Waye was actig, i eect, as uofcial, ucoected (ad aetly uwated olice eote He was a told, i what was descibed to me as a iitatio umked olice c ad wth his caea ad taeecodig equi met, at the scee of evey accidet, evey cime, eve goig so f as atemtg to get a job i the mogue
7
j A M E S
B A L D W I N
Ms Welcome asked Axem to try the case wth her ad he agreed ow der was decded uo is ot cle, excet, am told, that o Whte lawer om Atlata] would have ted the case wth her ad Welcome would, resumably, have kow ider om her seaso wth the reemet Mssssii law hs is a dsastrously mismatched to, as Waye Wil iams, dimly ad ieectuy, seems to have begu to arehed. Axem, for examle, takes the ositio, essetally, that the Prosecuto has o case befoe it proves it has a case herefoe, the Defese eed ot bude itse wth dis rovg what e, ut evidece oves othese, mee egatos he Defese, that is s ot so much com eled to ove Waye innocent as the State s comeled to prove hm guilty hs caot be doe by followg the Posecutios lead, ad askig wtesses, as de ds, Did he er seally molest yo? hs elevat questio smly co s fo the jury (ad o matter how the questio is aswered the dea of Wayes deavty here was, also a attemt, aetly, to ove that o cme had take lace hs was take as a sig that the Defese was deseate Ad the Defese set thou sads of dols, aetly, to bg a athologist om Jeusalem to ove that Cate ad Paye had died atual deaths, while swimmig because they sueed om e lged hets he jury was messed, as I am, by this eergy, but was ot, uluckily, covced o am The chge agst Waye s ot eve addessed by
8
Th Evd o Thg No S
ttemtg to comre hm to "dremer lke Mrt Luther Kg Jr whose reltosh to the chldre he s lleged to hve tued o corses ws tht of bg broher rohet, d gude No oe hvg ke oe look t Wye Wms would drem of cstg hm hs role, d he rgumet reeks moreover of kd of hyocrtcl morl blckml whch etes be cuse t trozes he jurors d g suggests th the Defese s o he roes Ad t ws dsstrous for the Defese o cl "There hs ever bee lck mss murderer for t llowed Slte to rely uswerbly di Amin ws Bl mss mrdrr.
urthermore s worh otg out tht ccordg o wesses crucl quesos were swered beyod he heg of the jury or the ublc for he Judge t those momes requested he lwyers o roch the bech. lly hs teso d dsseso hd terrible ef fect o Wye Wms who shorly dd ot kow whch lwyer o beleve Ad hough here were o other crmes th " he tte there were crmes eough t could ot hve bee dfcult to covey to hm ht he who hd bee "lked o so my cres could yet be "liked o ohers. hk ht ws hs c th cused hm to dsmss Toy Axem d lly Mry Welcome u he begg she mus hve seemed to hm swrhy femle Lee ley She my hve hought of ths too deed t would hve bee most mossble for her ot o hve thoght
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o ths For ths exceedly complex otorous, d re pellet s the kd o case precsely that c make or break a career I Ms Welcome was as coced o Wayes ece as s apparetly Waye hmsel the she would have had o choce but to help Waye oursh hs dre He cotued hs proects by ml d tred to hold hs record roup toether by ml Menlly, Wyne s Whe someby told me ad stl dot qute kow what to make o that statemet. I suppose the statemet reers to hs dream o ame ad domace ad the rewards Uluckly my exper ece the oly people capable o dremng o ame ad domce those merclessly medre catus who sometmes uluckly or us all acheve a semblace o these Uluckly because to drem o ame ad dom ace s to dream quotato marks ad desre to trs o osel to a resoud d usweble quotao Sce p ad daer however accompy every our ey hope d deluso my oat may have bee y no to woder Waye despsed Black esh eouh to destroy twhch has bee deed the prcpal ad uaswerable acto o the Whte metty; d ths questo obvously does ot apply oy to Waye The Wllams amly dsked Ms. Welcome d Ms Wllams reused to allow Ms Welcome to exame her Oe o my oats tred to call Camle Bell at the be o the Teor ad was uable to et throuh She ally maaed to speak to her much later ot wthout dculty or by ths tme Ms. Bell had bee orcbly upraded to the status o a ulsted umber
20
Th Evidn of Things Not n
The foowg exhge took le: Ms. e You're oe of the few eds we hve the mddlelss My formt I hvet lwys bee mddlelss Ms e We, I hve! I thik I uderstd the meg of ths exeedgly lo d loded exhge, whh ould ke le oly og lk eole ths outry ow I remember boy ed uddy ust before or ust fter I oed the hurh I ws bout fourtee He ws sevetee I met hm few times, very briey. He hd bee ed of the older boys hurh but they o loger soke to him I remember seeg him for the lst tme o the v eue, the dytime. I ws omg home om shool He looked very sd d wey, th grette betwee hs hevy s I remember the grette beuse the grette sg led roved hs sful stte He hd bee member of the hurh, sted, holy but hd bksd hd goe bk to the wold d we were forbdde to sek to hm. y seg to udd I sked rermd d mght hve bee fored to udertke urg fst Yet, I soke to hm We tlked for little whle. ut h srely kew me- ws ot oe of the older boys. I stremember hs fe lghtless d oely, ubelev bly loey ookig t somethg fr wy or dee th I remember wthg him wlk w, dow the v eue I my memory, he s werg blk ter ot
2
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B A D
eve saw him agai Vey shortly aterward, he died, was told, of T tuberculosis. The ecouter, his face d the afteathhis death hauted me for may years i some way obviously it hauts me sti had the feelig dimly the, but vey vividly later that he ded becau he had bee rejected by the oly commuity he kew that we had had it our ower to bg the gh back to his eyes. e was a sier ad he ded herefore i si; but we are siers Le im wo is wio sin mon yo s e rs sone ut could ot say that the t was whe foud myself uable no to say it that too left the churchthe commuity; ad t took me my years o reaze that the commuity that had foed me had so brought about that hour ad that ruture was actig, after , o the moral assumtos had iherited om the commuiy that had ruced me had bee told to love erybody. Whoever else did ot believe this I dd The way of the trasgresso s hard ideed, but t is har because the commuity roduces the trsgressor i order to reew itself am aid that this mathematic this exorabiliy, will last as log as e lasts; ad would ot have to risk soudig so ga dose ere ot uder he ecessty of attemtig to excavate the meaig of the word ommniy as have uderstood it siml meas our edless co ectio with ad resosiblity for each other say tha to suggest his there s somehig ro foud ad uaswerable stirrg he cosciousess of makid today, ad our detties, with evey breath
122
Th Evidn o Thing No Sn
we take, are beig altered There i othig ayoe ca do to hat or revet thi metamorhoi Ad my memory of Buddy omehow trigger thi areheio t ha omethig to do wth my ee that oe i alway doig oe rt work over The key to the reumed geeraity ca be foud oly i the merce ticular have uggeted that Buddy rejectio by the com muty heled brig about hi death-left him o choice but death. Thi may eem a exaggerated tatemet but thik that the exaggeratio may be a ueful oe. or whie there o guaratee that the commuity could have, a a ied of mie ut it, kied the hurt away hi ee of beig vaued might have made the lit ecod dierece betwee chooig life ad chooig death l of our live really hag o ome uch tiy thread ad it i very dagerou ot to kow th ay cae, we e al bo ito commuitie whether we like t or ot or kow it or ot ad whether or ot we get aog wth the commuity Ad, whe eak of dong ons rst works ovr am referrig to the move met of the huma oul, i crii, which the i forced to reexie the deth om which it come i order to trike water om the rock of the iheritace the twetieth cetury, ad i the me State, the dea-the ee-of commuity ha bee ub merged for a very log time the ited State the idea of commuity ccely mea aythig aymore a f ca tell, exet og the ubmerged, the lowly the Natve Aeria the Mexia the Puerto Rica the Black hee ca be aled ommuitie becaue they
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re ifrmed by their kwledge tht y they f the cmmity c sst d recrete ech ther he gret vst shiig Reblc kws thig bt them d cres thig bt them-recgizes their exst ece ly i tie f stress s drig mitry dvetre sy r electi yer r whe their dgers sit ti erts it wht the Rebc geery cs "rit Ad it ges wtht syig tht these cmmities i ciiet wded r fctiig re betwee the crt d the stick f the Aerc Drem Bt the Aerc Drem c be tke s the l miestti f the EreesteChrsti dm ice here re mre ces t crss svge territries t be cqered mre tives t be c verted (Ad thse fr sle hve bee bght. wrld mde hides by mmde verty d bsceely seseless wr it is hrd t redct the ftre f mey whe the Sth Ac mier eves the mes wht hes t the rce f gd? he reset sci d lticl rts ct serve hm eed It is this rehesi tht fermets i mltitdes tdy kg t the bdies f their meced d se lessy sghtered chdre l ver this wrd i Att d m se t shiig se D t misderstd wht kw c vey esiy be red merey s ccsti d t hve the Ere (r rvcil iberty t write Accuse (Thik bt it This is the y ti der heve tht cts the iverseest d west rth d sth blck d whte. Ths is the y ti i
24
Th Ed o Thg No S
the orld that ca hope to liberateto begi to liberate makid om the straglig idea of the atioal idetity ad the tyray of the territoria dispute ko this souds remote o, ad that il ot lie o see ay thig resemblig this hope come to pass Yet ko that hae see it-i re ad blood ad aguish true but hae see it speak ith the authority of the issue of the slae bo i the coutry oce belieed to be he last best hope of earth Fally it s perfectly possibe that Waye Wilams must be added to the list of Atlata's slaughtered back chidre do ot thk that the Back commuity or for that matter the White oe ca aord to igore the mora dilemma as e as the mora opportuty posed by hs icrceratio The author of a crime is hat he is-he kos it ca make o more demads or is aythg more demaded of him. But he ho coaborates is doomed, boud foreer that uimagiable ad yet ery commo coditio hich e eaky suggest as Hell. that coditio ad eery America akig shoud ko t oe ca eer agai summo breath to cry let my people go
2
