In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Prose Page 13

  It is a part of the black Southern sensibility that we treasure memories; for such a long time, that is all of our homeland those of us who at one time or another were forced away from it have been allowed to have.

  I watched my brothers, one by one, leave our home and leave the South. I watched my sisters do the same. This was not unusual; abandonment, except for memories, was the common thing, except for those who "could not do any better," or those whose strength or stubbornness was so colossal they took the risk that others could not bear.

  In i960, my mother bought a television set, and each day after school I watched Hamilton Holmes and Charlayne Hunter as they struggled to integrate--fair-skinned as they were--the University of Georgia. And then, one day, there appeared the face of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. What a funny name, I thought. At the moment I first saw him, he was being handcuffed and shoved into a police truck. He had dared to claim his rights as a native son, and had been arrested. He displayed no fear, but seemed calm and serene, unaware of his own extraordinary courage. His whole body, like his conscience, was at peace.

  At the moment I saw his resistance I knew I would never be able to live in this country without resisting everything that sought to disinherit me, and I would never be forced away from the land of my birth without a fight.

  He was The One, The Hero, The One Fearless Person for whom we had waited. I hadn't even realized before that we had been waiting for Martin Luther King, Jr., but we had. And I knew it for sure when my mother added his name to the list of people she prayed for every night.

  I sometimes think that it was literally the prayers of people like my mother and father, who had bowed down in the struggle for such a long time, that kept Dr. King alive until five years ago. For years we went to bed praying for his life, and awoke with the question "Is the 'Lord' still here?"

  The public acts of Dr. King you know. They are visible all around you. His voice you would recognize sooner than any other voice you have heard in this century--this in spite of the fact that certain municipal libraries, like the one in downtown Jackson, do not carry recordings of his speeches, and the librarians chuckle cruelly when asked why they do not.

  You know, if you have read his books, that his is a complex and revolutionary philosophy that few people are capable of understanding fully or have the patience to embody in themselves. Which is our weakness, which is our loss.

  And if you know anything about good Baptist preaching, you can imagine what you missed if you never had a chance to hear Martin Luther King, Jr., preach at Ebeneezer Baptist Church.

  You know of the prizes and awards that he tended to think very little of. And you know of his concern for the disinherited: the American Indian, the Mexican-American, and the poor American white--for whom he cared much.

  You know that this very room, in this very restaurant, was closed to people of color not more than five years ago. And that we eat here together tonight largely through his efforts and his blood. We accept the common pleasures of life, assuredly, in his name.

  But add to all of these things the one thing that seems to me second to none in importance: He gave us back our heritage. He gave us back our homeland; the bones and dust of our ancestors, who may now sleep within our caring and our hearing. He gave us the blueness of the Georgia sky in autumn as in summer; the colors of the Southern winter as well as glimpses of the green of vacation-time spring. Those of our relatives we used to invite for a visit we now can ask to stay....He gave us full-time use of our own woods, and restored our memories to those of us who were forced to run away, as realities we might each day enjoy and leave for our children.

  He gave us continuity of place, without which community is ephemeral. He gave us home.

  1973

  CORETTA KING REVISITED

  I MET CORETTA Scott King for the first time in 1962 when I was a freshman at Spelman College in Atlanta and lived a few blocks from the neat but rather worn neighborhood where Coretta and Martin Luther King, Jr., lived. A group of us from Spelman were going to the World Youth Peace Festival in Helsinki that summer, and our adviser, a white peace activist from California, thought we should meet Mrs. King, who seemed, at that time, the only black woman in Atlanta actively and publicly engaged in the pursuit of peace.

  I recall vividly our few minutes in the King home, a modest, almost bare-looking house with exceedingly nondescript furniture. I was delighted that the furniture was so plain, because it was the same kind of stuff most black people had and not the stylish plastic-covered French provincial that sat unused in many black middle-class homes. I felt quite comfortable on the sofa. Coretta that day was quick, bright-eyed, slim, and actually bubbly; and very girlish-looking with her face free of make-up, shining a little, and her long hair tied back in a simple, slightly curly, ponytail. She herself was on her way to a peace conference in Geneva. And, in addition, she was aglow with thoughts of an upcoming musical recital.

  As she talked briefly to us, I sat on the sofa and stared at her, much too shy myself to speak. I was satisfied just to witness her exuberance, her brightness, her sparkle and smiles, as she talked about the peace movement, her music, and all her plans. She gave us several words of encouragement about our journey, the first trip abroad for all of us, but I don't recall what they were. She did not, and we did not, mention her husband But she was so clearly a happy woman I couldn't help wishing I could sneak out of the living room and through the rest of the house, because I was positive he was there.

  I have often thought that if it had not been for her husband, Dr. King, I would have come of age believing in nothing and no one. As it was, my life, like that of millions of black young Southerners, seemed to find its beginning and its purpose at the precise moment I first heard him speak. Through the years, like thousands of others, I followed him, unquestioningly, for my belief in him overcame even my disbelief in America. When he was assassinated in 1968 it was as if the last light in my world had gone out. But in 1962 people of eighteen, as I was then, felt at the beginning of things. The future looked difficult, but bright. We had a tough, young, fearless friend and brother who stood with us and for us. We hoped bluntly, as eighteen-year-olds will, that his wife was good enough for him. How lucky you are that he belongs to you! I had thought, looking at Coretta then, beginning to admit grudgingly that my hero had married a person, and not just a wife.

  When I saw Coretta again it was at Dr. King's funeral, when my husband and I marched behind her husband's body in anger and despair. We could only see her from a distance, as she sat on a platform on the Morehouse campus. In my heart I said good-bye to the nonviolence she still professed. I was far less calm than she appeared to be. The week after that long, four-mile walk across Atlanta, and after the tears and anger and the feeling of turning gradually to stone, I lost the child I had been carrying. I did not even care. It seemed to me, at the time, that if "he" (it was weeks before my tongue could form his name) must die no one deserved to live, not even my own child. I thought, as I lay on my bed listening to the rude Mississippi accents around me, that with any luck I could lose myself. I do not recall wanting very much to live. A week later, however, I saw Coretta's face again, on television, and perhaps it was my imagination, but she sounded so much like her husband that for a minute I thought I was hearing his voice.... "I come to New York today with a strong feeling that my dearly beloved husband, who was snatched suddenly from our midst slightly more than three weeks ago now, would have wanted me to be present today. Though my heart is heavy with grief from having suffered an irreparable loss, my faith in the redemptive will of God is stronger today than ever before."

  I knew then that my grief was really self-pity; something I don't believe either Martin or Coretta had time to feel. I was still angry, confused, and, unlike Coretta, I have wandered very far, I think, from my belief in God if not from my faith in humanity, but she pulled me to my feet, as her husband had done in a different way, and forced me to acknowledge the debt I owed, not only to her husband
's memory but also to the living continuation of his work.

  Coretta was surprised, when I arrived to interview her for this article, that I remembered so well our first meeting in her home, for she had long since forgotten it. The first thing I noticed was that her eyes have changed. They are reserved, almost cool, and she is tense; perhaps because she has been written about so often and because she is bored with it. She is not as slim as she was in 1962, but then, neither am I. Her hair this time falls down against her cheeks and is held back by a magenta-colored headband. Her dress is colorfully striped and her lipstick is very red.

  I am embarrassed because I have dared to list among my interview questions things like "Do you enjoy dancing?" "Can you bougaloo?" "Do you save trading stamps?" I also want to know her favorite color and her horoscope sign. She rightly comments that even though people who are curious about her might like to know these things the questions themselves are "not important." I feel rather foolish when she says this, and hasten to explain that what I am most concerned about is what direction her music career--Mrs. King studied at the New England Conservatory of Music and often sings in concert--is taking. After that, I add, beginning to brighten a bit, for her look now is much less severe, I would like to know whether she thinks a woman can maintain her art--in her case, her singing--without having to sacrifice it to her husband's ambitions, her children's needs, or society's expectations. I want to know her opinion of why black women have been antagonistic toward women's liberation. As a black woman myself, I say, I do not understand this because black women among all women have been oppressed almost beyond recognition--oppressed by everyone. Until recently, I comment, black women didn't even know what a real black woman looked like, because most black women were lightening their skin and straightening their hair. Ticking off another item on my shamefully long list--her assistant, Mrs. Bennett, had made it quite clear to me when I arrived that an hour of interviewing was the limit--I ask about the role she feels she has in the world, in this country, in her family, and in her immediate community.

  Coretta's voice in conversation is quite different from the way it sounds when she gives speeches. It is softer and not as flatly Southern. When she talks she seems very calm and sure, though not relaxed, and she is cautious and careful that her precise meaning is expressed and understood. I have the feeling that she is far more fragile than she seems and the oddly eerie suggestion enters my head that the Coretta I am speaking with is not at all the one her children and family know. It strikes me that perhaps the reaction to overwhelming publicity must be a vigilant guarding of the private person. I try hard not to stare while Coretta talks, but I find I can't help it. I would have stared at Mary McLeod Bethune the same way. Coretta has changed a lot since 1962 but she continues to believe in and carry on her husband's work along with her own. I am trying to see where so much strength is coming from.

  She leans back in her camel-colored swivel chair underneath the large oil portrait of her husband and pauses briefly to touch one of the many piles of correspondence on her desk. She begins at a mutual point of reference: the day we first met, nearly ten years ago. "I was on my way then," she recalls, "to the Seventeen-Nation Disarmament Conference in Geneva. Fifty American women had been invited and I was going as a delegate. I was also scheduled, the following Sunday, to give a recital in Cincinnati. Of course this presented something of a problem, because I would be away from the children for a week, but I thought it was important that I go. However, I wouldn't have gone had my husband not encouraged me to go." She smiles, slightly, and explains. "Periodically Martin and I would have these discussions about my being so involved in my singing and speaking and being away from home so much. We always agreed that when both of us were under a lot of pressure to be away from home I would be the one to curtail my activities. I wasn't too unhappy about this. It was really a question of knowing what our priorities were. And since my top priority has always been my family there was never any conflict.

  "Of course Martin had a problem throughout his career because he couldn't be with his family more. He never felt comfortable about being away so much. I don't think anybody who must be away from home a lot can really resolve this. But what you have to do is spend as much time with your family as you can and make the time that you spend meaningful. When Martin spent time with the children he gave himself so completely that they had a great feeling of love and security. I think this can best be done by individuals who feel secure within themselves and who are committed to what they are doing. People who have a sense of direction and who feel that what they're doing is the most important thing they can be doing. There was never a question in our minds that we were not doing the most important thing we could be doing for ourselves and for a better society for our children, all children, to grow up in."

  At this point something goes wrong with my tape recorder and I lean forward to fix it, explaining with some vexation that I am the world's worst manipulator of simple gadgetry. Coretta charitably admits she's no genius with mechanical things either.

  While waiting for the tape to rewind I tell her that her husband often crops up in my work and is very often in my thoughts. I tell her that in my novel, a copy of which I just gave her, one of the characters mentions that although Dr. King was constantly harassed and oppressed by the white world he was always gentle with his wife and children. I tell her how important I feel this is: that black men not take out their anger and frustration on their wives and children. A temptation that is all too obvious.

  Coretta's face is thoughtful as she says, "Maybe I shouldn't say this, because I don't know it, it's just a feeling I have . . but few black men seem to feel secure enough as men that they can make women feel like women. It was such a good feeling that Martin gave me, since the first time I met him. He was such a strong man that I felt like a woman, I could be a woman, and let him be a man. Yet he too was affected by the system, as a black man; but in spite of everything he always came through as a man, a person of dignity. ... I miss this now, very much. Since my husband's death I've had to struggle on alone, and I can appreciate now, more than ever, how important it is to have somebody to share things with, to have someone who cares, someone who is concerned."

  A rather ardent feminist myself I would like to spend a lot of time on the subjects of black woman and women's liberation. But Coretta only states that she understands the black woman's reluctance to be involved in liberating herself when all black people are still not free. Of course, she says, and laughs with humor and exasperation, "it is annoying to have men constantly saying things like 'I know that must be a woman driver!'" She also believes that if women become irrevocably involved in social issues they will find themselves powerful as activists and as women. She thinks that women will liberate themselves to the extent of their involvement in the struggle for change and social justice. To me this sounds very logical, but I am stuck with the suspicion that, as with black people, there must be for women a new and self-given definition. I fear that many people, including many women, do not know, in fact, what Woman is.

  We do, however, share a vast appreciation for the black woman, liberated or not. I think we both realize that in the majority of black women in the South we have been seeing women whose souls have been liberated for generations. In fact, it is when Coretta mentions some words of gentle courage from some old woman she has met somewhere that her eyes fill with tears. "The black woman," she says, "has a special role to play. Our heritage of suffering and our experience in having to struggle against all odds to raise our children gives us a greater capacity for understanding both suffering and the need and meaning of compassion. We have, I think, a kind of stamina, a determination, which makes us strong." Then she says something that I feel is particularly true: "Women, in general, are not a part of the corruption of the past, so they can give a new kind of leadership, a new image for mankind. But if they are going to be bitter or vindictive they are not going to be able to do this. But they're capable of tremendous compassion
, love, and forgiveness, which, if they use it, can make this a better world. When you think of what some black women have gone through, and then look at how beautiful they still are! It is incredible that they still believe in the values of the race, that they have retained a love of justice, that they can still feel the deepest compassion, not only for themselves but for anybody who is oppressed; this is a kind of miracle, something we have that we must preserve and must pass on."

  Coretta was born and raised in Marion, Alabama, a small town not far from the larger one of Selma, which her husband was later to make infamous. When she speaks of her upbringing in the "heart of Dixie" there is no bitterness in her voice. Like many blacks from the South she is able to dismiss or feel pity for white racists because she realizes they are sick. Instead, her voice warms with pride and respect for her father, who survived against fantastic odds. Not only did Obidiah Scott survive; he prevailed.

  The Scotts owned a farm in Marion, and Coretta's father raised thousands of chickens. When his sawmill was mysteriously burned out only days after he purchased it he bought himself a truck and began a small pulpwood business. Recently, at seventy-one, Obie Scott ran for highway commissioner in his home town, something he wouldn't have dreamed of doing as short a time as six or seven years ago. He lost in the election, and Coretta thinks losing "got to him," but the important thing, she says, is that he still has the courage to try to change things in the South so that all people can live there in harmony and peace.

  "My father is a most industrious man," says Coretta. "If he'd been white he'd be the mayor of Marion, Alabama." From what she has told me about him I think she underestimates Obidiah Scott: if he had been white I doubt if he'd have stopped with the Alabama governorship.

  Although active in several political campaigns, Coretta appears to have enjoyed her swing through her home state, in support of local black candidates, including her father, most. She explains that she gave a number of "Freedom Concerts" which her children helped her sing, and that they enjoyed campaigning as much as she. What emerges about Coretta is that the fabric of her life is finely knit. Each part is woven firmly into another part. Her office, which is in the basement of her house, is where she directs the business of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Center. When her children come home from school they troop downstairs to see her. She will usually stop whatever she is doing to talk to them. Her music is a skill that she uses for a variety of good causes: her Freedom Concerts bring out the crowds at local elections for black candidates; her other concerts are given to raise money for the memorial to her husband that she insists he must have. Her singing is also her means of reaching other peoples who can understand the beauty of her voice if not the words she sings.