I Am Not Your Negro Page #3

Good morning, Tump.

The role

of the janitor is small,

yet the man's face

bangs in my memory until today.

- I have done nothing.

- Nobody says you have, Tom.

But they might.

The film's

icy brutality both scared me...

What for?

...and strengthened me.

Because Uncle Tom

refuses to take vengeance

in his own hands,

he was not a hero for me.

Heroes, as far as I could see,

where white,

and not merely

because of the movies,

but because of the land

in which I lived,

of which movies

were simply a reflection.

I despised

and feared those heroes

because they did take vengeance

into their own hands.

They thought vengeance

was theirs to take.

And, yes, I understood that:

my countrymen were my enemy.

I suspect that all these stories

are designed to reassure us

that no crime was committed.

We've made a legend

out of a massacre.

Leaving aside

all the physical facts

which one can quote.

Leaving aside rape or murder.

Leaving aside the bloody catalog

of oppression,

which we are, in one way,

too familiar with already,

what this does

to the subjugated

is to destroy

his sense of reality.

This means, in the case

of an American negro,

born in that

glittering republic,

and in the moment you are born,

since you don't know any better,

every stick and stone

and every face is white,

and since you have not yet

seen a mirror,

you suppose that you are too.

It comes as a great shock

around the age of five,

or six, or seven,

to discover that Gary Cooper

killing off the Indians,

when you were

rooting for Gary Cooper,

that the Indians were you.

It comes as a great shock

to discover the country,

which is your birthplace,

and to which you owe

your life and your identity,

has not, in its whole system

of reality,

evolved any place for you.

I know how to do it,

technically.

It is a matter of research

and journeys.

And with you or without you,

I will do it anyway.

I begin in September,

when I go on the road.

"The road" means

my return to the South.

It means briefly, for example,

seeing Myrlie Evers,

and the children.

Those children

who are children no longer.

It means going back to Atlanta,

to Selma, to Birmingham.

It means seeing

Coretta Scott King,

and Martin's children.

I know that Martin's daughter,

whose name I don't remember,

and Malcolm's oldest daughter,

whose name is Attalah

are both in the theatre,

and apparently are friends.

It means seeing Betty Shabazz,

Malcolm's widow,

and the five younger children.

It means exposing myself

as one of the witnesses

to the lives and deaths

of their famous fathers.

And it means much,

much more than that.

"A clod of witnesses,"

as old St. Paul once put it.

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