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She also knew that if a white person made fun of her or called her a bad name, she had to keep on walking and bite her tongue. If they tried to pick a fight, she could not take the bait.
DuBose stopped making this mental list in her head and thought about the lives sacrificed to overturn almost every one of those “rules.”
Restless, she once more slipped the picture of two people from her wallet to complete her nightly ritual. It was a photo of her and the man she had loved and hoped to marry.
A man who is now dead.
No one had been arrested. No one had been held accountable.
She had not told this story to anyone, because she could barely admit it to herself.
She traced the man’s smile with her finger and then put the photo away. She rose and went to the window and opened it. The hotel did not have air-conditioning, and the light breeze coming in through the opening was welcome to her.
Her parents had liked Chicago well enough, but they had missed Louisiana’s raw heat and humidity, and the absence of any real winter. And they missed the spicy Creole food. And the daily hugs and smiles from their families and friends. But those were really the only things they had missed about being Black while in the South.
But all the major Northern cities had their Black-concentrated areas: Harlem in New York. The South Side, where DuBose lived, in Chicago. There were slums and ghettos in Baltimore, Detroit, Philadelphia, St. Louis. This was accomplished by banks refusing to loan to Blacks in white areas; Realtors not showing Blacks any homes in white neighborhoods; and, of course, restrictive deed covenants that outright prohibited sales to Blacks.
Much like Native Americans forcefully sequestered onto reservations, Blacks had thus been relegated to areas where the housing—dilapidated though it was—and other associated costs were exorbitant, the jobs scarce and low-paying, the crime and drug use high, the loan sharks and pawnbrokers ubiquitous, the imperious police omnipresent, and the deep feeling of inferiority and isolation inspired and demanded by the white community rampant. How could anyone really be happy being told where they had to live? thought DuBose. And knowing that it was solely because Blacks were deemed not good enough to coexist with whites.
With all that, any hope by her race should have been nonexistent, DuBose realized. And yet folks got up every day and went about their lives as best they could. For DuBose, that was all she needed to show that Blacks were the equal of whites. Indeed, they had to work harder and more cleverly and cautiously for less than any white person she knew.
But then a politician or newspaper would tout that a few had made it out of these dire circumstances. If you just work harder, sacrifice more, tug those bootstraps with more vigor, you, too, can make it out, the message went. Even if it was only one in ten thousand.
Yet people’s abilities and experiences were not monolithic and thus one method of success was not easily replicated for everyone. And touting the victory of one amid the “failure” of ten thousand was fine for the one, but it did nothing to aid the ten thousand, and it certainly should not be a reason to do nothing except encourage harder personal bootstrapping.
DuBose closed her eyes and mused:
If a heart surgery was only successful once every ten thousand operations, or a plane landing safely occurred only once every ten thousand times, what would people demand? Change the way it was done. Now.
From her satchel she slipped out an old copy of the Green Book, a publication that she and her family had used for many years and that told Blacks where they would be welcomed while traveling, allowing them to avoid danger. As a child she vividly recalled that her parents would always leave long before dawn when the family was driving to the South, to avoid traveling late at night. You didn’t want to end up in a sundown town on the wrong side of the clock, when whites went looking for Blacks to arrest or kill.
This often meant that Blacks had to drive fifteen, twenty, or more hours without stopping if the distance was great enough, and nighttime driving could not be avoided. DuBose visualized the bucket of cold water and washcloths her mother would pack, and which she would apply to her husband’s face and neck to keep him awake as they passed by places of rest unavailable to them. She knew of several families who had lost loved ones in car crashes because the driver had fallen asleep. That was another bite that Jim Crow took out of Black flesh.
She also was aware that white people often chastised or made outright fun of her race for “wasting” their money on large, fancy cars with powerful engines instead of buying homes. The reasons, at least to Black folks, were obvious.
Since Blacks weren’t really allowed to purchase homes, nice cars were really the only way to show affluence and accomplishment. And the automobiles they typically purchased were large because often whole families had to sleep in them. And the powerful engines were critical, to outrun whites intent on doing them harm, including the police.
Before they were old enough to really understand, DuBose and her siblings wanted to know why they couldn’t stop at a motel or eat at a restaurant along the way like white people. Arguments ensued between them and their parents. DuBose more than once observed the look of deep shame on her father’s face, though she now knew the shame had nothing to do with him or them.
The Green Book had ceased publication in 1967, after the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Still, DuBose carried the last edition with her because she never wanted to forget how far her race had come. Because if you did, you might end up back where you started. And while one Supreme Court had finally done the right thing in overturning the doctrine of separate but equal, a future Supreme Court could easily take it all away. Nothing was certain, or forever.
DuBose stiffened when she heard footsteps outside her door. She walked quietly over to it and put her eye to the peephole.
DuBose screamed and leapt back an instant before the fired bullet tore through the cylinder of glass, and lodged in the far wall.
She collapsed onto the floor because her legs had suddenly failed her. She frantically crawled away from the door and jerkily picked at the bits of wood and glass that had ended up on her hair, skin, and nightgown. She then wrapped her arms around her knees and sat there, trying to get her breath, her heart, and her nerves all under control.
When it was apparent no one was coming, she managed to rise and walk unsteadily over to the nightstand. She picked up the phone and called Jack.
“Hey, everything okay?” he said quickly.
“N-no, it’s... it’s actually not.”
She told him. He was there in five minutes. He had called the police before he left. They met him there. Two patrolmen hurried up to the room with him and interviewed DuBose, and dug the bullet out of the wall. No one at the hotel had seen or heard anything, so they said.
“This has to stop,” Jack told them. “It’s only by the grace of God she’s not dead.”
One of the officers said, “Colored communities all up in arms what with their preacher gettin’ himself killed. Riotin’ and burnin’ and such. Got white folks on edge. Make ’em do things they might not otherwise do.”
