NEW RADICALISM
55
back into
his
practice. I went back down into the Central Ward, and
had a long soda at Bernice's Restaurant on 18th Avenue.
FIVE o'CLOCK:
John Barnes, an old Turner associate connected
with the Mayor's Human Relations Commission, sauntered down 18th
Avenue until he saw me sitting on a porch. Smiling a lot, he said he'd
been with the Mayor (he called him hy the last name to indicate
his independence) that morning, and it was agreed we'd get our
traffic light. He was especially worried about what we might do
next, and feared conflict between ourselves and Turner people. The
man I was with said we would "take Newark apart" unless we got
the light, which made Barnes shudder. When Barnes went off, I
asked my friend what he thought. "He's a stool pigeon, you can sure
tell that," said the man.
Later that night, Sampson called to say that the head of the
Human Relations Commission had come right up to
his
apartment to
assure us about the light and find out what we were going to do
next. With him, Sampson went on, he brought a young, white
married couple, dressed just like "SDS people," but representing the
government's anti-poverty program. They asked Sampson and
his
brother to call a meeting of their neighbors, and said they would
be working in the neighborhood for a while to "help people improve
themselves." Sampson and
his
brother politely said no.
I was over at another Avon meeting where people decided to
demonstrate in the street on Monday
if
the City took no action about
their traffic problem. When I came back, I bought some hamburger
meat and went to a friend's house to cook it. Then Carl Wittman,
who works in the next county over, came in from hitchhiking down
to Louisiana, over to the Midwest, and back. He went on the trip
to see what shape organizing in white communities was in. Said it
was "bad," and that he'd decided to keep up
his
slow work among
whites in the next county. "Out of enthusiasm, or doggedness?" I
asked. "Doggedness, for sure," he said, and then he drove me back
to the apartment.
