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go. And I thought the end of the world was coming, because sure as
anything they'll come in the night and kill us, be it with dynamite or
bullets or a fire that burns us down so fast we couldn't figure which fire
it was, the one here or the one in Hell. And if we tried to escape, they'd
be waiting for us up the road, guns pointing, like always, you know.
"Well, the next thing that happened was It. My boy - he's four–
teen - he just walked off one day, right from this house here, with every–
one watching us real close, not only him but us, too. They were lawyers
and the news people, and they told me there were government people,
the F.B.I. from up in Washington come, and they were to stand by, in
case of trouble. And the next thing I knew, there was our James walking
out of here, and he marched his way right into the school and sat there,
with all those white kids, and God knows how he come out of it alive,
and the fact that he's still alive today - well, I can't explain it, I'll have
to admit. Because I thought they'd kill
him,
right on the spot, as soon
as his black feet stepped inside of that white school, and no matter how
many people were there to watch him and protect him. And to this
minute, I hold my breath in talking of it all. Because the white man,
he'll kill a nigger when he can, even for no reason, you see - just that
he
wants
to; and my boy, he gave them a real good reason. But so far,
they're holding their guns, and maybe waiting until the moment is quiet,
and they'll strike. I fear they will. I believe they will. I do. And when
they do, you know, they'll kill more than one - maybe the whole family,
for all you can know. They don't stop until they figure they've drawn all
the blood they need, and then we know that it's no use provoking them,
not on this earth."
Those words were spoken in the autumn of 1965, well over a century
since Nat Turner led his short-lived revolt and died by hanging; and
presumably at a time when William Styron was writing
The
Confessions
of
Nat
Turner,
an unforgettable book, a feverish, convincing, redemptive
book, a book by a contemporary American novelist that will be read and
valued for generations. As I read Styron's novel I kept on thinking of
that youth and his family. For years I spent time in Little Rock, in New
Orleans, in Clinton, Tennessee, in Atlanta - but I have never seen any–
thing to match what the man quoted above had to face: his son was not
marching down a city's streets, in the company of others; nor could the
youth fall back on the support of a Negro community, poor but massed
together and somewhat able to defend itself. They were way out in the
country, the father, the mother and their children; they were "sitting
ducks," as they put it, sharecroppers who lived in Mississippi,
virtual
slaves, barely alive in isolated territory that may well be as dangerous
