say, is the opiate of the masses, fundamentalism is the amphetamine.
[That busted us up.]
The hierarchy, indisputable. The hereafter, actual. Sin, she believed in. That she was born in and bound to do it; she was likewise accepting of being sinned against. Injustice she rejected. Through and through.
Something else—LIE, was not in her vocabulary. The pure inflammatory truth she could take it, and Gentle Reader, she knew how to inflict it.
The night the town erupted, the night they beat the Memphis organizer, the Man Imported from Memphis, the City of Good Abode, the self-named Invader [the tag was picked from a sci-fi show; it stuck, and it sent its message straight to the eighth nerve].
The night they put some of the strangers in jail [in Swahili, stranger is mgeni. It also means “guest.” Hereabouts, it means outside agitator; it means godless communist; it means Invader], a crazed white woman turned her hose on V and the Invaders through the bars, and a mad white mob set her car ablaze [the only car she would ever have];
and a little twig of a white kid went to the Bijou with his father.
The reel had just sputtered into action when the lady left the projection booth and ran down the aisle to the boy and his father. You’ve got to get out of here, this town’s about to blow. And it was rare to go to a movie, rare for his daddy to take him, and he did not want to leave, he wanted to see the show, he wanted to see, but the lady had already stopped the projector and everyone else had cleared out.
It was all black. It was all white. It was black and white. No, it was in living color.
What was playing.
VETERINARIAN: You got me there.
You tend big animals or cats and dogs.
I’m small, I just take care of the small. If a heifer or a mare rolled over on me, that’d be all she wrote. I wouldn’t be able to work anymore. So, I stick to small. My father treated every one of her cats, the Persians, the blue point Siamese. Long before the black and white issue. He knew them all.
Two of their descendants made it to Hell’s Kitchen. They were ill-tempered, overweight, and generally obnoxious.
So, who would you rather live with, V asked, Al Capone or Mahatma Gandhi.
You got me there.
GRADUATE OF THE ALL-NEGRO HIGH SCHOOL: I did not participate [in the uprising]. I was in the band room, practicing. Keeping time. Our mother was very strict.
What was your band called.
Come again.
Your band.
You got me there.
GRADUATE OF THE ALL-WHITE HIGH SCHOOL, first year of Integration-By-Choice: I did not participate. I was in the theater, practicing.
I was a smart kid, and I sort of knew I was going to leave, and that high school was just something you had to go through to get to the rest of your life.
ALL-NEGRO HIGH SCHOOL ANNUAL:
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