Nobody Said Amen. Tracy Sugarman
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in her house in 51 years. Ted. She couldn’t help smiling, it was just too strange. Nice looking man, too. Dark, curly hair, but losing some. A little gray at the temples. She took the coffee cup and washed it under the one water faucet in the small kitchen. Better feed the family early tonight. Jimmy said the meeting would start at seven.
Right after supper Ted Mendelsohn headed for the Sojourner Chapel. Mr. Williams, Rennie, and Sharon would follow as soon as Sharon was fed and changed. Panting in the heavy damp of the late afternoon, he approached the chapel. It appeared nearly deserted. Only a gaggle of neighborhood kids playing on the baked clay out front, their shouts and cries mixing with the music of a single piano and the muffled sound of singing from inside. Mendelsohn paused, checking his notebook. Jimmy had said seven o’clock. Looking down the dirt road he saw several volunteers ambling toward the chapel, but hardly any blacks. Puzzled, he climbed the stairs and entered.
In the back of the room an elderly woman bent intently over an upright, out of tune, piano, playing and singing softly with two women companions, “Precious Lord, lead me on.” Mendelsohn scanned the rows of empty benches that added to the melancholy of the unadorned chapel. The only color in the room was the faded lettering of a Sunday school poster and an American flag that hung limply in the oppressive heat on the wall behind the podium. He sat down on a bench near the entrance, listening to the thrum of the ancient piano and the gentle singing of the three old women. Outside the two windows behind the lectern, the brilliance of the afternoon glare dimmed, turning first to rose, then to lavender. Mendelsohn’s eyes grew heavy. When the music stopped, he stirred and sat erect. The sky beyond the windows was turning to coal as the day expired. One of the women moved through the darkening room and switched on the naked bulbs in the ceiling. Surprised to see Mendelsohn, she nodded and murmured, “Good evening, suh.” She paused, then stepped closer. “Can ah help you?”
“No, thanks, I’m just waiting for the meeting to start. I was enjoying hearing you sing.”
She glanced at the window and nodded. “The meeting should be starting soon. Trucks from the fields came back about a half hour ago.”
When Mendelsohn stepped outside, Jimmy Mack was at the bottom of the steps, greeting the men and women of Shiloh who were filtering back from the fields or from the small houses down the dusky dirt roads. Jimmy had passed the word, summoning them to come to meet the volunteers who had just arrived, and they looked curiously at the group of northerners who waited just beyond the steps. Young! How young the volunteers looked! Some younger even than Jimmy.
“You know what you’re doin’, Mack?” a man asked, pausing at the door. “Look like some of ’em ain’t even shaved yet.”
Jimmy laughed. “They didn’t come all the way to Shiloh to shave, Munroe. They’re here to work.”
“Well, I ain’t seen this many whites this side of the highway since there was a raid on Huey Johnson’s still back in ’58. And these kids look like they not old enough to drink!”
Jimmy grinned. “Huey’s still is long gone, Munroe. Naw, they’re here to work, and we got a whole lot of work to do.”
Mendelsohn lingered at the chapel door after Jimmy and the volunteers had moved inside and down the narrow aisle, standing tentatively on either side of the platform. He noted that the older women, chatty and smiling, most at home in the chapel, had moved confidently to the front benches, stirring the heavy air with their funeral parlor fans. Behind them were most of the young women and girls, many in bright summer cottons, giggling and whispering as they stole glances at the boys who lingered restlessly at the entrance, not yet deciding to settle in. When Mr. Williams led his family into Sojourner Chapel the elderly men at the rear obligingly made room for the deacon.
Like the rest of the old men, Percy craned his neck to see the volunteers. “They’re Davids, come to slay Goliath,” Rennie had said to Percy on their walk to the church, but Mr. Williams frowned when he looked at the young whites, noting that only Mack and Dale Billings were Negroes. He’d never before seen whites in Sojourner Chapel. When the door closed behind him, Mendelsohn estimated there were perhaps 150 souls in the uncomfortably warm room.
The wide-eyed volunteers stood awkwardly, scanning the faces of these strangers they realized they must get to know. But . . . all these women? All these kids? Jesus! What do they think we can do? Where are the men? There was a hush of expectancy as Jimmy stepped to the podium. With a loud slap of his hands he sang out in his husky voice: “Go tell it on the mountain . . . ”
Startled, the crowd quickly responded: “Over the hills and everywhere!”
And now the clapping and singing soared as Jimmy brought the volunteers on to the platform with him, confidently exhorting the crowd: “Go tell it on the mountain . . . ”
Mendelsohn’s eyes misted, caught up with the wonder of this moment as every voice began to join in a sweet commonality not hinted at only minutes before. Here, in this wretchedly needy church, weary heads lifted and unbelieving eyes were shining. Filling the place with a joyous noise were the poorest of the poor and America’s most favored children, smiling at each other and shouting out, “To let my people go!”
Mendelsohn watched Jimmy Mack, who seemed to throb with aspiration and optimism, believing in himself, but even more believing in all of them, making them braver.
“These folks on the platform with me,” he cried out, “have left their own families to come to Shiloh because they think we are being cheated down here! They know, like you know, that we are being kept from registering to vote because Mr. Charley wants it that way!”
“Oh, yes!”
“And Mr. Charley’s going to try to put us down whenever we stand up and say out loud, ‘We want to have what other Americans have!’”
“That’s right! Preach, son!”
“Well Mr. Charley’s gonna have to stop all of these volunteers standing here when you go up the stairs at the courthouse to try to register because they’re going to be right with you. And then the whole country will know about it!” He paused, searching the audience until he spotted Mendelsohn and waved him forward. Making his way up the aisle to the platform, Mendelsohn saw a look of pride in Rennie Williams as she held up Sharon to see.
Jimmy said, “This is Ted Mendelsohn, and you’re gonna see a lot of him this summer. He’s a reporter from Washington and he’s here to tell the truth about Shiloh and the Delta, and what’s happening to brave folks like you that want to change things!”
By meeting’s end, each of the volunteers had been introduced to Shiloh, and the excited chatter of a new beginning seemed to follow them all as they began cascading out into the darkness.
The only light visible was across the highway at the Kilbrew gas station and Mendelsohn could see three men, silhouetted in the open door of the office, watching them exit Sojourner Chapel. Two cars idled at the entrance of the Kilbrew garage. Rennie Williams came down the chapel steps, carefully cradling Sharon, who was asleep in her arms. Mr. Williams followed behind. His head nodding, he stopped in front of Ted, meeting his eyes directly. “That was something I never saw before.” His voice was gentle but firm. “I’m seventy-one, Mr. Mendelsohn.”
The two idling cars suddenly raced their motors, wheeling to hurtle into the neighborhood. Screaming curses, the men in the cars hurled empty beer bottles at the lighted target of the open church door. Bottles crashed against the doorjamb, showering glass on the scattering crowd as Mr. Williams pushed Rennie and the baby to the safety of the darkened road. Ted saw them disappear behind a neighboring house. The summer volunteers froze at the door.
Jimmy yelled to Hollis Watkins, “Kill the lights!” Mendelsohn thought, There’s a smart kid, good reflexes he learned in Korea. In the sudden darkness they watched the tail-lights of the two cars disappear down the rutted road. Johnny Buckley led a weeping child and her terrified mother across the shattered glass to the sheltering darkness beyond the road, then trotted back to the wide-eyed volunteers, who made a ring around Jimmy. “Who, Jimmy? Rednecks? Klan?” The questions hung in the dark.
“Rednecks?