Admiration

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Collected Essays (1998)

  Every time you let the white man think you think segregation is right, you arc co-operating with him in doing evil. "The next time," he said, "the white man asks you what you think of segregation, you tell him, Mr. Charlie, I think it's wrong and I wish you'd do something about it by nine o'clock tomorrow morning!" This brought a wave of laughter and King smiled, too. But he had meant every word he said, and he expected his hearers to act on them. They also expected this of themselves, which MAR TIN LUTHER KING 645 is not the usual effect of a sermon; and that they are living up to their expectations no white man in Montgomery will deny. There was a dinner in the church basement afterwards, where, for the first time, I met Mrs. King-light brown, del icate, really quite beautiful, with a wonderful laugh-and watched young Martin circulating among church members and visitors. I overheard him explaining to someone that big otry was a disease and that the greatest victim of this disease was not the bigot's object, but the bigot himself And these people could only be saved by love . In lib erating oneself , one was also liberating them. I was shown, by someone else, the damage done to the church by bombs. King did not mention the bombing of his own home, and I did not bring it up. Late the next night, after a mass meeting in another church , I flew to Birmingham. I did not see King again for nearly three years. I saw him in Atlanta, just after his acquittal by a Montgomery court of charges of perjury, tax evasion, and misuse of public funds. He had moved to Atlanta and was co-pa stor, with his father, of his father's church . He had made this move, he told me, because the pressures on him took him away from Montgom ery for such exc essively long periods that he did not feel that he was properly fulfilling his ministerial duties there. An at tempt had been made on his lif e-in the North, by a myste rious and deranged Negro woman; and he was about to receive, in the state of Georgia, for driving without a resident driver's license, a suspended twelve -month sentence. And, since I had last seen him, the Negro student move ment had begun and was irresistibly bringing about great shifts and divisions in the Negro world, and in the nation. In short, by the time we met again, he was more beleaguered than he had ever been before, and not only by his enemies in the white South .

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  The enemy is not there, of course, but his soldiers are, in patrol cars, armed. And yet-I have been to Watts to give high-school lectures, for example, and these despised, maligned, and menaced chil dren have an alertness, an eagerness, and a depth which I certainly did not find in-or failed to elicit from-students at many splendid universities. The future leaders of this country (in principle, anyway) do not impress me as being the intel lectual equals of the most despised among us. I am not being vindictive when I say that, nor am I being sentimental or chauvinistic; and indeed the reason that this would be so is a very simple one. It is only very lately that white students, in the main, have had any reason to question the structure into which they were born; it is the very lateness of the hour, and their bewildered resentment-their sense of having been be trayed-which is responsible for their romantic excesses; and a young, white revolutionary remains, in general, far more romantic than a black one. For it is a very different matter, and results in a very different intelligence, to grow up under the necessity of questioning everything-everything, fr om the question of one's identity to the literal, brutal question of how to save one's life in order to begin to live it. White children, in the main, and whether they are rich or poor, grow up with a grasp of reality so feeble that they can very accurately be described as deluded-about themselves and the world they live in. White people have managed to get through entire life- 43 2 NO NAME IN THE STREET times in this euphoric state, but black people have not been so lucky: a black man who sees the world the way John Wayne, for example, sees it would not be an eccentric patriot, but a raving maniac. The reason tor this, at bottom, is that the doc trine of white supremacy, which still controls most white peo ple, is itself a stupendous delusion: but to be born black in America is an immediate, a mortal challenge. People who cling to their delusions find it difficult, if not impossible, to learn anything worth learning: a people under the necessity of cre ating themselves must examine everything, and soak up learn ing the way the roots of a tree soak up water. A people still held in bondage must believe that Ye shall know the truth, and the mtth shall make ye free. But, of course, what black people are also learning as they learn is the truth about white people: and that's the rub.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  Before the service began, I thought about all the time I had spent with Walter after he got out. Then the choir sang, and the preacher gave a rousing sermon. He spoke about Walter being pulled away from his family in the prime of his life by lies and bigotry. I told the congregation that Walter had become like a brother to me, that he was brave to trust his life to someone who was as young as I was then. I explained that we all owed Walter something because he had been threatened and terrorized, wrongly accused and wrongly condemned, but he never gave up. He survived the humiliation of his trial and the charges against him. He survived a guilty verdict, death row, and the wrongful condemnation of an entire state. While he did not survive without injury or trauma, he came out with his dignity. I told people that Walter had overcome what fear, ignorance, and bigotry had done to him. He had stood strong in the face of injustice, and his exonerated witness might just make the rest of us a little safer, slightly more protected from the abuse of power and the false accusations that had almost killed him. I suggested to his friends and family that Walter’s strength, resistance, and perseverance were a triumph worth celebrating, an accomplishment to be remembered. I felt the need to explain to people what Walter had taught me. Walter made me understand why we have to reform a system of criminal justice that continues to treat people better if they are rich and guilty than if they are poor and innocent. A system that denies the poor the legal help they need, that makes wealth and status more important than culpability, must be changed. Walter’s case taught me that fear and anger are a threat to justice; they can infect a community, a state, or a nation and make us blind, irrational, and dangerous. I reflected on how mass imprisonment has littered the national landscape with carceral monuments of reckless and excessive punishment and ravaged communities with our hopeless willingness to condemn and discard the most vulnerable among us. I told the congregation that Walter’s case had taught me that the death penalty is not about whether people deserve to die for the crimes they commit. The real question of capital punishment in this country is, Do we deserve to kill?

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  Hucy and I were supposed to meet again one afternoon, but something happened and Huey couldn't make it. Shortly thereafter Gloria and I returned to New York; eventually we received a phone call tr om a triend, telling us what had hap pened to Huey. Gloria's reaction was, first-"That nice boy!" and then a sombre, dry, bitter, "At least he isn't dead." Many months later, I went to sec him, with Charles Garry, his lawyer, and some other journalists, in the Alameda County Courthouse. 1 remember it as being a hot day; the little room in which we sat was very crowded. Huey looked somewhat thinner and paler than when we had first met, but he was very good-natured and lucid. Huey is a hard man to describe. People surrounded by leg end rarely look the parts they've been assigned, bur, in Huey's case, the Great Casting Director decided to blow everybody's mind. Hucy looks like the cleanest, most scrubbed, most well bred of adolescents-everybody's tavoritc baby-sitter. He is old-t:1 shioncd in the most remarkable sense, in that he treats everyone with respect, especially his elders. One can see him almost-a few years hence working quietly ti. >r a law firm, say, able but not distinguished, with a pretty wite and a couple of sturdy children, smoking a pipe, living peacefully in a more or less integrated suburb. I say "almost" because the moment one tries to place him in any ordinary, respectable setting something goes wrong with the picture, leaving a space where one had thought to place Huey. There is in him a dedication as gcntle as it is unyielding, absolutely single-minded. I began to realize this when I realized that Huey was always listening TO BE BAPTIZED 461 and always watching. �o doubt he can be fooled, he's human, though he certainly can't be fooled easily; but it would be a Yery great mistake to try to lie to him. Those eyes take in everything, and behind the juvenile smile, he keeps a compli cated scoreboard. It has to be complicated. That day, for ex ample, he was dealing with the press, with photographers, with his lawyer, with me, with prison regulations, with his notoriety in the prison, with the latest pronouncements of Police Chief Gain, with the shape of the terror speedily en gulfing his friends and co-workers, and he was also, after all, at that moment, standing in the shadow of the gas chamber. Anyone, under such circumstances, can be pardoned for be ing rattled or e\·en rude, but Huey was beautiful, and spoke with perfect candor of what was on his mind. Huey belie,·es, and I do, too, in the necessity of establishing a form of so cialism in this country-what Bobby Seale would probably call a "Yankee-Doodle type" socialism. This means an indigenous socialism, formed by, and responding to, the real needs of the American people.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  Consider that we may all have learned, by now, all that we can learn from you and may not want to become like you. At this hour of the world's history it may be that you, now, have something to learn tr om us. I must add, in honor, that I write to you because I love our country: And you, in my lifetime, are the only president to whom I would have written. The New Ym·k Times, January 23, 1977 Last of the Great Masters THE WoRLD oF EARL HINES B;• Staulcy Dance. Illustrated. 324 pp. New York: CIJades Scribne1''s Sons. Cloth, $rs.9s. Paper, $1 .95. T ONI MoRRISON, that handsome and perceptive lady, once remarked that, in spite of all the other elements which more immediately meet the eye, she was struck by the quantity of "sheer intelligence" which went into the forging of black life in America-without which "intelligence," sim ply, none of us would have survived. Similarly, while reading Earl "Fatha" Hines's vast and beautiful document, I am struck by the sheer generosity of the man, and the people he lived with, whom he shares with us. Hines is describing hard trials, good times, bad times, narrow escapes-but the book is never petty or mean and never bitter. Such generosity may also be a function of the intelligence; it gives life, certainly, heals, and saves. In "The World of Earl Hines," Stanley Dance, the British jazz critic and author of "The World of Duke Ellington" and "The World of Swing," has compiled Earl Hines's taped rec ord of his life and music. It is an oral history-spanning 7 2 years, from Hines's birth in Duquesne, Pa., through his rise to prominence as a pianist, singer and bandleadcr in the 1920's, his "rcdiscovciy" in the late so's, and on to his present acclaim as "the last of the great masters." Complementing Hines's own words arc Dance's interviews with other jazz greats who knew and played with Hines; Dizzy Gillespie, Teddy Wilson, Budd Johnson and Billy Eckstinc arc among those who give their impressions of "Fatha." But it is diflicult to assess or discuss so loaded and tremen dous a record. It is impossible to do justice to a book in which one meets King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Valaida Snow, Duke Ellington, Count Basic, Benny Goodman, Dizzy Gillespie, Nat Cole, Sarah Vaughan, Ethel Waters ("she used some lan guage I won't usc here") Ella Fitzgerald (on opening nights, "a nervous wreck"), Charlie Parker ("It was too bad he got 770 LAST OF THE GREAT MASTERS 771 mixed up with the wrong crowd. He was a fine boy and there was nothing wrong with him at all when it came to his char acter. All the harm he did he did to himself.") And Jack Tea garden and Johnny Hodges, and Joe Louis, and the dapper Billy Eckstine taking very literally a Southern cafe owner's warning: "You can't drink it in here."

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  I answer that, Although in some respect one or other of the prophets was greater than Moses, yet Moses was simply the greatest of all. For, as stated above [3687](A[3]; Q[171], A[1]), in prophecy we may consider not only the knowledge, whether by intellectual or by imaginary vision, but also the announcement and the confirmation by miracles. Accordingly Moses was greater than the other prophets. First, as regards the intellectual vision, since he saw God’s very essence, even as Paul in his rapture did, according to Augustine (Gen. ad lit. xii, 27). Hence it is written (Num. 12:8) that he saw God “plainly and not by riddles.” Secondly, as regards the imaginary vision, which he had at his call, as it were, for not only did he hear words, but also saw one speaking to him under the form of God, and this not only while asleep, but even when he was awake. Hence it is written (Ex. 33:11) that “the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a man is wont to speak to his friend.” Thirdly, as regards the working of miracles which he wrought on a whole nation of unbelievers. Wherefore it is written (Dt. 34:10,11): “There arose no more a prophet in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face: in all the signs and wonders, which He sent by him, to do in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh, and to all his servants, and to his whole land.” Reply to Objection 1: The prophecy of David approaches near to the vision of Moses, as regards the intellectual vision, because both received a revelation of intelligible and supernatural truth, without any imaginary vision. Yet the vision of Moses was more excellent as regards the knowledge of the Godhead; while David more fully knew and expressed the mysteries of Christ’s incarnation. Reply to Objection 2: These signs of the prophets mentioned were greater as to the substance of the thing done; yet the miracles of Moses were greater as regards the way in which they were done, since they were wrought on a whole people. Reply to Objection 3: John belongs to the New Testament, whose ministers take precedence even of Moses, since they are spectators of a fuller revelation, as stated in 2 Cor. 3. Whether there is a degree of prophecy in the blessed?Objection 1: It would seem that there is a degree of prophecy in the blessed. For, as stated above [3688](A[4]), Moses saw the Divine essence, and yet he is called a prophet. Therefore in like manner the blessed can be called prophets. Objection 2: Further, prophecy is a “divine revelation.” Now divine revelations are made even to the blessed angels. Therefore even blessed angels can be prophets.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  Then came in a great multitude of faire maidens: on the one side were the most comely Graces: on the other side, the most beautifull Houres carrying garlands and loose flowers, and making great honor to the goddesse of pleasure; the flutes and Pipes yeelded out the sweet sound of Lydians, whereby they pleased the minds of the standers by exceedingly, but the more pleasing Venus mooved forward more and more, and shaking her head answered by her motion and gesture, to the sound of the instruments. For sometimes she would winke gently, sometimes threaten and looke aspishly, and sometimes dance onely with her eyes: As soone as she was come before the Judge, she made a signe and token to give him the most fairest spouse of all the world, if he would prefer her above the residue of the goddesses. Then the young Phrygian shepheard Paris with a willing mind delivered the golden Apple to Venus, which was the victory of beauty.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  This done he perswaded me to depart, and sayd that onely shame and reproach done unto the old Caitife did suffice him, So I went away amazed and astonied, towards the Baines, considering with myself and devising of the grace of my companion Pythias. Where when I had well washed and refreshed my body, I returned againe to Milos house, both without money and meat, and so got into my chamber. Then came Fotis immediately unto mee, and said that her master desired me to come to supper. But I not ignorant of Milos abstinence, prayed that I might be pardoned since as I thought best to ease my wearied bones rather with sleepe and quietnesse, than with meat. When Fotis had told this to Milo, he came himselfe and tooke mee by the hand, and while I did modestly excuse my selfe, I will not (quoth he) depart from this place, until such time as you shall goe with me: and to confirm the same, hee bound his words with an oath, whereby he enforced me to follow him, and so he brought me into his chamber, where hee sate him downe upon the bed, and demaunded of mee how his friend Demeas did, his wife, his children, and all his family: and I made answer to him every question, specially hee enquired the causes of my peregrination and travell, which when I had declared, he yet busily demanded of the state of my Countrey, and the chief magistrates there, and principally of our Lievtenant and Viceroy; who when he perceived that I was not only wearied by travell, but also with talke, and that I fell asleep in the midst of my tale, and further that I spake nothing directly or advisedly, he suffered me to depart to my chamber. So scaped I at length from the prating and hungry supper of this rank old man, and being compelled by sleepe and not by meat, and having supped only with talke, I returned into my chamber, and there betooke me to my quiet and long desired rest. THE SECOND BOOKE THE EIGHTH CHAPTER How Apuleius fortuned to meet with his Cousin Byrrhena.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  To be a citizen means that you have the rights of a citizen. If you haven't got the rights of a citi zen, then you're not a citizen." "It 's not as simple as that," the boy said. "Why not?" asked Malco lm. I was, in some way, in those years, without entirely realizing it, the Great Black Hope of the Great White Father. I was not a racist-so I thought; Malcolm was a racist, so he thought. In tact, we were simply trapped in the same situation, as poor Martin was later to discover (who, in those days, did not talk to Malcolm and was a little nervous with me). As the GBH of the GWF, anyway, I appeared on a television program, TO BE BAP TIZED 411 along with Malcolm and several other hopes, including Mr. George S. Schuyler. It was pretty awful. If I had ever hoped to become a racist, Mr. Schuyler dashed my hopes forever, then and there. I can scarcely discuss this program except to say that Malcolm and I very quickly dismissed Mr. Schuyler and virtually everyone else, and, as the old street rats and the heirs of Baptist ministers, played the program off each other. Nothing could have been more familiar to me than Malcolm 's style in debate. I had heard it all my lif e. It was vehemently non-s top and Malcolm was young and looked younger; this caused his opponents to suppose that Malcolm was reckless. Nothing could have been less reckless, more cal culated, even to those loopholes he so often left dangling. These were not loopholes at all, but hangman's knots, as who ever rushed for the loophole immediately discovered. When ever this happened, the strangling interlocutor invariably looked to me, as being the more "reasonable," to say some thing which would loosen the knot. Mr. Schuyler often did say something, but it was always the wrong thing, giving Malcolm yet another opportunity. All I could do was elabo rate on some of Malcolm's points, or modifY, or emphasize, or seem to try to clarify, but there was no way I could disagree with him. The others were discussing the past or the future, or a country which may once have existed, or one which may yet be brought into existence-Malcolm was speaking of the bitter and unanswerable present. And it was too important that this be heard for anyone to attempt to soften it. It was important, of course, for white people to hear it, if they were still able to hear; but it was of the utmost importance for black people to hear it, for the sake of their morale. It was important for them to know that there was someone like them, in public lif e, telling the truth about their condition.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  Their fights came out of that, their laughter came out of that, their curses, their tears, their decisions, their sp menaced loves, their courage, and even their cowardice-and perhaps espe cially the stunning and unexpected changes they could play on these so related strings-their music, their dancing: it all came from the center. "No," said an elderly black man, stand ing in front of his barber shop, "I don't believe I'll join this voting registration drive. You sec, I only cut the white folks' hair in here, and they'll close me up." He was very tall; as he said this, he seemed to be looking up at me, a physical im possibility; he had been bowing so long, my brother said, that his head would never be straight on his neck again. Yet, there he stood, a gnarled old tree, and the authority of his response made it impossible to question his decision: he may have been planning to cut a white man's throat one day. If I had been TAKE ME TO THE WATER 39 3 white, I certainly would never have allowed him anywhere near me with a razor in his hand. Most white men, by com parison, seemed to be barely shuffling along, and one always doubted whatever they said, because one realized that they doubted it themselves. As far as personal authority went, one could imagine that their shriveled faces were an exact indica tion of how matters were with them below the belt. And the women were worse-proof� if proof were needed: nowhere in the world have I encountered women so blighted, and blighted so soon. It began to seem to me, indeed, not entirely fr ivolously, that the only thing which prevented the South fr om being an absolutely homosexual community was, pre cisely, the reverberating absence of men. One could not be in any Southern community for long and not be confronted with the question of what a man is, should do, or become. The world in which we live is, after all, a reflection of the desires and activities of men. We are respon sible for the world in which we find ourselves, if only because we are the only sentient force which can change it. What brought this question to the front of my mind, of course, was the fact that so many of the black men I talked to in the South in those years were-1 can find no other word for them heroic. I don't want to be misunderstood as having fallen into an easy chauvinism when I say that: but I don't see how any observer of the Southern scene in those years can have arrived at any other judgment. Their heroism was to be found less in large things than in small ones, less in public than in private.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  And it must have demanded great steadiness of mind, as well as great love, to hide so successfully from his children the evidence of these battles. And, since salvation, humanly speaking, is a two-way street, I suggest that, if the father saved the children, it was, almost equally, the chil dren who saved him. It would seem that he was able, with rare success, to project onto his children, or at least onto one of them, a sense of lif e as he himself would have liked to live it, OTH ER ES SAYS and somehow made real in their personalities principles on which he himself must often have found it ext remely danger ous and difficult to act. Martin, Sr. is regarded with great ambivalence by both the admirers and detractors of his son, and I shall, alas, shortly have more to say concerning his gen eration; but I do not think that the enormous achievement sketched above can possibly be taken away from him. Again, young Martin's decision to become a minister has everything to do with his temperament, tor he seems always to have been characterized by his striking mixture of steadi ness and peace. He apparently did the normal amount of cry ing in his childhood, tor I am told that his grandmother "couldn't stand to sec it." But he seems to have done very little complaining; when he was spanked, "he just stood there and took it"; he seems to have been incapable of carrying grudges; and when he was attacked, he did not strike back. From King's own account, I can only guess that this deci sion was aided by the fact that, at Morehouse College, he was asked to lead the devotions. The relationship thus established between himself and his contemporaries, or between himself and himself� or between himself and God, seemed to work for him as no other had. Also, I think it is of the utmost impor tance to realize that King loves the South; many Negroes do. The ministry seems to atlord him the best possible vehicle for the expression of that love . At that time in his lif e, he was discovering "the beauty of the South"; he sensed in the peo ple "a new determination"; and he felt that there was a need for "a new, courageous witness."

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  Those who remained continued to work the land, but the out-migration of African Americans combined with other factors to make traditional agriculture less sustainable as the economic base of the region. By the 1950s, small cotton farming was becoming increasingly less profitable, even with the low-wage labor provided by black sharecroppers and tenants. The State of Alabama agreed to help white landowners in the region transition to timber farming and forest products by providing extraordinary tax incentives for pulp and paper mills. Thirteen of the state’s sixteen pulp and paper mills were opened during this period. Across the Black Belt, more and more acres were converted to growing pine trees for paper mills and industrial uses. African Americans, largely excluded from this new industry, found themselves confronting new economic challenges even as they won basic civil rights. The brutal era of sharecropping and Jim Crow was ending, but what followed was persistent unemployment and worsening poverty. The region’s counties remained some of the poorest in America. Walter was smart enough to see the trend. He started his own pulpwood business that evolved with the timber industry in the 1970s. He astutely—and bravely—borrowed money to buy his own power saw, tractor, and pulpwood truck. By the 1980s, he had developed a solid business that didn’t generate a lot of extra money but afforded him a gratifying degree of independence. If he had worked at the mill or the factory or had had some other unskilled job—the kind that most poor black people in South Alabama worked—it would invariably mean working for white business owners and dealing with all the racial stress that that implied in Alabama in the 1970s and 1980s. Walter couldn’t escape the reality of racism, but having his own business in a growing sector of the economy gave him a latitude that many African Americans did not enjoy. That independence won Walter some measure of respect and admiration, but it also cultivated contempt and suspicion, especially outside of Monroeville’s black community. Walter’s freedom was, for some of the white people in town, well beyond what African Americans with limited education were able to achieve through legitimate means. Still, he was pleasant, respectful, generous, and accommodating, which made him well liked by the people with whom he did business, whether black or white. Walter was not without his flaws. He had long been known as a ladies’ man. Even though he had married young and had three children with his wife, Minnie, it was well known that he was romantically involved with other women. “Tree work” is notoriously demanding and dangerous.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  Michael had stayed long past the two years he had committed to us, but he was now scheduled to move to San Diego to start a job as a federal public defender. He agonized about leaving our office, although he was less conflicted about leaving Alabama. I assigned one of our new attorneys, Bernard Harcourt, to replace Michael on Walter’s case. Bernard was a lot like Michael in that he was smart, determined, and extremely hardworking. He had first worked with me when he was a law student at Harvard Law School. He became so engaged in the work that he asked the federal judge he was clerking for after law school if he could cut short his two-year clerkship to join us in Alabama. The judge agreed, and Bernard arrived shortly before Michael left. Raised in New York City by French parents, he had attended the Lycée Français de New York in Manhattan, a high school that was unapologetic about its European perspective on education. After graduating from Princeton, Bernard worked in banking before pursuing his law degree. He had been preparing for a traditional legal career until he came down to work with us one summer and became fascinated by the issues that death penalty cases presented. He and his girlfriend, Mia, moved to Montgomery and were intrigued by life in Alabama. Bernard’s quick immersion in the McMillian case intensified his cultural adventure more than he could have ever imagined. The community’s presence at the hearing got people talking about what we had presented in court, and that encouraged more people to come forward with helpful information. All sorts of people were contacting us with wide-ranging claims of corruption and misconduct. Only a few things here and there were useful to us in our efforts to free Walter, but all of it was interesting. Bernard and I continued to track leads and interview people who had insights to share about life in Monroe County. The threats we received made me worry about the hostility that Walter would face if he was ever released. I wondered how safely he could live in the community if everyone was persuaded that he was a dangerous murderer. We began discussing the idea of reaching out to a few people who might help us publicly dramatize the injustice of Mr. McMillian’s wrongful conviction as a way of setting the stage for his possible release. If the public could only know what we knew, it might ease his re-entry into freedom. We wanted people to understand this simple fact: Walter did not commit that murder. His freedom wouldn’t be based on some tricky legal loophole or the exploitation of a technicality. It would be based on simple justice—he was an innocent man.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  The cases generated a lot of national media attention. When we filed our brief in the U.S. Supreme Court, national organizations joined us and filed amicus briefs urging the Court to rule in our favor. We received support from the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Bar Association, the American Medical Association, former judges, former prosecutors, social workers, civil rights groups, human rights groups, even some victims’ rights groups. Former juvenile offenders who had later become well-known public figures filed supporting documents, including very conservative politicians like former U.S. senator Alan Simpson from Wyoming. Simpson had spent eighteen years in the Senate, including ten as the Republican whip, the second-ranking senator in his party. He had also been a former juvenile felon. He had been adjudicated as a juvenile delinquent when he was seventeen, for multiple convictions for arson, theft, aggravated assault, gun violence, and, finally, assaulting a police officer. He later confessed: “I was a monster.” His life didn’t begin to change until he found himself imprisoned in “a sea of puke and urine” following another arrest. Senator Simpson knew firsthand that you cannot judge a person’s full potential by his juvenile misconduct. Another brief was filed on behalf of former child soldiers whose terrifying behavior after being forced into violent African militias made the crimes of our clients seem much less aggravated by comparison. Yet these former child soldiers, rescued from their armies, had mostly recovered and been widely embraced at American colleges and universities, where many of them had thrived. In November 2009, after the briefs were filed in Joe’s case and the Graham case, I went to Washington for my third U.S. Supreme Court oral argument. There was a lot more media attention and national news coverage than in any of my earlier cases. The Court was packed. There were hundreds of people outside the Court as well. A wide assortment of children’s rights advocates, lawyers, and mental health experts were watching closely when we asked the Court to declare life-without-parole sentences imposed on children unconstitutional. During the argument, the Court was feisty, and it was impossible to predict what the justices were going to do. I told the Court that the United States is the only country in the world that imposes life imprisonment without parole sentences on children. I explained that condemning children violates international law, which bans these sentences for children. We showed the Court that these sentences are disproportionately imposed on children of color. We argued that the phenomenon of life sentences imposed on children is largely a result of harsh punishments that were created for career adult criminals and were never intended for children—which made the imposition of such a sentence on juveniles like Terrance Graham and Joe Sullivan unusual. I also told the Court that to say to any child of thirteen that he is fit only to die in prison is cruel. I had no way of knowing if the Court had been persuaded.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  And I think we need each other, and have much to learn trom each other, and, more than ever, now. Hucy and I were supposed to meet again one afternoon, but something happened and Hu ey couldn't make it. Shortly thereafter Gloria and I returned to New York; eventually we received a phone call trom a triend, telling us what had hap pened to Hu ey. Gloria's reaction was, first-"That nice boy!" and then a sombre, dry, bitter, "At least he isn't dead." Many months later, I went to sec him, with Charles Garry, his lawyer, and some other journalists, in the Alameda County Courthouse. 1 remember it as being a hot day; the lit tle room in which we sat was very crowded. Hu ey looked somewhat thinner and paler than when we had first met, but he was very good-natured and lucid. Hu ey is a hard man to describe. People surrounded by leg end rarely look the parts they've been assigned, bur, in Hue y's case, the Great Casting Director decided to blow everybody's mind. Hucy looks like the cleanest, most scrubbed, most well bred of adolescents-everybody's tavoritc baby-si tter. He is old -t :1 shioncd in the most remarkable sense, in that he treats everyone with respect, especially his elders. One can see him al most-a few years hence working quietly ti.>r a law firm, say, able but not distinguished, with a pretty wite and a couple of sturdy children, smoking a pipe, living peacef ully in a more or less integrated suburb. I say "almost" because the moment one tries to place him in any ordinary, respectable setting something goes wrong with the picture, leaving a space where one had thought to place Hu ey. There is in him a dedication as gcntle as it is unyielding, absolutely single-minded. I began to realize this when I realized that Huey was always listening TO BE BAPTI ZED 461 and always watching. �o doubt he can be fooled, he's hu man, though he certainly can't be fooled easily; but it would be a Yery great mistake to try to lie to him. Those eyes take in everything, and behind the juvenile smile, he keeps a compli cated scoreboard.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  Diana Ross, clearly, respected Billie too much to try to imitate her. She picks up on Billie's beat, and, for the rest, uses herself, with a moving humility and candor, to create a portrait of a woman overwhelmed by the circum stances of her lite. This is not exactly Billie Holiday, but it is the role as written, and she docs much more with it than the script deserves. So docs Billy Dec, in the absolutely impossible role of Louis McKay, and so does Richard Pryor, in a role CHAPTER THREE 557 which appears to have been dreamed up by a nostalgic, aging jazz aficionado. The film begins at the end, more or less: titles over, we watch a series of sepia stills of Billie being fingerprinted, and thrown, alone, into a padded cell . We pick up, then, on a gawky colored girl, alone in the streets of Harlem. She has been sent by her mother to a rooming house, which turns out to be a whorehouse. She does not stay there long-packs her bags, and gets dressed, in fact, as a particularly horny and vocal client is getting undressed. She has seen Louis in this estab lishment, or elsewhere: in any case, she has seen him. Sh e later meets him again, in a dive where she is one of the singers, and where the singer is expected to pick up money off the tables with her, ah, sexual equipment. Billie cannot do this, which has its effect on the two men in her lif e, Louis, and Piano Man (Richard Pryor). It is at this point that Piano Man dubs her "Lady," and it is at this point that she has her first date with Louis. A few frames later, she is the black singer with a white band, touring the South. (Bi llie went on the road with Artie Shaw, but the fil m version of this adventure is not in Billie's book.) On the road, she encounters the Ku Klux Klan, and sees a lynching. One of the members of the band has been offering her drugs, but she has always refused. After the lynching-an image, and a moment, to which we shall return-she succumbs to the friendly pusher, and returns to New York, hooked. Louis tries to get her off drugs, but docs not succeed. Desperate for a fix, she pulls a razor on him, to force him to give her her works; after which he asks her to leave his house. Her mother dies, she gets busted-! think, in that order-Louis returns, and helps bring her back to the living. He also realizes that she needs her career, and helps her to begin again.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  He wants, or seems to want, everything and practically everybody; in another sense, and at the same time, he needs no one at all; and families, fr iends, and lovers find this extremely hard to take. While he is alive, his work is fatally entangled with his personal fo rtunes and misfortunes, his personality, and the social facts and at titudes of his time. The unadmitted relief, then, of which I spoke has to do with a certain drop in the intensity of our bewilderment, fo r the baffling creator no longer stands be tween us and his works. He does not, but many other things do, above all our own preoccupations. In the case of Richard Wright, dead in Paris at fifty-two, the fact that he worked during a bewildering and demoralizing era in Western history makes a proper assess ment of his work more difficult. In Eight Men, the earliest story, "The Man Who Saw the Flood," takes place in the deep South and was first published in 1937. One of the two 2 4 7 NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME previously unpublished stories in the book, "Man, God Ain't Like That," begins in Mrica, achieves its hideous resolution in Paris, and brings us, with an ironical and fitting grimness, to the threshold of the 196o's. It is because of this story, which is remarkable, and "Man of All Work," which is a masterpiece, that I cannot avoid fe eling that Wright, as he died, was ac quiring a new tone, and a less uncertain esthetic distance, and a new depth. Shortly after we learned of Richard Wright's death, a Negro woman who was re-reading Native Son told me that it meant more to her now than it had when she had first read it. This, she said, was because the specific social climate which had produced it, or with which it was identified, seemed archaic now, was fading from our memories. Now, there was only the book itself to deal with, for it could no longer be read, as it had been read in 1940, as a militant racial manifesto. Today's racial manifestoes were being written very differently, and in many different languages; what mattered about the book now was how accurately or deeply the life of Chicago's South Side had been conveyed. I think that my friend may prove to be right. Certainly, the two oldest stories in this book, "The Man Who Was Almost a Man," and "The Man Who Saw the Flood," both Depres sion stories, both occurring in the South, and both, of course, about Negroes, do not seem dated. Perhaps it is odd, but they did not make me think of the 19 3 0's, or even, particularly, of Negroes. They made me think of human loss and helplessness.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  It is rare that one lilus a world-tamous man-by the time they be come world-tamous they rarely like themselves, which may account for this antipathy. Yet King is immediately and tre mendously winning, there is really no other word for it; and there he stood, with an inquiring and genuine smile on his face, in the open door of his hotel room. Behind him, on a desk, was a wilderness of paper. He looked at his fr i end, he looked at me, I was introduced; he smiled and shook my hand and we entered the room. I do not remember much about that first meeting because I was too overwhelmed by the tact that I was meeting him at all. There were millions of questions that I wanted to ask him, but I feared to begin. Besides, his tr iend had warned me not to "bug" him, I was not there in a professional capacity, and the questions I wanted to ask him had less to do with his public role than with his private lite. When I say "private life" I am not rdcrring to those maliciously juicy tidbits, those meaningless details, which clutter up the gossip columns and muddy everybody's mind and obliterate the humanity of the subject as well as that of the reader. I wanted to ask him how MARTIN LUTHER KING 639 it felt to be standing where he stood, how he bore it, what complex of miracles had prepared him for it. But such ques tions can scarcely be asked, they can scarcely be answered. And King docs not like to talk about himself. I have de scribed him as winning, but he docs not give the impression of being particularly outgoing or warm. His restraint is not, on the other hand, of that icily uneasy, nerve-racking kind to be encountered in so many famous Negroes who have allowed their aspirations and notoriety to destroy their identities and who always seem to be giving an uncertain imitation of some extremely improbable white man. No, King impressed me then and he impresses me now as a man solidly anchored in those spiritual realities concerning which he can be so elo quent. This divests him of the hideous piety which is so prev alent in his profession, and it also saves him from the ghastly self-importance which until recently, was all that allowed one to be certain one was addressing a Negro leader. King cannot be considered a chauvinist at all, not even incidentally, or part of the time, or under stress, or subconsciously.

• From Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition (2004)

  197 divided by a caesura, but the half-lines show much more variability than do those of Beowulf or Roland. One may encounter half-lines of as few as 4 syllables or as many as 14. The most common pattern is 6 to 8 syllables per half-line. Like Roland, the half-lines depend on assonance, with the assonating vowels running through a laisse but not carrying over to the next one. The narrative of the poem runs straight through with very little in the way of asides or fl ashbacks, although the poet often stops to say, “Now I have to tell you about this…” without, thereby, turning back in time. The action, again like Roland, slows down and speeds up, but the poet here rarely uses parallel or similar laisses to create the effect of multiple points of view on a given event. The story revolves around two overlapping plots. The fi rst plot concerns the Cid’s exile and rehabilitation. The second plot concerns the marriages of the Cid’s daughters. As we have it, the Poema is divided into three cantares (“songs”): (1) the cantar of exile, (2) the cantar of marriage, and (3) the cantar of the outrage of Corpes. The cantares and the basic plot structure do not jibe. The cantares may be how much of the poem was sung at a given time. Again as with Roland, the poem was meant for oral presentation, but we have no music telling us what it sounded like. The poet’s (Per Abbat’s?) story of Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar may be summarized as follows. As the poem opens, Rodrigo is departing Castile for his exile. He accepts his unjust fate with dignity and resignation. People profess their love and admiration for him but tell him that they cannot help him because of the king’s edict. The Cid crosses into Muslim territory, takes a few frontier cities, and begins a set of brilliant campaigns against Muslim princes in the east of Spain (the Levante). His initial band of 60 or so followers swells to several thousand. After every battle, the Cid generously shares the spoils and makes his followers rich and famous. Several times, he sends The poet wanted to encourage honorable Christian soldiers to enlist in the war against Muslims instead of indulging their taste for court politics and a life of leisure.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  I hitchhiked, in sub�zero weather, out of what I will alw ays remember as one of the lowest and most obscene circles of Hell, into Manhattan: where both Beauford and Miss Anderson were on hand to inform me that I had no right to permit myself to be defined by so pitiful a people. Not only was I not born to be a slave: I was not born to hope to become the equal of the slave -m aster. They had, the mas ters, incontestably, the rope-in time, with enough, they would hang themselves with it. They were not to hang me: I was to sec to that. If Beauford and Miss Anderson were a part of my inheritance, I was a part of their hope. OTH ER ES SAYS l still remember Miss Anderson, at the end of that concert, in a kind of smoky yellow gown, her skin copper and tan, roses in the air about her, roses at her feet. Beauford painted it, an enormous painting, he fixed it in time, for me, forever, and he painted it, he said, for me. Beauford was the first walking, living proof, for me, that a black man could be an artist. In a warmer time, a less blas phemous place, he would have been recognized as my Master and l as his Pupil. He became, f(>r me, an example of courage and integrity, humility and passion. An absolute integrity: I saw him shaken many times and I lived to sec him broken but I never saw him bow. His example operated as an enormous protection: for the Village, then, and not only for a boy like me, was an alabaster maze perched above a boiling sea. To lose oneself in the maze was to f.1 ll into the sea. One saw it around one all the time: a famous poet of the twenties and thirties grotesquely, shame lessly, cadging drinks, another relic living in isolation on opium and champagne, someone your own age suddenly strung out or going under a subway train, people you ate with and drank with suddenly going home and blowing their brains out or turning on the gas or leaping out of the window. And, racially, the Village was vicious, partly because of the natives, largely because of the tourists, and absolutely because of the cops. Very largely, then, because of Beauford and Connie Wil liams, a beautiful black lady trom Trinidad who ran the res taurant in which I was a waiter, and the jazz musicians I loved and who referred to me, with a kind of exasperated affection, as "the kid," I was never entirely at the mercy of an environ ment at once hostile and seductive.