I tried to imagine referring to Louise as “black.” I didn’t think she’d like it. “Couldn’t it be seen as insulting?” I asked.
He surprised me by nodding. “Yes,” he said. “So I’m careful with it. I won’t use it with most of the folks we see. But I personally like the feel of it. The strength of it.”
We walked in silence for a while. I carried the packet with our canvassing paperwork and voting rights pamphlets, and I kept my gaze cast down on the road, not wanting to step in one of the ruts and twist an ankle. After a while, I spotted a small cluster of houses up ahead, maybe an eighth of a mile or so. Finally. A goal.
“I thought I knew how to do this, after all the role-playing and everything we did during orientation,” I admitted, “but it felt so awkward, talking to Mrs. Dawes about registering. They’re working so hard and it’s got to be the last thing on their minds. Plus, I just kind of popped the conversation on her. No buildup. No camel stories.”
He didn’t crack a smile. So serious, this guy. “We have to help them see that it needs to be the first thing on their minds to make their lives easier,” he said. “Think about the Dawes family. How would being able to vote help them?”
“This road,” I said. “This road is a mess.”
“That’s for sure,” Win said. “This doesn’t even qualify as a road. What else?”
“Electricity?”
“That would surely help. And you’re on the right track. You and I know that the right to vote will mean a better life for their kids in the future, but people need to see the concrete ways it can change their lives right now. Roads. Electricity. Plumbing. A decent minimum wage, that’s an important one. Huge.”
“They could vote Negroes … Black people … into office,” I said, trying out the word. “They could have better schools.”
“Now you’re cookin’ with gas,” he said. “You can see why white folks are afraid of Black folks getting the vote. They think they’ll lose power. Right now Blacks are dependent on the white man and that’s the way the white man wants it.” I heard anger behind the words.
“It shouldn’t be an ‘us versus them’ thing,” I said.
“Tell that to your white neighbors.”
For a moment, neither of us spoke. “You had a whole different way of talking to her than you do right now,” I said finally. I was awestruck by Win, the way he had two sides to him. He was like a chameleon, able to match whatever environment he was in.
He almost smiled, but not quite. Except for when he was talking to Mrs. Dawes about the camel, and occasionally when we sang freedom songs, I didn’t think I’d seen a smile out of him. “It helps to connect to people, talking their language,” he said.
“I don’t know how to do that,” I said.
“It’d be weird coming out of your mouth. You just be you—a well-intentioned rich white girl—and let me be me.”
I stopped walking. “That’s not fair,” I said, surprised and suddenly angry.
He stopped, too. Looked me in the eye from behind his horn-rimmed glasses. “No, I guess it wasn’t,” he said finally.
“That’s how you really feel, though?”
“Look, I’m part of SCOPE because of Dr. King,” he said, starting to walk again. “I met him through some friends and he said I was needed here. When Dr. King says he needs you, well, you do it. Whatever he says. But the longer I’m in this fight … this battle … the more I think it’s got to be a Black battle. So … there’s noble intentions here, I know that, and I know you’re here out of a good heart, right?”
I nodded.
“A good heart and wanting to do the right thing and make a difference and I’ve got to … I have to put my own … values … aside and do what I promised Dr. King I’d do. ‘Just give Hosea and me this summer,’ he said to me. So … Ellie…” My name came out of him slowly. “I apologize. It doesn’t matter if you’re white or Black or rich or poor or in between, we’re here to do the same work.”
“Yes,” I said. “We are.”
* * *
Win turned out to be an amazing teacher. I was awed by the way he switched his way of talking—his whole personality, really—as soon as we were greeted at the door. The way he picked up everyone’s language and their accents and the cadence in their sentences, from the first words out of their mouths. Some people were nervous, their eyes darting past us as if they were looking for their landlords who’d be angry to find them talking to us. Others invited us right into the house. Sat us down and gave us welcome lemonade or sweet tea to drink. I watched how Win connected to them. There was no way I could imitate him, but I found that if I asked questions about what problems they were dealing with without judgment or putting words in their mouths, people opened up. I knew it was only because I had Win at my side that they trusted me. His smile was genuine and it was clear that every woman we saw sort of melted when he spoke to them. That didn’t mean they agreed to register. Not at all. But by the time we stopped to eat—me, a fried chicken leg and hunk of corn bread Mrs. Dawes packed for me, and Win, a peanut butter sandwich—we had three yeses on our canvass sheet and a whole lot of maybes that Win told me meant no.
We sat in the shade of an old shed, batting away the gnats as we ate.
“They’re afraid of losing their jobs if their employers find out,” I said, parroting what I’d learned during orientation. I was anxious to show Win that I knew something.
“Exactly,” he said. “But a good many said they’d come to the protest, so that’s positive.”
My legs were stretched out in front of me and my feet were appallingly filthy. I knew that I was beginning to get a blister on my heel, but I would say nothing. Tomorrow, though, I’d wear my sneakers.
* * *
Our second day together found us surrounded by children—little ones who wanted to hold my hand as we walked and older kids who were drawn to Win’s transistor radio and the music on the Negro station. “My Girl” and “Shotgun,” and “I Can’t Help Myself.” The children turned out to be a real boon to our canvassing. They told us who lived where, how many kids in each family, what type of work the parents did, and often, what sort of problems were dragging them down.
By the time Win and I sat down in the shade of a tobacco barn to eat our lunch, we already had eight commitments to register on our canvass sheet.
“So how’s it going at the Daweses’ house?” Win asked as he freed his tomato sandwich from its wax paper wrapping.
I wasn’t sure how to answer. I could say “fine,” but I opted for the truth. “It’s hard to get used to,” I said. “The outhouse. No electric light at night. I’m sleeping in a bed with two little girls climbing all over me.” I had to admit that I’d slept incredibly well the night before, though, kids or no kids, after covering so much of Flint by foot.
“It’s the same at the house I’m in.” He took a long drink from the thermos he wore attached to his belt.