If I married Guy, he could help fill it. But whenever he pressed about our getting married, I put him off, not wanting to discuss it. Despite his liberal outlook and supposed understanding of what I experienced as a black person, I knew he could have no true understanding of my world. He had never walked in a black person’s shoes. He did not understand that my concern was not only about marrying him, but having children with him, children who would be mixed-race. My cousin Suzella had been mixed-race. Her father was Mama’s nephew and her mother was a white woman, mostly an unheard-of thing to me when I was a child. Things had been tough for Suzella, and more than once she denied her own heritage. I didn’t want that for my child.
I spoke to a colored woman married to a white lawyer in the firm. He was British, she was from Alabama, and they had four children. I asked her how having parents of two races affected their children. She was straightforward about it. “Sometimes it’s harder than hell,” she said. “Sometimes when they make a white friend at their school, the white parents don’t want their children socializing with them. They get along better with colored children most of the time, but then there are those times when colored children turn on them too, beat them up, say they’re acting uppity, think they’re better than the rest of the colored kids because they look so white, straight hair, light skin. It’s not an easy road, Cassie. You have to be willing to sacrifice for a marriage like mine, and your children will have to sacrifice right along with you. You have to be mighty in love to take it on. My advice? Don’t marry this man unless you’re willing to take it on.”
That was the thing. I didn’t know if I could take it on. The family would not have understood. Even though our family was racially mixed, that racial mixing had come during the days of slavery, when black people had little to no say about what happened to our bodies. We had no choice with whom we had relations; sexual relations were forced upon us. Both Papa’s father and Mama’s father had white fathers. Grandpa Paul-Edward’s mother, Deborah, was the child of a black slave woman, Emmaline, and a Choctaw Indian, Kanati. There was black-Indian heritage on Mama’s side of the family too. But now, despite all this racial mixing, we were expected to stick to our own race, and Stacey had made that very clear. I had so-called succeeded in a white world, but if I stepped outside the bounds of what the family and the community expected of me, I would betray them both. I would be a traitor to all the values they taught.
In addition to all the problems involved with interracial marriage, marriage between the races was illegal in the Deep South states, and a person could be jailed for it. So, I vacillated between making a commitment to Guy and totally breaking off the relationship. But I didn’t want to lose Guy. Since I had come to Boston, Guy had been such an important part of my life; it was difficult for me to imagine it without him. There had been a time I could not have imagined life without Flynn either, but when he died, somehow I managed to live. Still, every time Guy asked me about marrying him, I told him it would have to wait; for now, I just wanted to continue as we were. Reluctantly, he accepted that.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
It was almost midnight when Stacey called. “Cassie,” he said, “Rie’s in jail.”
“What?”
“That sit-in today, you hear about it?”
“No . . . I was tied up at the office all day working on a case. Didn’t get home ’til late. What happened?”
“Hundreds of college students were protesting down there in Atlanta. Police came, arrested a bunch of them. Rie was one. I’m headed down there now. Man’s going with me to help on the drive. Need you to meet me there, help get her out.”
Without hesitation, I said, “I’ll check the planes. I’ll be down in the morning.” Stacey told me where they were holding Rie. “See you down there.”
All across the South, Negroes could not sit at lunch counters in department stores or try on clothing at those stores. Students in Atlanta had begun to protest. They came from the black colleges in the area—from Spellman, from Morehouse, from Atlanta University, from Clark, from Morris Brown. There was even a sprinkling of white students too from the white colleges—Emory and Georgia Tech. They all came together in sit-ins and protests against the big stores of Atlanta. Many protested, many demonstrated, and on October 19, many were arrested, charged with “trespass and refusing to leave private facilities.” That was how Rie was charged, along with more than fifty others. Among those arrested was Dr. Martin Luther King.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
Stacey was already at the jail by the time I arrived. He looked angry and distraught. “Did you see her?” I asked. “Did they set bail?”
“They set it.”
“You have the money for it? I’ve got some.”
“I’ve got it, but the girl wants to stay here.”
“What!”
“They’re saying jail, no bail to protest the jailing. Supposed to bring more attention to what’s going on down here.”
I considered. “Well, I suppose it would.” I looked around. “Where’s Man?”
“Seeing to the car.” We both were silent. Then, in a sudden outburst, Stacey proclaimed, “I’m not going to have it, Cassie! I’m not going to have Rie stay in this white man’s jail! I’ve been in jail. I won’t have it!”
I said nothing.
Stacey despondently shook his head, almost in surrender to his daughter’s will. “I should never have let her come down here, Cassie. I can’t protect her anymore.”
“But you did let her come. You knew the risks . . . and you knew Rie.”
Stacey looked away. “I can’t believe it, Cassie. My baby in jail.”
I felt my brother’s pain and touched his arm. “But think why she’s in here, Stacey. Just think about that.”
Stacey turned back to look at me. “I’d rather be in jail myself, Cassie, than have Rie here.”
“But you’re not. Fact is, Stacey, you and Dee, you done good. Rie is right where she’s supposed to be.”
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
In the end, Rie did not stay in jail. Fourteen others did, along with Dr. King. They remained there for six days, until October 24, when Atlanta’s white mayor ordered their release, except for Dr. King. He was to remain. Eventually, the protest charge against Dr. King was dropped, but a judge sentenced him to four months in jail for violating a traffic ticket probation. It was said that Dr. King didn’t even know about the ticket. It was a misdemeanor charge, but the judge refused to set bail. We all kept anxiously tuned to the radio and television news, trying to learn what was happening to Dr. King. Then word came that he had been secretly moved from the Atlanta jail to Georgia’s Reidsville State Penitentiary. Reidsville. It was a dangerous place known for its brutal chain gangs and the questionable deaths of its Negro inmates.