THE HEART OF A WOMAN

CHAPTER 11

The Cultural Association for Women of African Heritage had its second meeting at Abbey's luxury penthouse apartment on Columbus Avenue, Several weeks before, we had agreed on a charter, a policy statement and a name: CAWAH, It sounded exotic We agreed, The newly founded organization included dancers, teachers, singers, writers and musicians, Our intention was to support all black civil rights groups, The charter, as drawn up by Sarah Wright and signed unanimously by the membership, stated that since the entire power of the United States was arrayed in fury against the very existence of the Afro- mericans, we, members of CAWAH, would offer ourselves to raise money for, promote and publicize any gathering sincerely engaged in developing a just society, It further stated that our members, multitalented, would agree, after an assenting vote, to perform dance concerts, song fests, fashion shows and general protest marches.

Abbey's living room filled with strident voices, Should we or should we not insist that every member show her commitment to being black by wearing unstraightened hair. Abbey, Rosa and I already wore the short-cut natural, but it was the other women, with tresses hanging down like horse's manes, who argued that the naturals should be compulsory.

"I've made an appointment for next Friday. I'm having all this shit cut off because I believe that I should let the world know that I'm proud to be black." The woman placed her hands on the back of her neck and lifted years of hair growth.

I said, "I don't agree." I would miss seeing her long black pageboy.

Abbey said, "I don't agree either. Hair is a part of woman's glory. She ought to wear it any way she wants to. You don't get out of one trick bag by jumping into another. I wear my hair like this because I like it and Max likes it. But I'd dye it green if! thought it would look better."

We all laughed and put that discussion aside, addressing ourselves to plans for an immense fashion show based on an African theme and showing African designs. Abbey said, "In Harlem, I'm sick of black folks meeting in white hotels to talk about how rotten white folks are." So Rosa and I were assigned to find a suitable auditorium for the affair.

Rosa and I met on 125th Street and the first thing she said was "Lumumba is dead." She continued in a horror-constricted voice, saying that she had learned of the assassination from Congolese diplomats, but that there would be no announcement until the coming Friday when Adlai Stevenson, the United States delegate to the United Nations, would break the news.

I said nothing. I knew no words which would match the emptiness of the moment. Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah and Sekou Toure were the Holy African Triumvirate which radical black Americans held dear, and we needed our leaders desperately. We had been abused, and so long abused, that the loss of one hero was a setback of such proportion it could dishearten us and weaken the struggle.

We were walking aimlessly, in a fog, when the sound of people talking, moving, shouting, broke into our stupor. We allowed ourselves to be drawn to the corner where the Nation of Islam was holding a mass meeting.

The street corner wriggled with movement as white policemen nervously guarded the intersection. A rapt crowd had pushed as close as possible to the platform where Malcolm X stood flanked by a cadre of well-dressed solemn men. Television crews on flatbed trucks angled their cameras at the crowded dais.

Malcolm stood at the microphone.

"Every person under the sound of my voice is a soldier. You are either fighting for your freedom or betraying the fight for freedom or enlisted in the army to deny somebody else's freedom."

His voice, deep and textured, reached through the crowd, across the street to the tenement windows where listeners leaned half their bodies out into the spring air.

"The black man has been programmed to die. To die either by his own hand, the hand of his brother or at the hand of a blue- eyed devil trained to do one thing: take the black man's life."

The crowd agreed noisily. Malcolm waited for quiet. "The Honorable Elijah Muhammad offers the only possible out for the black man. Accept Allah as the creator, Muhammad as His Messenger and the White American as the devil. If you don't believe he's a devil, look how he's made your life a hell."

Black people yelled and swayed. Policemen patted their unbuttoned holsters.

Rosa and I nodded at each other. The Muslim tirade was just what we needed to hear. Malcolm thrilled us with his love and understanding of black folks and his loathing of whites and their cruelty.

Unable to get close to the platform, we pushed ourselves into Mr. Micheaux's bookshop and watched and listened in the doorway.

"Talk, Malcolm."

Malcolm roared back, his face a golden-yellow in the sun, his hair rusty-red.

"If you want to live at any cost, say nothing but 'yes, sir' and do nothing except bow and scrape and bend your knees to the devil. But if you want your freedom, you'd better study the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, and start respecting your women. Straighten out your home affairs and stop cheating on your wives. You know who you're really cheating?"

Female voices shot up like arrows over the crowd. "Tell these fools, brother Malcolm." "Tell them to stop acting like little boys." "Explain it. Explain it on down." "Break it down."

Malcolm took a breath and leaned toward the microphone. "You are cheating your fathers and mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers and-you-are-cheating-Allah."

A man on the platform lifted his hands, showing copper palms, and chanted in Arabic.

After a burst of applause, Malcolm paused and looked solemnly at the crowd. People stopped moving; the air became still. When he spoke again his tone was soft and sweet.

"Some of you think there are good whites, don't you? Some good white folks you've worked for, or worked with or went to school with or even married. Don't you?"

The listeners exchanged a grumble of denial.

Malcolm continued speaking low, nearly whispering. "There are whites who give money to the SCLC, the NAACP and the Urban League. Some even go so far as to march with you in the streets. But let me tell you who they are. Any white American who says he's your friend is either weak"-he waited for the word to have its effect and when he spoke again his voice growled-"or he's an infiltrator. Either he'll be too scared to help you when you need help or he's getting close to you so he can find out your plans and deliver you back in chains to his brothers."

The street corner exploded with sound as anger and recognition collided. When Malcolm finished speaking the crowd yelled their approval of the fire-hot leader. Rosa and I waited in the bookstore until most of the people left the corner.

We walked without speaking to Frank's Restaurant. Again there was no need to talk. Malcolm's words were harsh, but too close to the bitter truth to argue. Our people were alone. As always, alone. We could not expect protection from whites even if they happened to be our relatives. Slave-owning fathers had sold black sons and daughters. White sisters had put their black sisters in slave coffins for a price.

Rosa and I drank at the bar, not looking at each other.

"What can we do?"

"What do you think?" Rosa turned to me sadly as if I had failed her. She had been counting on me to be intelligent. She continued, frowning, "What the shit do you think? We've got to move. We've got to let the Congolese and all the other Africans know that we are with them. Whether we come from New York City or the South or from the West Indies, that black people are a people and we are equally oppressed."

I ordered another drink.

The only possible action that occurred to me was to call the members of CAWAH and throw the idea out for open discussion. Among us we would find something to do. Something large enough to awaken the black American community in New York.

Rosa didn't think much of my idea but she agreed to go along.

About ten women met at my house. Immediately the tone was fractious and suspicious. How did Rosa know Lumumba was dead? There had been no announcement in the newspapers.

Rosa said she had gotten her news from reliable sources.

Some members said that they thought our organization had been formed to support the black American civil rights struggle. Weren't we trying to swallow too much, biting into Africa? Except for Sekou Toure and Tom Mboya, when had the Africans backed us?

One woman, a fashion model, hinted that my husband and Rosa's diplomat boyfriend made us partial to the African cause. Abbey said that was a stupid attitude, and what happens in Africa affects every black American.

One woman said the only thing Africans had really done for us was to sell our ancestors into slavery.

I reminded the conservatives in our group that Martin Luther King had said that he found great inspiration and brotherly support on his recent trip to Africa.

Rosa spoke abruptly. "Some of us are going to do something. We don't know just what. But all the rest of you who aren't interested, why'n the hell don't you get your asses out and stop taking up our time?"

As usual when she got excited, her West Indian accent appeared and the music in her voice contradicted the words she chose.

Abbey got up and stood by the door. A rustle of clothes, the scraping of shoes, and the door slammed and six women were left in the living room.

Abbey brought brandy and we got down to business. After a short, fierce talk our decisions were made. On Friday, we would attend the General Session of the United Nations. We would carry black pieces of cloth, and when Adlai Stevenson started to make his announcement on Lumumba's death, we six women would use bobby pins and clip mourning veils to the front of our hair and then stand together in the great hall. It wasn't much to do but it was dramatic. Abbey thought some men might join us. She knew Max would like to come along. Amece, Rosa's sister, knew two West Indian revolutionaries who would like to be included. If men joined us, we would make elasticized arm bands, and at the proper moment, the men could slip the black bands up their sleeves and stand with the women. That was the idea. No mass movement but still a dramatic statement.

As the meeting was coming to an end, I remembered a piece of advice Vus had given a few young African freedom fighters:

"Never allow yourself to be cut off from the people. Predators use the separation tactic with great success. If you're going to do something radical go to the masses. Let them know who you are. That is your only hope of protection."

I quoted Vus to the women and suggested that we let some folks in Harlem know what we intended to do. Everyone agreed. We would go to Mr. Micheaux; he could pass the word around Harlem faster than an orchestra of conga drums.

The next afternoon we went back to the bookstore, where posters of blacks covered every inch of wall space not taken up by shelves: Marcus Garvey, dressed in military finery, drove forever in an open car on one wall. W. E. B. DuBois gazed haughtily above the heads of book browsers. Malcom X, Martin Luther King and an array of African chiefs stared down in varying degrees of ferocity.

Mr. Micheaux was fast moving, quick talking and small. His skin was the color of a faded manila envelope. We stopped him on one of his spins through the aisles. He listened to our plans impatiently, nodding his head.

"Yeah. The people ought to know. Tell them yourselves. Yeah, you tell them." His short staccato sentences popped out of his mouth like exploding cherry bombs. "Come back this evening. I'll have them here. Not nigger time. On time. Seven-thirty. You tell them."

He turned, neatly avoiding customers In the crowded aisle.

A little after seven o'clock at the corner of Seventh Avenue, we had to push our way through a crowd of people who thronged the sidewalks. We thought the Muslims, or the Universal Improvement Association, were holding a meeting, or Daddy Grace and his flock were drumming up souls for Christ. Of course, it was a warm spring evening and already the small apartments were suffocating. Anything could have brought the people into the streets.

Mr. Micheaux's amplified voice reached us as we neared the bookstore.

"A lot of you say Africa ain't your business, ain't your business. But you are fools. Niggers and fools. And that's what the white man wants you to be. You made a cracker laugh. Ha, ha." His voice barked. "Ha, ha, crackers laugh."

Because of my height, I could see him on a platform in front of the store. He held on to a standing microphone and turned his body from left to right, his jacket flapping and a short-brim brown hat shading his face from view.

"Abbey, these people"-the human crush was denser nearer to the bookstore-"these people are here to hear us."

She grabbed my hand and I took Rosa's arm. We pressed on.

"Some of your sisters are going to be talking to you. Talking to you about Africa. In a few minutes, they're gonna tell you about Lumumba. Patrice Lumumba. About the goddam Belgians. About the United Nations. If you are ignorant niggers, go home. Don't stay. Don't listen. And all you goddam finks in the crowd-run back and tell your white masters what I said. Tell 'em what these black women are going to say. Tell 'em about J. A. Rogers' books, which prove that Africans had kingdoms before white folks knew how to bathe. Don't forget Brother Malcolm. Don't forget Frederick Douglass. Tell 'em. Everybody except ignorant niggers say 'Get off my back, Charlie. Get off my goddam back.' Here they come now." He had seen us. "Come on, Abbey, come on, Myra, you and Rosa. Come on. Get up here and talk. They waiting for you."

Unknown hands helped us up onto the unstable platform. Abbey walked to the microphone, poised and beautiful. Rosa and I stood behind her and I looked out at the crowd. Thousands of black, brown and yellow faces looked back at me. This was more than we bargained for. My knees weakened and my legs wobbled.

"We are members of CAWAH. Cultural Association for Women of African Heritage. We have learned that our brother, Lumumba, has been killed in the Congo."

The crowd moaned.

"Oh my God."

"Oh no."

"Who killed him?"

"Who?"

"Tell us who."

Abbey looked around at Rosa and me. Her face showed her nervousness.

Mr. Micheaux shouted. "Tell 'em. They want to know."

Abbey turned back to the microphone. ''I'm not going to say the Belgians."

The crowd screamed. "Who?"

"I won't say the French or the Americans."

"Who?"

It was a large hungry sound.

"I'll say the whites killed a black man. Another black man."

Mr. Micheaux leaned toward Abbey. "Tell 'em what you all are going to do."

Abbey nodded.

"On Friday morning, our women and some men are going to the United Nations. We are going to sit in the General Assembly, and when they announce the death of Lumumba we're going to stand up and remain standing until they put us out."

The crowd agreed loudly.

"I'm coming."

"I'll be there."

"Me too."

"Yeah, stand up and be counted."

"That's right!"

A few dissenting voices were heard.

"Bullshit. Is that all?''

"They kill a man and you broads are going to stand up? Shit." And, "They'll shoot your asses too! Yes, they will."

The opposition was drowned out by the larger encouragement.

Mr. Micheaux took the microphone.

"Come here, Myra." The little man could spell my name but he never pronounced it correctly. "You talk."

He turned to the crowd. "Here's a woman married to an African. Her husband just barely escaped the South African white dogs. Come on, Myra. Say something."

I repeated what had already been said at least once. Repetition was a code which everyone understood and appreciated. We had a saying: "Make everything you say two-time talk. If you say it once, you better be able to repeat it." Black ears were accustomed to the call and response in jazz, in blues and in the prose of black preachers.

Mr. Micheaux took the microphone from me and called Rosa.

She looked out at the faces and spoke very quickly.

"We'll be there. Any of you who wants to come will be welcome. We are going to meet at eight-thirty in front of the U.N. We'll make up extra veils and arm bands and our members will be waiting to distribute them. Come all. Come and let the world know that no longer can they kill black leaders in secret. Come."

She gave the microphone to Mr. Micheaux and beckoned to me and Abbey. We were helped off the stage. The crowd parted, and made an aisle of sounds.

"We'll be there."

"Eight-thirty on Friday."

"See you, sister. See you at the U.N."

"God bless you."

We sat quiet in the taxi and held on to each other. The enormity of the crowd and its passionate response had made us mute. We agreed to meet the next day.

I went back to an empty house. Guy's dinner dishes drained on the sideboard and a note propped on the dining-room table informed me that he was attending a SANE meeting and to expect him at ten-thirty.

Rosa phoned. We had to draw money from CAWAH. Her niece Jean was going downtown to a fabric outlet in the morning. She would buy black tulle and elastic. Rosa would pick up bobby pins from Woolworth's. We ought to meet at her house to make the arm bands and stick the pins in the veils. I agreed and hung up. Abbey phoned. Would I call the women of CAWAH and would I check with the Harlem Writers Guild, and just to be on the safe side, wouldn't it be a good idea to make up a hundred veils and arm bands? I agreed.

Guy came home, full of his meeting. SANE was planning a demonstration on Saturday in New Jersey. He and Chuck would like to go. If the Killenses and I gave permission for them to miss a school day, they would join a march on Friday, walking across the George Washington Bridge. He would be O.K., Mom. They would carry sleeping bags, and a lot of peanuts, and after all, hadn't I said I wanted him to be involved? "Dad" would certainly agree if he wasn't in India. My generation had caused the atomic bomb to be dropped on Hiroshima, the year he was born. So he could say correctly that he was an atomic baby. He and Chuck had talked. The bomb must never be used again. Human beings had been killed by the hundreds of thousands, and millions mutilated, and did I want to see the photographs of Hiroshima again?

I gave him permission to go to New Jersey.

Jean, Amece and Sarah cut the bolt of black tulle. Rosa sewed strips of elastic to half the large squares while Abbey and I gathered bobby pins into the remainder.

Jean pinned a veil to her hair and the stiff material stood out like a softly pleated fan. Her eyes and copper-colored skin were faintly visible through the material. She looked like a young woman, widowed by an untimely accident. We looked at her and approved. Our gesture was going to be successful.

On Friday morning, I stepped over Guy's sleeping bag, which he had laid open on the living-room floor. It wouldn't be kind to awaken him, since he would be sleeping rough that evening after his march. He knew I had planned to leave the house early for the United Nations. I placed a five-dollar bill on the plaid sleeping bag and left the apartment.

Abbey's house was a flurry of action. CAWAH women were busy, drinking coffee, laying the veils in one box, talking, putting the arm bands in another box, eating sweet rolls a teacher had brought, smiling and flirting with Max, who walked around us like a handsome pasha in a busy harem. We left for the elevators, carrying the boxes, and jumpy with excitement.

Max and Abbey could take four in their car. The rest would find taxis. We agreed to meet on the sidewalk in front of the U.N. Amece and Rosa had the veils, so they rode with Max. The teacher, the model, Sarah and I would travel together. Jean and the other friends would get their own taxis. Finding a cab so early on Friday on New York's Upper West Side was not easy. Business people had radio-controlled taxis on regular calls, and many white drivers sped up when black people hailed them, afraid of being ordered north to Harlem and/or of receiving small tips.

At ten minutes to nine our taxi turned off 42nd Street onto First Avenue. Sarah and I screamed at the same time. The driver put on brakes and we all crashed forward.

"What the hell is going on here?" The cabbie's alarm matched our own. People stood packed together on the sidewalk and spilled out into the street. Placards stating FREEDOM NOW, BACK TO AFRICA, AFRICA FOR THE AFRICANS, ONE MAN, ONE VOTE waved on sticks above the crowd.

We looked out the windows. Thousands of people circled in the street and all of them were black. We paid and made our way to the crowd.

"Here she is. Here's one of them."

"Sister, we told you we'd be here. Where you been?"

"How do we get inside? The police said ... "

"They won't let us in."

The shouts and questions were directed at me. I began a chant and used it moving through the anxious crowd: ''I'll see about it. I'll take care of it. I'll take care of it. I'll see about it." Not knowing whom to see, or really how I would take care of anything.

Rosa was waiting for me in front of the severely modern building by the large glass doors.

"Can you imagine this crowd? So many people. So many." She was excited and her Caribbean was particularly noticeable. "And the guards have refused entrance."

"Rosa, you said you'd get tickets from the African delegations."

"I know, but only the Senegalese and my friend from Upper Volta have shown up." She had to shout, because the crowd had begun to chant.

She leaned toward me, frowning, ''I've only got seven tickets." The people on the sidewalk shouted. "Freedom!" "Freedom!" "Lumumba! Lumumba!"

She said, "Little Carlos is here. The Cuban, you know. He took the tickets and went in with Abbey, Max, Amece and others. He'll bring the tickets back and take in six more. It's the only way." Carlos Moore was an angry young man who moved through Harlem's political sky like a luminous meteor.

I looked over at the black throng. Many had never been in midtown Manhattan, thinking the blocks south of Harlem as dangerous as enemy territory and no man's land. On our casual encouragement, they had braved the perilous journey.

Carlos came trotting through the double doors. "Sister, you have arrived." He grinned, his little chocolate face gleeful. "I am ready for the next group. Let's go! Now!"

I turned, and without thinking about it, plucked the first people in the crowd.

"Give me your placards. You're going in." I held the ungainly weighted sticks and Carlos shouted to the chosen men and women. "Follow me, brothers and sisters. Stay close to me." They disappeared into the dim foyer, and I redistributed the placards.

Rosa had walked away into the crowd. I took her example and moved through the people near the building.

"What's going on, sister?"

"The crackers don't want to let us in, huh?"

"We could break the motherfucker wide open."

"Shit, all we got to do is die. And we gonna do that any goddam way."

I stopped with that group. "Nothing could please the whites more than to have a reason to shoot down innocent black folks. Don't give them the pleasure."

An old woman grabbed my sleeve. "God will bless you, honey. If you keep the children alive."

She sounded wise and was about the age of my grandmother. "Yes, ma'am. Thank you." I took her hand and pulled her away from the seething mass. She would go in with the next group. We walked to the steps together. I turned and raised my voice to explain what had obviously happened.

Informers had alerted the police that Harlem was coming to the U.N. So security had been increased. In order to get into the building we had to exercise restraint. The cops were nervous, so to prevent some trigger-happy idiot from shooting into the crowd, we had to remain cool.

The people assented with a grace I found assuring. The old woman and I reached the top steps as Carlos came through the doors. "Six more. And we move. Now!"

Carlos gathered the next five people along with the old lady and led them into the building.

For the next thirty minutes, as Carlos siphoned off groups of six and led them into the building, more cadres of police arrived to stand armed and confused on the sidewalks and across the street, while plain-clothes white men took photographs of the action.

A marcher grabbed my sleeve. "What you folks think you're doing? You told us to come down here and now you can't get us in." The man was furious. He continued, "Yeah, that's black folks for you. Running around half shaved and grinning."

I wanted to explain how some fink had put us in the cross, but Rosa appeared, taking my other sleeve.

"Come on, Maya. Come on now." Her urgency would not be denied. I looked at the angry man and lied. "I'll be right back."

Inside the gleaming hall, unarmed security guards stood anxiously at their posts. Near the wide stairs leading to the second floor, Carlos was hemmed in by another group of guards.

"I've got my ticket. This is mine." Frayed stubs protruded from his black fist. "They were given to me by a delegate."

Rosa and I pushed into the circle, forcing the guards away. Rosa took his arm. "Come on, Carlos, we've got to go."

We walked together straight and moderately slowly, controlling the desire to break and run, keening into the General Assembly.

Although we were beyond the guards' hearing, Carlos whispered, "The Assembly has started. Stevenson is going to speak soon."

Upstairs, more guards stood silent as we passed. Two black men were waiting by the entry to the hall, anxiety flushing their faces.

"Carlos! We thought they had you, man."

"They'll never have me, mono I am Carlos, man."

His assurance had returned. Rosa smiled at me and we entered the dark, quiet auditorium. Miles away, down a steep incline, delegates sat before microphones in a square of light, but the upper balcony was too dim for me to distinguish anything clearly.

After a few seconds, the gloom gave way, and the audience became visible. About seventy-five black people were mixed among the whites. Some women had already pinned veils over their faces.

Amece, Jean and the teacher sat together. Max and Abbey were across the aisle near Sarah and the model. An accented voice droned unintelligibly.

"Uh, uhm, mm, um."

The little white man so far away leaned toward his microphone, his bald forehead shining-white. Dark-rimmed glasses stood out on the well-known face.

A scream shattered his first word. The sound was bloody and broad and piercing. In a second other voices joined it.

"Murderers,"

"Lumumba. Lumumba."

"Killers."

"Bigoted sons of bitches."

The scream still rode high over the heads of astounded people who were rising, clutching each other or pushing out toward the aisle.

The houselights came on. Stevenson took off his glasses and looked to the balcony. The shock opened his mouth and made his chin drop.

A man near me screamed, "You Ku Klux Klan motherfuckers. "

Another yelled, "Murderers."

African diplomats were as alarmed as their white counterparts. I was also shaken. We had not anticipated a riot. We had been expected to stand, veiled and mournful, in a dramatic but silent protest.

"Baby killers."

"Slave drivers."

Terrorized whites in the audience tried to hustle away from the yelling blacks. Security guards rushed through the doors on the upper and lower levels.

The garish lights, the stampede of bodies and the continuing high-pitched scream were overpowering. My knees weakened and I sat down in the nearest seat.

A woman in the aisle beside me screamed at the guards, "Don't dare touch me. Don't put your hands on me, you white bastard!"

The guards were shouting, "Get out. Get out."

The woman said, "Don't touch me, you Belgian bastard."

Below, the diplomats rose and formed an orderly file toward an exit.

When the piercing scream stopped I heard my own voice shouting, "Murderers. Killers. Assassins."

Two women grappled with a guard in the aisle. Carlos had leaped onto a white man's back and was riding him to the floor. A stout black woman held the lapels of a white man in civilian clothes.

"Who you trying to kill? Who you trying to kill? You don't know me, you dog. You don't know who you messing with."

The man was hypnotized and beyond fear, and the woman shook him like a dishrag.

The diplomats had vanished and except for the guards the whites had disappeared. The balcony was ours. Just as in the Southern segregated movie houses, we were in the buzzards' roost again.

Rosa found me and I got up and followed her. We urged the people back to the safety of the street. The black folks strode proudly past the guards, through the hall and out the doors into sunshine.

The waiting crowd, enlarged by latecomers and more police, had changed its mood. Insiders had told outsiders that we had rioted, and now an extravagant disorder was what the blacks wanted, while the law officers yearned for vindication.

"Let's go back in." "Let's go in and show them bastards we mean business." "This ain't no United Nations. This is just united white folks. Let's go back in."

A cadre of police stood on the steps, their eyes glittering. By law, they were forbidden inside the U.N. building, but they were eager to prevent our reentry.

Some folks screamed at the silent seething police.

"You killed Lumumba too. You shit."

"I wish I had your ass on 125th Street."

"Take off your pistol. I'll whip your ass."

Carlos rushed to me.

"We're going to the Belgian Consulate. Walk together." Rosa's voice was loud. "Forty-sixth Street. The Associated Press Building. Let us go. Let's go."

The crowd began to move between a corridor of police which stretched to the street. Up front, someone had started to sing.

"And before I'll be a slave, I'll be buried in my grave ..."

The song rippled, now high, now low. Picked up by voices and dropped but never discarded.

"And go home to my God and be free."

Mounted police, sitting tall on hot horses, looked down as we crossed First Avenue, singing.

Rosa and I were walking side by side in the last group as we turned into 43rd Street. I said, "That scream started it. Wonder who screamed."

She frowned and laughed at the same time. "Amece, and she almost killed Jean."

The marchers around us were singing

"No more slavery,
No more slavery,
No more slavery over me."

Rosa continued, "Amece said she looked down and saw Stevenson and thought about Lumumba. She reached to caress her daughter, but Jean jumped and Amece screamed. Unfortunately, she had her arm around Jean's neck. So when Jean jerked, Amece tightened her grip and kept screaming. Nobody was going to hurt her baby. So she screamed." Rosa laughed. "Nobody but Amece. She nearly choked Jean to death."

The crowd was trooping and chanting.

Six mounted police climbed the sidewalk and rode through the stragglers. People jumped out of the way as the horses bore down on them.

A wiry black man unable to escape was being pressed against the wall of a building. I flung myself toward him slapping horses, jutting my elbows into their flanks.

"Get away. Move, dammit."

The man was flat against the wall, ignoring the horses, staring up at the policemen. I reached him and took his hand.

"Come on, brother. Come on, brother."

We walked between the shifting horses and back to Rosa, who had halted the group.

Rosa was grinning, her face filled with disbelief. "Maya Angelou, I thought you were scared of animals. You went into those horses, kicking ass!"

She was right. I had never owned a pet. I didn't understand the intelligent idiocy of dogs or cats; in fact, all animals terrorized me. The day's action had taken away my usual self and made me uncommon. I was literally intoxicated with adventure.

We approached the corner of 46th and Sixth Avenue, and the intersection reminded me of a South American news telecast. For the moment, heavily armed police and angry people seemed to neutralize the scene. Bright sunlight left no face in shadow and the two groups watched each other warily, moving dreamily this way and then that. That way and this. Policemen's hands were never far from their pistols, and plain-clothes officers spoke into the static of walkie-talkies. Black demonstrators edged along the sidewalk, rumbling and carrying battered and torn placards.

Police cars were parked double in the street and a captain walked among his men, talking and looking obliquely at the crowd, trying to evaluate its mood and its intention.

When Rosa dashed away from me and into the shuffling crowd, a beribboned officer came over.

"You're one of the leaders?" His pink face was splotched with red anger.

Following the Southern black advice "If a white man asks you where you're going, you tell him where you've been," I answered, ''I'm with the people."

"Where is your permit? You people have to have a permit to demonstrate."

Three black men suddenly appeared, placing themselves between the policemen and me.

"What do you want with this black lady?"

"Watch yourself, Charlie. Don't mess with her."

Instantly more police surrounded my protectors, and black people from the dragging line, seeing the swift action, ran over to encircle the newly arrived police.

I had to make a show of confidence. I looked into the officer's face and said, "Permit? If we left it to you whites we'd be in the same shape as our folks in South Africa. We'd have to have a permit to breathe."

A man standing by my side added, "Naw. We ain't got no damn permit. So you better pull out your pistols and start shooting. Shoot us down now, 'cause we ain't moving."

The policemen, eager to accept the man's invitation, snorted and fidgeted like enraged horses. The officer reined them in with his voice. He shouted, "It's all right, men. I said, it's all right. Back to your stations."

There was a brief period of hateful staring before the cops returned to the street and we rejoined the larger group of black people shuffling along the pavement.

Rosa found me. "Carlos is inside." Her eyes were narrowed. "Somebody said he's been in there over a half-hour. The Belgian Consulate is on the eleventh floor. Maybe the cops have got him."

The knowledge of what police do to black men rose wraithlike before my eyes. Carlos was little and pretty and reminded me of my brother. The cops did have Bailey and maybe he was being clubbed or raped at that very minute. I saw a horrifying picture of Bailey in the hands of madmen but there was nothing I could do about it.

I could do something about Carlos.

I said, 'Tm going in. You keep the people marching."

I searched the faces nearest me.

Vus once told me, "If you're ever in trouble, don't under any circumstances ask black middle-class people for help. They always think they have a stake in the system. Look for a tsotsi, that's Xhosa for a street hoodlum. A roughneck. A convict. He'll already be angry and he will know that he has nothing to lose."

I continued looking until I saw the man. He was taller than I, rail-thin and the color of bitter chocolate. One deep scar ran from the flange of his left nostril to his ear lobe and another lay between his hairline and his left eyebrow.

I beckoned to him and he came toward me.

"Brother, my name is Maya. I think Carlos Moore is in this building somewhere. He's the leader of this march. The cops may have him and you know what that means."

"Yeah, sister, yeah." He nodded wisely.

"I want to go in and see about him and I need somebody to go with me."

He nodded again and waited.

"It'll be dangerous, but will you go?"

"Sure." The planes on his face didn't change. "Sure, Sister Maya. Let's go." He took my elbow and began to propel me to the steps.

I asked, "What's your name?" He said, "Call me Buddy."

Rosa's voice came to me as we went through the revolving doors. "Be careful, Maya."

The lobby was busy with police, guards and milling white men. Although my escort was pushing me quickly toward the bank of elevators, I had time to look at the building's directory. Above the eleventh-Boor listing of the Belgian Consulate were the words AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY, 10TH FLOOR. A fat, florid police officer stepped in front of me and my companion.

"Where are you going?"

The tsotsi spoke. "None of your goddam business." I poked his side and said sweetly, "I'm going to the American Book Company."

The cop and the tsotsi stared knowingly at each other. Loathing ran between the two men like an electrical current.

"And you. Where do you think you're going?"

"I'm going with her. Every step of the way."

The cop heard the challenge and narrowed his eyes and I heard the protection and felt like a little girl. The pudgy cop followed us to the elevators and I pushed the tenth-floor button, holding on to the black man's hand. The ride was tense and quick. We walked out into the hall and turned to watch the officer's face until the doors closed.

I said, "Let's find the stairs."

Around the corner we saw the exit sign.

"Buddy, you go through and let the door close, then see if you can open it again."

He walked out onto the landing and waited until the door slammed shut. I stepped back as he turned the knob and opened the door from his side.

"Come on. Let's get up there."

We raced up the steps to the eleventh floor. He grabbed the knob, but the door wouldn't open.

"That cracker cop. He beat us to it. Stay here."

He turned and trotted up another flight. I heard him mutter. "This damn door is locked too."

He came down the steps heavily.

"What you wanna do now?"

I couldn't think at the moment. I had only a vague plan to reach the eleventh floor and "see about Carlos." My mind had not budged beyond the possibility of achieving that feat. I looked stupidly at Buddy, who was waiting for an answer. After a few seconds, my voice surfaced. "I guess there's nothing else to do but go back to the street. I'm sorry."

I expected to see disgust or at least derision on my accomplice's face, but he displayed no emotion.

"All right, sister. Let's go."

We walked back down to the tenth floor and I pushed the door, but it resisted. I must have gasped, because he pushed me aside and grabbed the knob. "Let me do it." He took the knob and leaned his body against the metal panel, but the door wouldn't give. Panic accelerated my blood. Like an idiot I had given myself to death. The cops could open the door any minute and blow my brains out. No one would see and no one would be able to protect me. I saw an image of my son in his classroom. Who would tell him, and how would he handle the news? My new husband would receive a telegram in India. What would he think of a wife so frivolous as to commit suicide! My poor mother ... The man beside me, whom fear had caused me to forget, took my shoulders in his hands.

"Sister. Sister. You ain't got nothin' to worry about. I'm here."

He released me and stood on the landing's edge. "They'll have to walk over my dead body to get to you."

Buddy ran down the steps. I heard him stop on the ninth floor, then his footsteps descended and stopped again and again. In a few seconds he called, "Sister Maya, come on. I got a door. Come on." I met him on the sixth-floor landing. My heart was fluttering so I could hardly catch my breath. The hallway and the elevator looked to me like Canada must have to escaping slaves. We were in the lobby before my embarrassment returned. My hand on his arm turned him around. "Buddy, I apologize for panicking a while ago. I'm going to tell my husband about you."

He looked at me, and shook his head. "Sister, in this country a Negro is always about to get killed, so that ain't nothing. But you tell your husband that a black man was ready to lay down his life for you. That's all."

He took my elbow and guided me past the still-waiting police and to the door. I walked right into Rosa's arms.

"Girl, what happened? Carlos came out just after you went in. A bunch of us were getting ready to go get you." We hugged tightly. I said, "Rosa, you've got to meet this brother," but when I turned to introduce Buddy, he had disappeared into the thinning crowd.

Rosa continued, "You were in there nearly twenty minutes." That was astounding news. I had been bold, blatant and audacious. I had been silly, irresponsible and unprepared. My body had been enclosed with panic and my mind immobilized with fear. A stranger had shown the courage of Vivian Baxter and the generosity of Jesus. And all that had happened in twenty minutes.

Television and radio reporters were walking among the remaining protesters seeking interviews.

One woman spoke into a microphone. "Yes, we're mad. You people pick us off like we're jack rabbits. You dadgummed right, we're mad." A man walking behind her added, "Lumumba was in the Congo. The Congo is in Africa and we're Africans. You get that!"

CAWAH members had agreed to make no public statements, so we turned our faces when the journalists approached. The line of marchers was exhausted. People had begun to peel away. Their shoulders sagged and they walked heavily. They knew that their latest protest had done no good. They had been Joshua's band, shouting and screaming, singing and yelling at the walls, but Jericho had remained upright, unchanged.

That night I went to Rosa's for dinner and to watch the evening news. The cameras caught black bodies hurtling out of the U.N. doors, and marchers chanting along 46th Street.

Angry faces in profile glided across the screen, shouting accusations. When an unknown, well-dressed man came into view, and speaking pompously, said that he took full responsibility for the demonstration, Jean responded by calling him a sap sucker and turning off the television.

The echo of the day's excitement and the wonder of CAWAH's power to bring all those people from Harlem kept us quiet for a few minutes. When conversation did return we talked about our next moves. The day had proven that Harlem was in commotion and the rage was beyond the control of the NAACP, the SCLC or the Urban League. The fury would turn on itself if it was not outwardly directed. There would be an increase of stabbings and shootings as black people assaulted each other, discharging tension, and blindly looking for a surcease of pained lives.

Rosa and I said, "the Black Muslims" and grinned, because we thought alike and at the same time. Of course, the Muslims, with their exquisite discipline and their absolute stand on black-white relations, would know how to control and use the ferment in Harlem. We should go straight to Malcom X and lay the situation in his lap. It would be interesting to see what he would do. And it would be a relief to shift the responsibility.

The next day, Guy jumped with excitement. "Mom, you're great. Really great. I wish I had been there. Boy, I wish I could have seen Stevenson's face. Boy, that's fantastic."

John Killens phoned. "Why didn't you let me know you people were going to have a riot? I'm always ready for a riot. You know that, angel."

When I explained that we had only expected a few people, he grunted and said we had fallen into the same trick bag whites are in. We underestimated the black community.

Two days later, Rosa and I walked into the Muslim Restaurant. Making the appointment had been the easiest part. I simply telephoned the Mosque and asked if Mr. Malcolm X could spare a half-hour for two black ladies. After a brief pause I was given a time and a place. Putting my thoughts in respectable order was more difficult, because after I knew Malcolm would see us I became appalled at our presumption.

We told a waitress that we had come to see Mr. Malcolm X. She nodded and walked away, disappearing through a door at the end of the long counter. We stood nervously in the center of the room. In a moment Malcolm appeared at the rear door. His aura was too bright and his masculine force affected me physically. A hot desert storm eddied around him and rushed to me, making my skin contract, and my pores slam shut. He approached, and all my brain would do for me was record his coming. I had never been so affected by a human presence.

Watching Malcolm X on television or even listening to him speak on a podium had been no preparation for meeting him face to face.

"Ladies, Salaam aleikum." His voice was black baritone and musical. Rosa shook hands, and I was able to nod dumbly. Up close he was a great red arch through which one could pass to eternity. His hair was the color of burning embers and his eyes pierced. He offered us a chair at a table and asked a nervous waitress for tea, which she brought in trembling cups.

Rosa was more contained than I, so she began explaining our mission. The sound of her voice helped me to shake loose the constriction of muteness. I joined the telling, and we distributed our story equally, like the patter of a long-time vaudeville duo.

"We-CAWAH ..."

"Cultural Association of Women of African Heritage."

"Wanted to protest the murder of Lumumba so we-"

"Planned a small demonstration. We didn't expect-"

"More than fifty people-"

"And thousands came."

"That told us that the people of Harlem are angry and that they are more for Africa and Africans"

"than they ever let on ..."

Malcolm was leaning back in his chair, his chin tilted down, his attention totally ours. He straightened abruptly.

"We know of the demonstration, but Muslims were not involved. New York Times reporters telephoned me and I told them, 'Muslims do not demonstrate.' And I'll tell you this, you were wrong."

Rosa and I looked at each other. Malcolm X, as the most radical leader in the country, was our only hope, and if he didn't approve of our action then maybe we had misunderstood everything.

"You were wrong in your direction." He continued speaking and looking straight into our eyes. "The people of Harlem are angry. And they have reason to be angry. But going to the United Nations, shouting and carrying placards will not win freedom for anyone, nor will it keep the white devils from killing another African leader. Or a black American leader."

"But"-Rosa was getting angry-"what were we supposed to do? Nothing? I don't agree with that." She had more nerve than I.

"The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that integration is a trick. A trick to lull the black man to sleep. We must separate ourselves from the white man, this immoral white man and his white religion. It is a hypocrisy practiced by Christian hypocrites."

He continued. White Christians were guilty. Portuguese Catholic priests had sprinkled holy water on slave ships, entreating God to give safe passage to the crews and cargoes on journeys across the Atlantic. American slave owners had used the Bible to prove that God wanted slavery, and even Jesus Christ had admonished slaves to "render unto their masters" obedience. As long as the black man looked to the white man's God for his freedom, the black man would remain enslaved.

I tried not to show my disappointment.

"Thank you. Thank you for your time. Mr. X--oh, I don't know your last name. I mean, how should you be addressed? "

"I am Minister Malcolm. My last name is Shabazz. But just call me Minister Malcolm."

Rosa had stood, irritation on her face.

Malcolm said, "I know you're disappointed." His voice had softened and for a time the Islamic preacher disappeared. "I'll tell you this. By twelve o'clock, some Negro leaders are going to be like Peter in your Christian Bible. They will deny you. There will be statements given to the press, not only refuting what you did, but they will add that you are dangerous and probably Communists. Those Negroes"-he said the word sarcastically -- "think they're different from you and that the white man loves them for their difference. They will sell you again and again into slavery. Now, here's what we, the Nation of Islam, will not do. We will not ask the people of Harlem to march anywhere at any time. We will not send black men and black women and black children before armed and crazy white devils, and we will not deny you. We will do two things. We will offer them the religion of Islam, the Prophet Muhammad and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. And we will make a statement to the press. I will say that yesterday's demonstration is symbolic of the anger in this country. That black people were saying they will not always say 'yessir' and 'please, sir.' And they will not always allow whites to spit on them at lunch counters in order to eat hot dogs and drink Coca-Colas." He stood; our audience was over. Suddenly he was aloof and cool, his energy withdrawn. He said, "Salaam aleikum" and turned to join a few men who had been waiting for him at the counter.

We left the restaurant in a fog of defeat. Black despair was still real, the murders would continue and we had just used up our last resource. When Rosa and I embraced at the subway there was no elation in our parting.

That evening the radio, television and newspapers bore out Malcolm's predictions.

Conservative black leaders spoke out against us. "That ugly demonstration was carried out by an irresponsible element and does not reflect the mood of the larger black community."

"No good can come from yesterday's blatant disrespect at the U.N." "It was undignified and unnecessary."

Malcolm X was as good as his word. He said, "Black people are letting white Americans know that the time is coming for ballots or bullets. They know it is useless to ask their enemy for justice. And surely whites are the enemies of blacks, otherwise how did we get to this country in the first place?

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