reading of Scripture, their choice of lawn fertilizer, or the constitutionality of the income tax (he felt that tax violated
the Bill of Rights, and conscientiously refused to pay).
“Maybe if you listened to other people a little more,” I had told him once, “they’d be more responsive.”
Will had shaken his head. “I do listen. That’s the problem. Everything they say is wrong.”
Now, after the meeting in Altgeld, Will had a new idea. “These mixed-up Negroes inside St. Catherine’s ain’t never
gonna do nothing,” he said. “If we wanna get something done, we gonna have to take it to the streets!” He pointed out
that many of the people who lived in the immediate vicinity of St. Catherine’s were jobless and struggling; those were
the people we should be targeting, he said. And because they might not feel comfortable attending a meeting hosted by
a foreign church, we should conduct a series of street corner meetings around West Pullman, allowing them to gather
on neutral turf.
I was skeptical at first, but unwilling as I was to discourage any initiative, I helped Will and Mary prepare a flyer, for
distribution along the block closest to the church. A week later, the three of us stood out on the corner in the late
autumn wind. The street remained empty at first, the shades drawn down the rows of brick bungalows. Then, slowly,
people began to emerge, one or two at a time, women in hair nets, men in flannel shirts or windbreakers, shuffling
through the brittle gold leaves, edging toward the growing circle. When the gathering numbered twenty or so, Will
explained that St. Catherine’s was part of a larger organizing effort and that “we want you to talk to your neighbors
about all the things y’all complain about when you’re sitting at the kitchen table.”
“Well, all I can say is, it’s about time,” one woman said.
For almost an hour, people talked about potholes and sewers, stop signs and abandoned lots. As the afternoon fell to
dusk, Will announced that we’d be moving the meetings to St. Catherine’s basement starting the following month.
Walking back to the church, I heard the crowd still behind us, a murmur in the fading light. Will turned to me and
smiled.
“Told you.”
We repeated these street corner meetings on three, four, five blocks-Will at the center with his priest’s collar and
Chicago Cubs jacket, Mary with her sign-in sheets circling the edges of the crowd. By the time we moved the meetings
indoors, we had a group of close to thirty people, prepared to work for little more than a cup of coffee.
It was before such a meeting that I found Mary alone in the church hall, making a pot of coffee. The evening’s agenda
was neatly printed on a sheet of butcher’s paper taped to the wall; the chairs were all set up. Mary waved at me while
searching a cupboard for sugar and creamer, and told me Will was running a little late.
“Need any help?” I asked her.
“Can you reach this?”
I pulled down the sugar from the top shelf. “Anything else?”
“No. I think we’re all set.”
I took a seat and watched Mary finish arranging the cups. She was a hard person to know, Mary was; she didn’t like to
talk much, about herself or her past. I knew that she was the only white person from the city who worked with us, one
of maybe five white people left in West Pullman. I knew that she had two daughters, one ten and one twelve; the
younger one had a disability that made walking difficult and required regular therapy.
barré
(Barré)
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