- I figured there’d been a mistake. I recalled that the Emancipation
Proclamation had been issued in 1863. I couldn’t account for that hundred
years, so I assumed it was a typo. I copied the date into my notes with a
question mark, but as more photographs flashed across the screen, it became
clear which century the professor meant. The photos were black and white
but their subjects were modern—vibrant, well defined. They were not dry
stills from another era; they captured movement. Marches. Police.
Firefighters turning hoses on young men.
Dr. Kimball recited names I’d never heard. He began with Rosa Parks. An
image appeared of a policeman pressing a woman’s finger into an ink sponge.
Dr. Kimball said she’d taken a seat on a bus. I understood him as saying she
had stolen the seat, although it seemed an odd thing to steal.
Her image was replaced by another, of a black boy in a white shirt, tie and
round-brimmed hat. I didn’t hear his story. I was still wondering at Rosa
Parks, and how someone could steal a bus seat. Then the image was of a
corpse and I heard Dr. Kimball say, “They pulled his body from the river.”
There was a date beneath the image: 1955. I realized that Mother had been
four years old in 1955, and with that realization, the distance between me and
Emmett Till collapsed. My proximity to this murdered boy could be
measured in the lives of people I knew. The calculation was not made with
reference to vast historical or geological shifts—the fall of civilizations, the
erosion of mountains. It was measured in the wrinkling of human flesh. In the
lines on my mother’s face.
The next name was Martin Luther King Jr. I had never seen his face
before, or heard his name, and it was several minutes before I understood that
Dr. Kimball didn’t mean Martin Luther, who I had heard of. It took several
more minutes for me to connect the name with the image on the screen—of a
dark-skinned man standing in front of a white marble temple and surrounded
by a vast crowd. I had only just understood who he was and why he was
speaking when I was told he had been murdered. I was still ignorant enough
to be surprised.
“Our Nigger’s back!”
I don’t know what Shawn saw on my face—whether it was shock, anger or
a vacant expression. Whatever it was, he was delighted by it. He’d found a
vulnerability, a tender spot. It was too late to feign indifference.
“Don’t call me that,” I said. “You don’t know what it means.”