The Heart of a Woman - Maya Angelou [40]
I heard on the morning radio that some black youngsters had sat down at a dining-room counter in North Carolina and that Martin was in jail again. The telephones rang constantly and the office swirled with activity. Hazel Grey, who had come to work as my assistant, was allotting chores to volunteers as I walked in. She looked up from her desk.
“Maya, the printing returned and a bunch of kids from Long Island are coming over this morning to stuff envelopes.”
“Good.” I walked into my office. Hazel followed. “They're coming from an all-white school.”
“Why? Who invited them and how old are they?”
“High school students. Boys and girls. Their counselor called; he's coming with them.” That white youngsters were going to brave Harlem was in itself startling, but that a white adult, in a responsible position, not only agreed, but was willing to officiate in the unusual situation was befuddling. It looked as if the world that would never change was changing.
I had a brief meeting with the black volunteers.
“You're going to have some help in an hour or two with jobs you've been unable to complete.”
A grandmother from a local church said, “Bless the Lord.”
I went on, “Thirty young people are on their way, and we have to decide on how they can help us. We may not have this opportunity again. Now, you tell me what needs to be done.”
“The mimeograph machine needs to be moved away from the window. The sunshine is melting the ink.”
“I wish somebody would take all that junk out of the back office.”
“Somebody ought to file that stack of papers in the hall.”
“We need the steps cleaned. Don't look right to come to Martin Luther King's office and have to walk up dirty steps.”
The counselor looked like an old Burgess Meredith. He was dressed in grey and looked as grey as a winter sky. His casualness was studied and his contrived shamble attractive. He was shorter than most of his charges.
“Miss Angelou, these students have been excused from their classes. In support of the students sitting in in North Carolina, they chose to give the day to the Martin Luther King organization. We are ready to do whatever job you assign us.”
He stood in the middle of the youthful energy like a dull drake among a brood of white ducklings.
I called in the volunteer captains and introduced them. Hazel and I sat through lunch in my office. We chuckled over the white youngsters who were scrubbing the steps and sweeping the floor and doing the jobs for us which were being done in their homes and in their streets by black women and men. We knew that what we were seeing was a one-time phenomenon, so were determined to enjoy it.
The children and their counselor filed in to say goodbye. They accepted my thanks and the thanks of the SCLC. I made a little speech about the oneness of life and the responsibility we all had to make the world livable for everyone. They left and we turned up the volume on the news station. Martin was still in jail. The police had dragged the blacks out of the diner. The North Carolina black community was angry but nothing had happened yet. The office was drifting back to normal when Hazel buzzed my phone.
“Hey Maya. Got something else for you. Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
“Two groups of whites are coming tomorrow and a high school class from an integrated school. Have we got work for them?”
I listened, speechless.
Hazel laughed, “I asked you if you were ready.”
The weeks ran together, the days raced. White and black people were changing as Martin Luther King traveled to and from jail and across the United States, his route covered by the national media. Malcolm X could be seen stripping white television reporters of their noise on the evening news. In Harlem, the Universal Negro Improvement Association formed in the twenties by Marcus Garvey was being revived, and the Ethiopian Association was coming back to life.
White movie stars attracted by Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier were lending their names to the struggle, and their sincerity