The Heart of a Woman - Maya Angelou [65]
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 I 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 Sékou Touré 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 police men 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