Boys Life

gymnasium equipment and a punching bag. Then we came to a white door, the smell of paint still fresh. He held it open for us as we passed through.
    We were in the civil rights museum. The floor was made of varnished timbers, and the lighting was low. Glass display cases held slave and Civil War clothes on black mannequins, as well as primitive pottery, needlework, and lace. A section of bookshelves held maybe a hundred or more thin, leatherbound volumes. They looked like notebooks or diaries. On the walls were large blown-up black and white photographs. I recognized Martin Luther King in one, and in another Governor Wallace blocking the schoolhouse door.
    And at the center of this room stood the Lady, dressed in white silk, her thin arms adorned with elbow-length white gloves. She wore a white, wide-brimmed hat, and beneath it her beautiful emerald eyes shone with light.
    “This,” she said, “is my dream.”
    “It’s lovely,” Mom told her.
    “It’s necessary,” the Lady corrected her. “Who on this earth can know where they’re going, unless they have a map of where they’ve been? Your husband didn’t come?”
    “He’s workin’.”
    “No longer at the dairy, I understand.”
    Mom nodded. I had the impression the Lady knew exactly where Dad was.
    “Hello, Cory,” she said. “You’ve had some adventures lately, haven’t you?”
    “Yes ma’am.”
    “You wantin’ to be a writer, you ought to be interested in those books.” She motioned toward the shelves. “Know what those are?” I said I didn’t. “They’re diaries,” she said. “Voices of people who used to live all around here. Not just black people, either. Anytime somebody wants to find out what life was like a hundred years ago, there are the voices waitin’ to be heard.” She walked to one of the glass display cases and ran her gloved fingers across the top, checking for dust. She found none, and she grunted with satisfaction. “Everybody needs to know where they’ve been, it seems to me. Not just blackskins, but whiteskins, too. Seems to me if a person loses the past, he can’t find the future either. Which is what this place is all about.”
    “You want the people of Bruton to remember their ancestors were slaves?” Mom asked.
    “Yes, I do. I want ’em to remember it not to feel pity for themselves, or to feel put-upon and deservin’ of what they don’t have, but to say to themselves, ‘Look where I have come from, and look what I have become.’” The Lady turned to face us. “Ain’t no way out but up,” she said. “Readin’. Writin’. Thinkin’. Those are the rungs on the ladder that lead up and out. Not whinin’ and takin’ and bein’ a mind-chained slave. That’s the used-to-be world. It ought to be a new world now.” She moved around the room, and stopped at a picture of a fiery cross. “I want my people,” she said quietly, “to cherish where they’ve come from. Not sweep it under a rug. Not to dwell on it either, because that’s nothin’ but givin’ up the future. But to say, ‘My great-granddaddy pulled a plow by the strength of his back. He worked from sunup to sundown, heat and cold. Worked for no wages but a master’s food and a roof over his head. Worked hard, and was sometimes whipped hard. Sweated blood and kept goin’, when he wanted to drop. Took the brand and answered Yes, massa, when his heart was breakin’ and his pride was belly-down. Did all this when he knew his wife and children might go up on the auction block and be torn away from him in the blink of an eye. Sang in the fields, and wept at night. He did all this and more, and by God… by God, because he suffered this I can at least finish school.’” She lifted her chin in defiance of the flames. “That’s what I want ’em to think, and to say. This is my dream.”
    I left my mother’s side, and walked to one of the blown-up photographs. It showed a snarling police dog, its teeth full of shirt as a black man tried to fight away and a policeman lifted a billy club. The next photograph showed a slim black girl clutching schoolbooks and walking through a crowd as rage-swollen white faces shouted derision at her. The third showed…
    I stopped.
    My heart had jumped.
    The third picture showed a burned-out church, the stained-glass windows shattered and firemen picking through the ruins. A few black people were standing around, their expressions dull with shock. The trees in front of the church had no leaves on