Read Online Voices in Our Blood by Jon Meacham - Free Book Online Page A

the house.”
    â€œBury him under the
house?
”
    â€œThat right. He never amounted to much to us, and we just want him out of the way quick.”
    â€œYou can’t do it. It’s against the
law.
”
    â€œBut what if we don’t tell nobody? Ain’t nobody gonna miss him noway.”
    â€œNaw, you can’t do it. You got to get a death certificate and things like that.”
    â€œWell, we still gonna put him under the house. Is Johnson’s Baby Powder a good thing to sprinkle him with?”
    â€œJohnson’s
Baby Powder?
Lord no!”
    â€œBut it says on the can it’s good for the body.”
    â€œLady, you got to have your cousin buried
right.
” So I would give the undertaker the address, and then we would dash to the corner and watch the big black hearse come by on the way to Bentonia.
    Or I would pick a Negro number at random from the telephone book, and phone it and say I was Bert Parks, calling from New York City on the Break-the-Bank program. Their number had been chosen out of all the telephones in the United States, and if they could answer three questions they would win $1000. “But I must warn you, Mrs. McGee, you are now
on the air,
and your voice is going into every home in America. Mrs. J. D. McGee, of Yazoo, Mississippi, are you ready for
question number one?
”
    â€œYessir, an’ I hope I can answer it.”
    â€œQuestion number one! Who was the first President of the United States?”
    â€œWhy, George Washington was.”
    â€œThat’s absolutely correct, Mrs. McGee,” as my fellow conspirators applauded in the background. “Now for question number two, and if you answer it correctly you get a chance to answer our big break-the-bank question. What is the capital of the United States?”
    â€œWashington, D.C. is.”
    â€œVery good!” (applause) “Now, Mrs. McGee, are you ready down there in Yazoo for the big jackpot question?”
    â€œYessir!”
    â€œHere it is
. . . . How many miles in the world?
”
    â€œHow many miles in the
world?
”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    â€œThe whole thing?”
    â€œAll of it.”
    â€œOh Lord, I’ll just have to guess. . . . One million!”
    â€œOne million? Mrs. McGee, I’m afraid you just missed! The correct answer should have been one million and three.”
    Several times I recall my father saying, when I was a small boy, “I don’t know why they treat these niggers so bad. They pay taxes just like everybody else. If they pay taxes they oughta get to vote. It’s as simple as that. If they don’t get to vote they ought not to have to pay any taxes.”
    But one day the police finally caught Willie Johnson, a Negro who had broken into a number of white houses on our street and stolen everything he could carry away with him. He stole my mother’s engagement ring from our house, and several pieces of family silver that the Harpers had buried in the dirt floor of their smokehouse before the federal troops had arrived in Raymond. The police brought Willie Johnson to the city hall for questioning, and telephoned all the men whose houses had been broken into to come down and question him. My father took me with him.
    It was a stifling hot summer day, so hot that all you had to do was walk into the sun and your armpits and the hair on your head would soon be soaking wet. The room at the city hall was a small one; it was crowded with white men, and several others peered through the open door from the hallway. The police chief was sitting behind a desk, and when he saw my father he shouted, “Come on in and let’s talk to this boy.” I found a place on the floor next to my father’s chair, and then I saw the Negro, sitting in a straight chair, trussed up and sweating as much as I was. The other white men were looking at him, glowering hard and not saying a word. The police chief