Road to Nowhere. Ch1. Mistakes of a Young White Organizer.
An inexperienced 25-year-old white organizer, working in a Black community, confronts the still timely argument over whether to lead the organizing of the working class of America with class or race.
Madeline Talbott circa 1975.
1975-1976
Madeline
My mother had a habit of every afternoon dissolving into a miserable mess of tears and anger. “Good for nothing no account kids!” she would start, and then keep it up for hours. She did the best she could, army wife with four kids who had to be fed and cleaned and moved every year or two, daughter of a woman who also had trouble loving her daughters. People would eventually find diagnoses for what my mother had, but we kids didn’t know. We thought we weren’t good enough, maybe good for nothing.
I learned to respond by talking back: snarky, smart-mouthed, mean even. All I wanted was closeness to that woman, but in a pinch, anger allowed me to breathe. No one taught me any rules for disagreements, so I always assumed that it was fair in any argument to try to hurt your opponent, even if it was a friend. I learned to fight from my mother, with a kind of vicious, ruthless anger. Loneliness and anger, they were my signature emotions.
Community organizing with a group called ACORN worked for me. On the one hand, we had to knock on doors in low-income neighborhoods to recruit dues-paying members. That act of beseeching poor folks to take me in and build their own organization was counter-cultural to a white middle-class girl coming from an Ivy League university. Asking, always asking, for information, for issues, for dues, for participation. To my surprise, doors opened and folks invited me in.
I ate their arroz con pollo and their sweet potato pie. I heard whispered confidences and asked for help. For instance, when my poor old used car broke down in front of Alma Hawkins’ little house in east Dallas during my ACORN training, I couldn’t figure out another solution, so I knocked on the nearest door—which happened to be Alma’s—introduced myself and asked her if she could please drive me to the house meeting I was already late for. That raspy-voiced, white working-class woman laughed and laughed at me, a Yankee stranger, but then she grabbed her keys and her cigarettes and told me to hurry up and get in her car. She would become a great leader in Texas ACORN. I learned that my total lack of helpful skills or resources could induce laughter, which could allow me in, inside, where I so wanted to be. If you come to help, smart folks will run for cover. But once they figured out that I was the one needing help, they could relax and we could get somewhere, together.
I faced strangers’ doors every day, with nothing to offer but my tendency to believe that the people behind those doors were up to the challenges ahead. The wonder of being invited inside some of them; the blessing of being allowed to get close to marvelous, brilliant, funny people who did not seem to notice my deep good-for-nothingness.
Along with feeding my need for human contact, community organizing also matched up perfectly with my inner rage. I had a habit of talking back and fighting. Organizing gave me targets to talk back to, to fight against, where the vicious and ruthless stuff came in handy. Unlike my mother, I didn’t have to hurt people I loved quite as much, because I could spend that energy trying to hurt people who caused my loved ones harm. Vengeance–for injustice, for racism, for inequality, for greed: some may have been lured to organizing by the need to make things right, but I was there at least partially to do some damage to the bad guys. I never won what I needed from my mother. Once I found out we could sometimes win against the banks, the corporations, or the mayors, I knew I was in the right place. There might be some things even more important than winning one battle, and there might have been some tactics that were unacceptable, especially in disagreements with folks on my side, but I didn’t know that then.
We organized working-class folks at ACORN: Black, brown, and white. We believed in a majority constituency, that the working-class could rule their own country if they got organized. It was a simple, compelling vision. A bit too simple. It failed to recognize the role that race and racism played in keeping the working-class down, but I didn’t know that then.
ACORN sent me to Pine Bluff, Arkansas in November of 1975 for my first assignment.
To Be Continued:
This piece is the first of 15 short chapters and will be continued in the next organizing story.