Road to Nowhere. Ch4. Tremors.
Madeline starts to realize that she is apprenticing herself to some folks who know how to wage a good issue campaign.
An ACORN Convention march in Milwaukee 1998. Painting by Steve Bachmann. Thanks to Lisa Clausen.
1975-1976
When Walker finished with his customer, he walked back over to where I was standing.
“Yeah, we all got letters today—from what I hear, pretty near ever’ property owner on Ohio Street, from here all the way down. They usin’ somethin’ called Community Development Block Grant funds, money come from HUD, supposed to improve low-and-moderate income neighborhoods. Ha!
“These suckers from city hall wanna expand little old Ohio Street to four lanes,” Walker told me. “But there ain’t nothin’ here but us Black folk, and they sure as hell don’t wanna improve where we livin’ at. They takin’ some of my gas station and goin’ right through the middle of some folks’ yards, or if their house is close to the street, through their living rooms.”
As he talked, I could feel the coiled energy: bold, magnetic.
“So, what can ACORN do?” he challenged. “You got lawyers? You got researchers? What you got?”
Good lord almighty. I had a lonely office that doubled as a home. I had a little experience as an organizer. I had signed up a handful of members since I arrived in town, to join the few dozen existing ones. We were hardly the force that Walker needed.
So I told him the truth.
“I got two hands and some time, Mr. Walker, no lawyers, maybe a bit of time from a researcher in Little Rock. I think you already know there’s two kinds of power: organized money and organized people. I figure the organized money wants your land. But if we bring the Ohio Street and southeast side folks together to build an organization, we might have enough organized people to make a difference. I can help reach out to them, but they don’t know me, and I’m white and really, city hall doesn’t care what I think. I’m not ACORN. A lot of this is going to be up to you and your neighbors. That’s what ACORN is. The whole community, united. What do you think?”
He looked me in the eye for the second time, and seemed to relax a bit. Sometimes admitting the truth about what I did and didn’t have to offer resets the conversation.
“Yeah, Thelma—that’s my wife—she’s already in touch with a lot of the homeowners on the street. Maybe you and her can figure what to do about this advisory meetin’ the city’s got on Thursday.” He seemed a bit warmer, like maybe we were going to be on the same side.
Despite my feeling that I had nothing to offer, organizers do have one bit of magic. We can become a mirror for the person we talk to. When we listen excitedly to what they have to tell us, when we laugh at a great sign, when we answer tough questions honestly, when we ask questions of folks whose opinion is never otherwise solicited, we send a message: I see you. I see the leader you really are, I hear your great ideas, I’m excited to have the chance to work with you.
Sometimes something ignites behind their eyes, maybe just a pilot light. That’s the signal that our vision of their best self has been conveyed back to them. None of this is articulated. It stays in the background, but things are different afterward.
My guess was Walker had already been fighting for a long time to get others to recognize who he really was: brilliant, charismatic, ready to lead. I simply noticed and acknowledged that in him, through my actions. Believe me, it didn’t make him trust an inexperienced young white woman, but it was a good-enough basis for going forward together.
“Okay, you got people you can talk to in Little Rock or someplace about this HUD business, what they can and can’t do?”
“Sure,” I responded, taking out my notebook. Looked like I was getting some assignments.
“Thelma!” he called. He turned to me, but with almost a smile now. “I gotta handle the customers. Thelma will show you the letter.
I turned around and saw a good-looking young Black woman coming out of the building next to the gas station. She had freckles, a long slender neck, and an Afro, big by Pine Bluff standards. She was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, but she looked elegant and professional. Walker, like the smart leader that he was, was delegating me to his chief organizer.
Thelma stuck out her hand before I could. “Thelma Walker. You must be the ACORN lady.”
“Sure am,” I smiled.
“Thelma, this here’s Madeline. Can you show her that fool letter the city sent to ever’body? I gotta get some work done.
We were rolling. Mrs. Walker was showing me the letter and telling me who she had already talked to from Ohio Street. She thought we should attend the Community Advisory Committee meeting referenced in the letter for next Thursday at the nearby AME church, and she felt sure she could turn out quite a few of her neighbors to that meeting. I just listened, smiling broader and broader.
I left the gas station that day with the feeling that I had just apprenticed myself to some masters. Two brilliant folks were ready to fight, and they seemed to be willing to let me in on the battle.
But I noted that Thelma Walker had spoken to me out of doors, without any invitation to come inside or have something to eat or drink, which was unusual in the south. I liked the arms-length, because we were not friends. We were proposing to build power together, and power can be dangerous. And I had some kind of an intimation about the underground volcano of race and racism lying just beneath us, ready to blow us sky high at any moment. But I didn’t know what to do about all that, so I ignored it.
Whatever else happened, the sleepy white power structure of Pine Bluff was about to get a wake-up call. I had an inkling even then that I was the lucky beneficiary of a chance to learn organizing work from the grassroots people like Mr. Walker who seemed to have imbibed strategy expertise from their experience. I couldn’t wait.
As I drove back to the office, I sang along with the radio, to KC and the Sunshine Band: “That’s the Way, uh-huh, uh-huh, I like it, I like it.”
To Be Continued:
This piece is the fourth of 15 short chapters and will be continued in the next organizing story.