Free The Path Was Steep by Suzanne Pickett Page B

toothpaste. “Nobody’s laid off,” he said. “We’re just moving to Hemphill.”
    Relief fought with anger as I began to argue. We didn’t have any furniture; I’d have to quit my job . . .
    David frowned as he rolled a cigarette. “The company has a new rule. All employees have to live at Hemphill.”
    I went to the bedroom and began to comb my hair in anger. This was the living end! Desolate, black Hemphill. Small houses perched on stilts that leaned precariously against a rocky hillside. “No baths,” I said as David followed me. “No hot water. Those houses don’t have anything!”
    “Piper houses don’t, either.”
    “But that is home!”
    “I’d do better if I could.” For a minute his jauntiness was gone, and he wore the typical lost, Depression look.
    “Oh, David!” I resented the Depression bitterly. Resented Mac in the next room. We didn’t have any privacy, yet I didn’t want him to leave; someone else would show up, and you couldn’t turn hopeless men out to starve. “Maybe, soon—” I kissed him and smiled. The Roosevelt rumble was growing stronger. This was March 1932. In November—we hoped.
    “What about your work?” Mrs. Peraldo asked, helping me pack. “Mr. Kaiser likes your verses.”
    Oh, I would miss the work! Printer’s ink had smudged my fingers. Hard to recover from that disease. When I reached the office each morning, some of the news had been typed for me. Other news I’d gather, listening in on the leased wire in Mr. Kaiser’s office. Most of the important people dropped by sooner or later. Mr. Kaiser would introduce them to me. One of the most famous men in Welch was Lawyer Cartwright, a black man. He was extremely brilliant and quite wealthy.
    I’d heard of him. Heard the tale of when he was traveling with a friend, by train into Virginia. At the state line, Mr. Cartwright was separated from his white friend and told to go to the cars at the back of the train.
    The friend protested, “But you don’t know who this man is!”
    “Whoever he is,” the conductor is reported to have said, “he is just a damn black nigger in Virginia.” Oh, we have paid for such as this! We have paid in full. I write this with a sort of horror. Were we ever really like that in the South? Oh, yes, we were, and never knew how cruel this was.
    It has been many years since I heard that story, but I think I bled a little. At least, I hope that I bled.
    Though born and reared in Alabama, I knew far less prejudice than the average person. Papa and Mama were almost totally without it. They loved everyone too much to hate because of color.
    But living when and where we did, a certain way of life was absorbed by all. There was an old but true saying, “The North loves the black race and hates the individual. The South hates the race but loves the individual.”
    We had always lived near blacks. I played with the small children of Mary, who came to wash for us, and I loved them. There was always laughter and friendliness, but there was a definite, accepted line between black and white over which no one crossed.
    I had never heard a white person address a black as “Mr.,” “Miss,” or “Mrs.” It was always “Sam” or “Mary.” But a black must always use a title when addressing a white person, even the children. It would have been a dangerous thing to leave this off.
    We were not intentionally cruel. Some, the lower class who could not earn respect from their own color, were belligerent and cruelly demanding of respect from blacks. But the better class of whites had only contempt for such people, and the blacks had a saying, “I’d rather be a nigger than poor white trash.”
    Most of us just lived in and perpetuated the way of life to which we had been born. Our fathers or grandfathers had fought in the war, had been slave owners, and we had a warm, paternal feeling for blacks.
    We loved them with our guilt. We loved them achingly, tenderly, pityingly. A black man could always