Free Certain People by Stephen; Birmingham Page B

of mulattos came into existence. There was a similar settlement near Lawrence, Kansas, and there were others scattered across the Middle West and Southwest. Behind these families was white money, for these people were all descendants of the white landed gentry—men who, unlike the common image of the cruel slave-owner, acknowledged their love-children, and maintained two, or in some cases more, families. These children were sent away to be educated at the finest schools and colleges in the United States and Europe. When they came back, they took positions in various corporations, and helped found the first black universities and churches, became the first black professionals as educators, lawyers, and physicians. Thus, even before the Emancipation, there was a black middle class in America.
    Gradually, these families moved to the larger cities, where they lived so quietly as to be almost invisible—which was exactly the state of affairs they preferred. They could not be, and in most cases did not wish to be, assimilated into the white world, and at the same time they were envied and resented by the black have-nots for the simple reason that they had more. Their chief philanthropic endeavors centered around the activities of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In its early years the N.A.A.C.P. operated as a kind of exclusive club.
    In many cities, these families have been living quiet, comfortable, but isolated lives for as many as five generations. Proud, conservativeand tradition-bound, they have placed the emphasis of their lives on refinement and good living—good silver, good linen, good antiques. In many cities, when integrated neighborhoods opened up, these families refused to move to them because they preferred to live near their friends and relatives. In Chicago, for example, families like the Gillespies, McGills, Abbotts, and George Cleveland Halls remained in their big houses on the South Side after it became unfashionable, where they kept chauffeurs and maintained summer homes on Cape Cod or Martha’s Vineyard. Still, conspicuous consumption was frowned upon, and costly items were acquired only if they were also useful. When the father of Mr. Leonard Evans of Chicago was criticized, by a less-well-off black, for driving a Cadillac, he carefully explained why he needed a big car. When he drove his family to visit their relatives in the segregated South, the children could sleep in the car, and not suffer the indignities of “colored-only” motels.
    These upper-class blacks, furthermore, have always carefully referred to themselves as “middle-class.” The phrase “middle-class” has a special meaning to blacks. To whites, it is essentially an economic consideration. Any family with, say, an annual income in the $20,000 to $35,000 range would be considered middle-class. Archie Bunker would be considered middle-class; he owns his own home, has a steady job, and his wife does not need to work. But in black America, class is a question of dignity and, more important, stability. To own your own home, unmortgaged, and to own your own car, unfinanced, is class. To be in debt, or to drift from job to job, is not class. Divorce is anathema, and illegitimacy is worse. Upper-crust blacks routinely express pity for poor blacks on welfare, but along with this pity are great feelings of disdain. Upper-class blacks voice concern over “street blacks,” and blacks who are drug-users, criminals, or pimps, but beneath this concern is something very close to contempt. Twenty years ago, a foreigner might have been puzzled by the patrician status accorded to Mr. A. Philip Randolph of Washington, D.C. It is true that Mr. Randolph had all the courtliness, dignity, and refined good manners of a Clifton Webb. But, after all, the Nashville-born labor leader was a sleeping car porter. Could he be upper-class? In black America he can indeed. In Denver, for many years,