The Weight of Blood (37)

Mrs. Morgan laughed. “I know. Hard to believe. But what if I’m right? Would it be so terrible to go to prom?”

Maddy nibbled on her bottom lip. She had never given prom a single thought. She only heard about it in passing, but she had no intention of going. Papa would never let her.

“You know what I think?” Mrs. Morgan said with a smirk. “I think going to the All-Together prom would be a major statement to everyone.”

“You do?”

“Hell yeah! Do you know, back in 1965, when this school first integrated, they literally canceled prom because they didn’t want Black people attending, potentially dancing with one of their own? They didn’t even want Black people to have a prom. Like, ‘you can integrate, but we’ll be damned if we allow you to have joy.’”

Maddy stared. It was the first time someone had spoken to her like she was a real Black girl. She didn’t know how to respond.

“The fight for equality can get really ugly,” Mrs. Morgan continued, shaking her head. “Segregation ended in 1964, and yet this town is carrying on like it’s STILL 1964. Treating Black people like second-class citizens they only want to interact with when it suits their needs.”

“But JFK gave them civil rights,” Maddy retorted.

Mrs. Morgan cocked her head to the side. “Huh?”

Maddy licked her lips. “Well, I mean . . . Negroes marched peacefully, and in return, our thirty-sixth president, Lyndon B. Johnson, honoring our assassinated thirty-fifth president, John F. Kennedy, signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act.”

Mrs. Morgan gaped at her for several beats. Maddy’s stomach tightened. Had she messed up the dates?

“I don’t know . . . if I’ve failed you or if someone else has. But that’s not what happened at all! It wasn’t always peaceful.”

“I don’t understand.”

Mrs. Morgan sighed. “Let me show you something.”

Mrs. Morgan pulled out a laptop, booted it up, and opened a browser to YouTube. She pressed play on a black-and-white video—a group of Black people sitting at a lunch counter, as a group of white people swung and violently yanked at their clothes, pulling them off their stools, shoving them to the ground, blood splattering as they kicked them.

“What is this?” Maddy gasped, horrified.

“This is what you’re not allowed to see. The school system pulled this out of the curriculum. Parents complained it was ‘too disturbing.’ Probably worried someone will recognize their grandpa’s or mother’s face.”

“Why are they hitting them like that?”

“These men were called the Greensboro Four. They were doing a ‘sit in’ to protest the racial segregation policy at a store’s lunch counter.”

Maddy frowned. “But why were they sitting where they weren’t supposed to?”

“Because sometimes you have to, like John Lewis said, ‘Get into good trouble, necessary trouble,’ for your voice to be heard.”

Mrs. Morgan clicked through more videos: two Black teens being pummeled by a surging water hose; a man in his church suit being beaten by a mob; a bleeding girl carried out on a stretcher; German shepherds sinking their sharp teeth into arms and legs; policemen wielding their batons like swords slicing through weaponless marchers . . .

“It wasn’t always gospel hymns and peaceful marches. The civil rights movement was a battle in the war against racism. People risked their lives to fight for equality. Let me show you one more thing.”

She pulled up a black-and-white photo with a large crowd surrounding a tree near train tracks, a Black man tied to the trunk. Maddy squinted, and it took her a few moments to process the familiar scene. She knew the giant oak well, rooted close to the East Side border, near her home.

It was Springville.

“They say that this man fell in love with a girl from the West Side. No one was charged with his murder.”

Maddy read the photo caption, calling it The Lynching Tree.

Mrs. Morgan pulled up more pictures of Springville: a Whites Only sign in front of the old market. Black people picking cotton up near Mr. Henry’s farm. Maddy couldn’t pull her eyes away from the screen. All those tapes Papa had, all the hundreds of black-and-white films and history documentaries they’d watched together, the way he boasted about Springville being a wholesome place in the past . . . Why hadn’t she ever seen any of this?

Maybe he has seen it, she thought with stunning realization. Did he make her pretend to protect her?

“Don’t you see?” Mrs. Morgan continued. “Just the act of you going to the prom, your school’s first integrated prom, is a protest in and of itself. Your presence adds to the resistance. It speaks out against the racism happening in this town and others.”

She paused to look at Maddy, as if making sure her words were penetrating. No teacher had ever paid much attention to her. Most blew her off as a nuisance or forgot she existed. But around Mrs. Morgan, she wasn’t invisible. The tenderness had an unfamiliar motherly quality that made Maddy wary yet hopeful.

“You go to that prom, Maddy. You go to that prom, and you show everyone that you’re not some girl who can be pushed around or made fun of. Your actions will speak louder than any words could. They’ll say that you are strong, brave, and powerful beyond measure.”

Maddy released a breath and studied her hands.