A Knock at Midnight(24)
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MAMA WAS A fighter. A survivor. She survived every day with the same unflinching determination she had shown in Fulbright when she had two toddlers in tow and still earned her nursing license. My mother was released from prison in November 2008 during my first semester as a student at the University of Houston Law Center. She stepped out of that prison looking like the real Evelyn Fulbright. And she was. She pledged to do whatever it took to get her nursing license back and get fully on her feet again. “I swear on my life and all that is holy I will never go back to that hell again,” she said to me and Jazz on three-way as soon as she could call, her jokes already having us laughing until our sides hurt. We knew it was true. We had our mama back.
Part Two
KNOCKING
One might have hoped that, by this hour, the very sight of chains on Black flesh, or the very sight of chains, would be so intolerable a sight for the American people, and so unbearable a memory, that they would themselves spontaneously rise up and strike off the manacles. But, no, they appear to glory in their chains; now, more than ever, they appear to measure their safety in chains and corpses. And so, Newsweek, civilized defender of the indefensible, attempts to drown you in a sea of crocodile tears (“it remained to be seen what sort of personal liberation she had achieved”) and puts you on its cover, chained.
—JAMES BALDWIN
Chapter 6
PROXIMITY
The day of President Obama’s inauguration, we were let out of Property Law early. I sat on the floor in the common area of the University of Houston Law Center. The lounge was packed with students and professors, the energy electric. Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., said of Black people that day, “We jumped, we wept, we whooped and hollered,” and he was right. I wasn’t in D.C. the day Barack Obama placed his gloved hand on the Lincoln Bible to be sworn in as the forty-fourth president of the United States, but my fervor and sentiment matched the overwhelming emotions on the faces of all of those who were. For months we had been on edge, urged into an extraordinary movement of hope, of change, of conviction that the impossible would be done. The Black Law Students Association held Obama watch parties to mark each speech, each debate. We wore our Obama T-shirts all over campus and let our hope be known. For many of us, it was the first time an election had stimulated our minds and kindled our passion. And now the historic moment had arrived. Obama was our president. When we elected Obama, we elected ourselves.
I loved every minute of the inauguration. When Aretha took the stage, resplendent in her Swarovski-crystal-studded bow, and lifted her angelic, soulful voice in a soaring rendition of “My Country ’Tis of Thee,” I felt the old church hymns of my childhood in my bones. Michelle Obama was a queen in chartreuse. And the president-elect himself—impossibly young, impossibly handsome, impossibly Black. All of those Black faces on that stage and in the crowd, the joy, the pride. It was an extraordinary moment. In the shadow of a Capitol built by slave labor, on a Bible first used in the year 1861, a year when Black people were by federal law considered only three-fifths of a human being, a Black man was sworn in as our nation’s president. A New Birth of Freedom indeed.
When President Obama stepped to the podium and looked over that extraordinary crowd, his face, so beautifully brown, seemed to me to hold all of the pain and triumph of our past. He was solemn, dignified—no longer the youthful senator rousing jubilant crowds on the campaign trail, but the commander in chief, ready to lead us through the perils of our present.
“My fellow citizens,” the president began, in his distinctive tenor, “I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors.”
I clung to every syllable. As well as I knew the rhythm of my own heartbeat, I knew a simple truth: We as a people can do anything. Maybe it was the first time in my life that I really felt that, really embodied it: We can do anything. I knew I was watching a moment of profound spiritual velocity. Its momentum would fuel me time and time again in the years to come.
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THE SUMMER BEFORE I transferred from the University of Houston to SMU Dedman School of Law, I got a troubling phone call. I was late to court, where I was interning for the summer. Even so, when I heard Mr. Mitchell’s voice on the other end of the phone, I stopped walking and passed my latte to my other hand so I could hear him better. After what his family had been through, he at least deserved my attention.
I’d known Mr. Mitchell since I was in high school, as the father of my friend Keyon. Keyon had grown up in Paris, where we used to go to house parties and impromptu kickbacks at “the Corner,” a four-way stop sign by the Paris basketball courts where people hung out, sitting on the hoods of cars, listening to music, being and breathing. The Corner was down the street from Mr. Mitchell’s auto body shop. Everybody knew Keyon’s dad. Everybody knew Keyon.
On the phone, Mr. Mitchell greeted me warmly and asked about my family. I could hear the strain in his usually smooth voice. “I’m guessing you heard the latest…”
“That they denied Keyon’s appeal? I heard, Mr. Mitchell. I’m sorry.”
“Brittany, I know you’re studying hard, that you’re not a lawyer yet. But I’m calling to ask you— If there’s anything…a project, or a campaign, maybe get one of those professors over there interested in Keyon’s case…”