“I Propose a March to Washington”
I just lately completed studying Carson McCullers’ nice 1940 novel, “The Coronary heart is a Lonely Hunter”—an actual masterpiece, by the best way, and one I extremely suggest—and I used to be startled to learn the next passage, which I cross alongside to mark the sixtieth anniversary (yesterday) of the March on Washington.
The context: the e-book describes life in a small city within the Deep South within the Thirties by way of the eyes of 5 fundamental characters: John Singer, a deaf-mute employed as a jewellery engraver; Mick Kelly, a 13 year-old woman; Jake Blount, a drifter/labor agitator; Biff Brannon, the proprietor of an area cafe; and Benedict Copeland, an aged African-American physician.
Copeland is consumed by bitterness and rage—rage at what white society had performed and was doing to his folks, rage at his fellow blacks who submit to those outrages, and rage at his personal lack of ability to alleviate their struggling or impact significant change. He and Blount, the labor agitator, confront each other in the direction of the tip of the e-book, after a very searing episode of racial violence on the native jail. They each agree: situations have turn into insupportable, and one thing should be performed. No extra “prudence.” Copeland says:
Within the face of brutality I used to be prudent. Earlier than injustice I held my peace. I sacrificed the issues in hand for the nice of the hypothetical entire. I believed within the tongue as a substitute of the fist. As an armor towards oppression I taught endurance and religion within the human soul. I do know now how unsuitable I used to be. I’ve been a traitor to myself and to my folks. All that’s rot. Now could be the time to behave and to behave shortly. Combat crafty with crafty and would possibly with would possibly.
“How?” Blount asks. Copeland continues:
By getting out and doing issues. By calling crowds of individuals collectively and getting them to display. … I’ve a program. It’s a quite simple, concentrated plan. I imply to give attention to just one goal. In August of this yr I plan to steer a couple of thousand Negroes on this nation on a march. A march to Washington. All of us collectively in a single strong physique. If you’ll look within the cupboard yonder you will note a stack of letters which I’ve written this week and can ship personally.
Blount desires no a part of it:
That is not the proper angle in any respect. Within the first place, you’d by no means get out of city. They’d break it up, saying it is a menace to public well being—or some such trumped-up purpose. However even in case you obtained to Washington it would not do a bit of excellent. The entire notion is loopy. … Who cares whether or not you and your thousand Negroes straggle as much as that stinking cesspool of a spot referred to as Washington? What distinction does it make? What do just a few folks matter—just a few thousand folks, black, white, good, or dangerous? When the entire of our society is constructed on a basis of lies?
Fairly superb, for 1940. In a e-book written by a previously-unknown white Southern lady who was, on the time she submitted the e-book for publication, all of twenty-two years previous!
And on the threat of gross over-simplification, I feel it honest to say that Copeland’s thought finally prevailed—folks did care, it did matter, and it completed significantly greater than a bit of excellent.
