Smooth Operating and Other Social Acts

Roland Leander Williams

Description

Through a cultural study of writings about slavery in the United States, Smooth Operating and Other Social Acts uncovers a mode of behavior adopted by African Americans for relief from the brutality of black bondage. Roland Leander Williams grants that African Americans have been beaten, but he guarantees that they have not been broken. While he acknowledges that they have been demeaned, he assures that they have not been diminished. Williams confesses that African Americans have been done harm, but he confirms that they have not become disheartened. Close readings of classic slave narratives, along with some neo-slave narratives—including The Conjure Woman (1899), Kindred (1979), Dessa Rose (1986), and The Good Lord Bird (2013)—furnish proof that African Americans have preserved their dignity and elevated their status through ingenious applications of improvisation. Smooth Operating and Other Social Acts establishes as well that a dim view of African Americans, propagated by black bondage, bears a resemblance to sexual discrimination, which prompts female targets of its gaze to practice dissembling.
Acknowledgments

Prologue: On the Sly

Birth of Cool

Standards and Practices

Two of Kind

Game of Charades

Old Black Magic

Lost in Translation

Learning the Ropes

Blind Man's Bluff

Dress for Success

Postscript: On One's Game

Works Cited

Index

Sujets

• Ethnic Studies
• Gender Studies
• Literary Criticism
• USA
• United States of America
• América
• Slavery
• Social sciences
• African American
• American
• États-Unis
• Black

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 juillet 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438489483
• Langue: English

Extrait

SMOOTH OPERATING and Other Social Acts
SUNY series in Multiethnic Literatures

Mary Jo Bona, editor
SMOOTH OPERATING and Other Social Acts
R OLAND L EANDER W ILLIAMS
Cover image: Phillis Wheatley, Negro servant to Mr. John Wheatley, of Boston by engraver Scipio Moorhead, active 1770–1779, available through the Library of Congress.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2022 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Name: Williams, Roland Leander, 1953– author.
Title: Smooth operating and other social acts / Roland Leander Williams.
Description: Albany, NY : State University of New York Press, [2022] | Series: SUNY series in multiethnic literatures | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022005689 | ISBN 9781438489476 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438489483 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: American fiction—19th century—History and criticism. | American fiction—20th century—History and criticism. | African Americans in literature. | Stereotypes (Social psychology) in literature. | Role playing in literature. | Race relations in literature. | Slavery in literature. | LCGFT: Literary criticism.
Classification: LCC PS374.B635 W55 2022 | DDC 813.009/896073—dc23/eng/20220331
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022005689
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
With our eyes closed, we see best, Every odd soul favors the rest.
For the love that Hazel poured into her daughter.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue: On the Sly
Birth of Cool
Standards and Practices
Two of Kind
Game of Charades
Old Black Magic
Lost in Translation
Learning the Ropes
Blind Man’s Bluff
Dress for Success
Postscript: On One’s Game
Works Cited
Index
Acknowledgments
A single hand never produces a book. It takes a village. The encouragement of many friends, including Renie and David Campbell, Marsha Levell, and Victoria McGuigan, made a critical difference. I tip my hat to my grandfather, Leander Roland Williams, for the example that he set. My nieces Tiffany and Teralyn filled me with inspiration. I am indebted to David Bradley for blazing the trail that I followed. Andrea Allison made sure that I stayed the course. Challenges from my colleagues at Temple University kept me going to the end. My graduate student, Christian Rupert, helped me think through the work. I owe Tamara Nopper thanks for broadening my view. Ike Newsum motivated me to draw on my imagination. Most of all, I am grateful to the team at SUNY Press, especially my editor, Rebecca Colesworthy, who did more than a hand’s turn with kindness and consideration.
Prologue
On the Sly
Judge not folks by an outward show; Feathers float while a pearl lies low.
W hen my grandfather passed, people remembered him as a polite and principled person. Family and friends reminisced about how he left his father’s farm in the South to work for the Pennsylvania Railroad in Philadelphia. He won the heart of a devout woman with whom he raised five children in a home that he bought. Members of his congregation paid him tribute for becoming a pillar of their church when it was getting off the ground. His neighbors held nobody more helpful and honest. A subtle side that he owned, which I discovered during my boyhood one day when he took me shopping for a pair of sneakers, went unnoticed by the unsuspecting.
Named Leander, my grandfather came to life as one of nine children whose father was born to an enslaved woman named Blanche Graham and an unnamed father in rural Virginia on the same day that Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his sword to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox. His forebear based his conduct on morals taught by native Virginian Booker T. Washington, commending faithfulness to industry, integrity, and intelligence within the bounds of reason. My grandfather picked up his manners from his parent, inclining him to maintain that no matter how fashions change, a ruffled temper will never be in style. He kept a mellow air about him. I never saw him lose his cool.
At twenty, in 1926, Leander departed from Roanoke on the flatbed of a train that he rode to Philadelphia. He made the move in response to a call for Pullman porters to work for the Pennsylvania Railroad operating out of the bustling 30th Street Station. His job had him haul assorted bags aboard cars for white passengers. He also shined the travelers’ shoes. In addition, he tended and tidied up sleeping berths for the fares. Leander remained on the job for thirty-five years, became a leader of the local chapter of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and hosted union confabs in his home attended by A. Phillip Randolph, the founder and president of the organization, which was the first African American labor union in the United States.
My grandfather earned a modest salary that exceeded the average for most African American men lucky enough to find employment in Philadelphia. The meat of his bread and butter came from tips handed to him by passengers, whom he pleased with a smile. Customers whom he greeted at depots along the Broadway Limited line running between the City of Brotherly Love and the Windy City, Chicago, must have regarded him as a model servant. They likely showered him with gratuities. On countless occasions, I saw him pull a wad of cash from his pants pocket.
With the income that he earned, he purchased a four-bedroom house. The residence sheltered his family through the Great Depression. While countless households in the city hungered for food, Leander watched his spending to make sure his children never missed a meal. His earnings stood his offspring in good stead through the hard times. He managed his money well enough to contribute a tithe of his income to support the New Bethlehem Baptist Church, where he acted as a lay officer. The church came to install a stained-glass window dedicated to his memory.
Before Labor Day and my first day of first grade, as a favor to my father, my grandfather volunteered to take me to the Thom McAn shoe store and buy me a pair of Chuck Taylor All-Stars by Converse, the sneakers that were all the rage among the boys in my neighborhood at the time. I had a hole in the bottom of my PF Flyers; therefore, as athletic shoes, they were useless for use in sports after school, and they were old hat to my friends, none of whom wanted to be caught dead with the brand on their feet. Stepping into the store with my grandfather filled me with excitement. We were both dressed in our Sunday best, as was always the case when anyone in my family went shopping in Center City, since we never wanted any whites selling or buying merchandise around the commercial strips to doubt that we were respectable and had cash. My grandfather was a short man. Still, greeting the white shoe salesman who met us a few feet inside the door, Leander looked like a giant, ready to perform magic for me.
The salesman wore a dingy gray polyester suit with a crumpled white shirt and stained black tie. He was a good bit taller than my grandfather, but he appeared younger than my father. Patting the shoulder pad of my grandfather’s brown herringbone jacket, he asked, “How’s it going, Pops? Can I do something for you and your boy? Looking for a bargain, I guess,” he said.
My grandfather flinched before he nodded, stammered, and flashed a smile. In a gradual and quiet fashion, he explained our mission. He let the white man know that he wanted to purchase me a new pair of sneakers. My grandfather pointed out that I had my heart set on wearing the Chuck Taylor All-Stars brand. He issued a polite request to see the type in my size.
The salesman questioned whether the Converse shoes fell within our price range. They were the most expensive sneakers in stock, he informed us. He asked, “Sure you can afford it, Pops?” Then he directed us to some PF Flyers displayed on a side shelf. Each of them looked worn out of shape from being tried on lots of times. The salesman offered to let my elder have the shoes for up to twenty percent off the sticker price. With a swear word, the white man insisted that the shabby shoes were a real bargain.
My elder hemmed and hawed for a minute. He grinned and shook his head and checked the tag on the PF Flyers. “Wow,” he blurted out with bulging eyes. “This could break the bank. Tell me, sir, do you have cheaper shoes in the back? I hate to trouble you, but if you could find some samples that cost a little less, you will help me stay out of the poorhouse.”
“Sure, Pops. I have some clearance items that might fit your budget. If you like any of them, I’ll let you take them off my hands at the manufacturer price. You could save a fortune on any set of them. Have a seat. I’ll bring out three or four boxes. You can have your pick on me for peanuts.”
The salesman disappeared into the stockroom. Confusion and disappointment consumed me until my grandfather said, “Let’s get out of here. Fool blew his commission. I’ll spend my money elsewhere.” We were gone before the salesman had a clue.
We hiked to the Father and Son shoe store on South Street, where a Black franchise owner who looked around my grandfather’s age sold him the sneakers that I wanted without a word about my elder’s ability to pay. I learned a priceless lesson that day about “smooth operating.” The full meaning of the moment exceeded my grasp until I had a literature class in college where I read