“For as long as the stevedores are hiring and promoting on the basis of race, as long as anyone anywhere is picking people on the basis of their skin color, we all lose,” the mayor says. “As long as we continue to
The wave of applause spreads through the crowd on the mall, reaching such a fevered pitch that Cynthia actually has to wait for it to die down before she can get out her next words. She plays the moment for all its dramatic effect, waving her hand in the air like a conductor, driving the people where she wants them to go. “If we play into that Southern stereotype, we run the risk of the world seeing Houston as backward and unsophisticated. We run the risk of driving away business. The future of this city depends on putting our best face for ward, to let people know that Houston, Texas, is first class all the way.”
She pauses to look down at the print reporters scribbling in their notebooks, as if she wants to make sure that no one misses a word of what she’s about to say next.
“The answer then, as I see it, is to remove the lens of race altogether,” the mayor says. “Now just this morning, Pat Bodine of the ILA, your union president, as well as Wayne Kaylin from OCAW, some members of the port commission and the Mar itime Association, and Thomas Cole . . . they were all in my office. We were hammering something out, trying to come up with the right solution. And I’m happy to report that we reached some common ground in there. I proposed a resolution I think we can all be proud of. And it starts here at city hall,” Cynthia pronounces. “I am proposing to the city council, as early as next week, that the city of Houston adopt an official policy of raceblind hiring. There will be no more
Oh, she has them now, Jay thinks. This is what they’ve been waiting for. The words they came all this way to hear. He hears whistles in the crowd, sees a few women waving handkerchiefs in the air. The men clap and stomp their feet. Jay, at the head of the crowd, holds up a hand, as high as he can manage. He waves for them to stop, everything in his body telling them to wait.
“And,” the mayor says, “there will be no
It takes a moment for the crowd to get it, for the catch to catch on.
For the dockworkers to understand what the mayor is really saying.
That her plan is to simply wipe the slate clean from this moment forward, to wipe out three hundred years of racial dis crimination in a single afternoon.
The mayor’s solution: let the problem self-correct.
Out in the crowd, the hand clapping stops short. The faces grow long.
Cynthia is so proud of herself, she is dangerously close to being smug.
“Now, when I proposed this idea to the unions this morning, to the stevedores and representatives from the port,” she says, “it took them no time to come to the conclusion that this was the right thing to do, that this was the right solution at the right time for this city.” She pauses, waiting for applause that never comes. “So it falls to you men now,” she says, putting the onus of this labor problem squarely in their calloused hands. “If the stevedores and the union leaders can come to a consensus on this, then the only question left is, when do you boys want to go back to work?” She looks directly into the TV cameras on the mall and smiles broadly. “The city is waiting, y’all.”
When Jay calls home about an hour or so later, Bernie complains that Rolly’s got his feet up on her sofa. “Some bodyguard,” she mumbles under her breath. Jay asks if she wants him to come home. She says no, “I know they need you there.” He asks how she’s feeling, if everything’s all right. Rolly, she says, “has been watching stories since this morning,” but she’s glad she’s not in the apartment alone. Jay tells her to hang in there, tells her that he loves her.
Outside the ILA union hall, he hangs up the pay phone. Then he heads back inside, where a labor fight has been rag ing for at least an hour already, the men more divided than ever. The white ones came here today right from the picket line, their clothes pocked with sweat marks. Everyone in the room is hot and tired on their feet. Jay and the Brotherhood camp came here straight from the mayor’s press conference at city hall, Jay driv ing his father-in-law and Darren Hayworth because the kid had asked him to come along. Reverend Boykins is still hoping for a sit-down with the union president and OCAW, and the kid, looking at Jay, said he wanted a man with him he could trust. It had been impossible for Jay, despite himself, to say no.
This ILA meeting was thrown together hastily, at Pat Bodine’s suggestion. There’s no microphone set up onstage today, no cof fee or refreshments. The union president is up on the stage, alone, in a damp and wrinkled shirt. He waves down the hand of a white man right under the stage, saying, “Naw, I got to you twice already. Let’s get some other voices in here.”
Another white man in front raises his hand in the air.
He’s leaning his weight against the stake of his picket sign, which reads, union stands for brotherhood. When Pat Bodine calls on him, the man turns to face his union brothers, black and white. “I don’t exactly see what there is to talk about,” he says. “I thought this is what we was looking for from the get-go.”
The applause in the room comes from the picketers, from the white dockworkers who, by their own choice, stayed far away from today’s march. The picketers clap their hands and stomp the posts of their handmade signs onto the meeting hall’s lino leum floor. The marchers, the men of the now defunct Broth erhood of Longshoremen, shake their heads vigorously. “This don’t make nothing right,” one of the black dockworkers says, followed by catcalls and claps from his fellow marchers. “This just puts us right back where we started.”
“Look,” one of the white picketers says, “if the stevedores say they’ll stop hiring foremen on the basis of race, I don’t get it . . . what more do you people want?”
“We want an equal shot, same as you,” Donnie Simpson says.
“I think what the mayor is saying is that a policy like this would level the playing field for everybody,” Bodine says. “There has never been an official policy like this on the books. It would be a huge step forward.” Then, sensing he’s maybe offered too much of his own opinion, he adds, “In theory.”
“But see, that’s the problem, jack,” Donnie Simpson says from the floor. “I can’t
There’s an explosive response from the Brotherhood camp, men calling out, “That’s right, brother,” and whistling loudly. Pat Bodine, onstage, tries to call on someone else to speak, but the marchers are slow to die down. Bodine puts his hands on his hips, exasperated at having momentarily lost control.
