Sundays. We worked hard when we had to and took it easy when there was a chance. A lot of colored people tell me that they hate the South; Jim Crow and segregation made a heavy weight for their hearts. But I never felt like that. I mean, lynchings were a terrible thing, and some of those peckerwoods acted so stupid that they embarrassed the hell out of you sometimes. But I still loved the little shack I shared with my mother. I’d have still been there if it wasn’t for one terrible event.
That event was learning to read.
I entered school at the age of six. It was a country schoolhouse with two teachers and four rooms. They broke us up among the classrooms according to size at first, and then they shuffled us around depending on ability. The fourth room was for study; children went in and out of there at the teachers’ request. On the first day I heard Miss Randolph read a story, and I knew that books were my destiny, not writing or teaching or inventing spaceships, just reading and reading and reading some more. I could pick out a simple sentence based on the knowledge of a dozen words by the end of the first week. By the age of eight I was alone in the fourth classroom, reading everything I could. I read the Bible and the dictionary and every newspaper I could. I read every book in our whole neighborhood by the time I was fifteen.
There was a library in the white part of town; coloreds couldn’t go inside. For a while I would go there and sit out front on the bench they had, rereading old books like
“Readin’,” I said proudly.
“Really,” old Miss Dowling said.
“Yes’m,” I replied.
“I don’t believe you,” she stated.
I didn’t know what to reply to such a rude comment, so I sat tight and quiet.
“Read me a sentence,” she ordered.
Dowling frowned and said, “Go on.”
I read the first page and then the second. I read all the way through the story. I had read that book many times and so did not skip or stutter hardly at all.
When I was through, Miss Dowling said, “Come on with me.”
She led me through the big double doors of the library into a large room that was at least twenty feet high, lined to the ceiling with shelves that were packed with neat rows of books. I remember my heart catching. I forgot how to breathe altogether. I had no idea that there were this many books in the whole world. There was a big oak table in the center of the room with fancy chairs around it. There was a podium with a proper Webster’s open to some page. The dictionary I’d read was just a small abridged thing that contained words a child might need to know.
“This is the library,” the librarian said.
I nodded and gulped.
“Close your mouth, boy.”
“It’s beautiful,” I said finally. “I never seen nuthin’ like it.”
“Of course you haven’t,” she said. “And do you know why?”
“Because I never been in here before?” I asked, not understanding the question.
“No,” she said from some Olympian height. “It is because this is a white library. And no matter how much you know how to read, these books are not meant for you. These books were written by white people for white people. This is literature and art and the way our country is and should be. There will be no library card for you, so you can stop sitting out in front. You have seen as much of this building as you ever will.”
The impact of her words brought tears to my eyes. I was thirteen, but, like I said, I’ve always been small. I looked up at Celestine Dowling, and she seemed pleased to see me cry.
“Go on now,” she said.
I went home in tears. My mother asked me what was wrong, but I was too sad to say. I cried that night and all the next day. Celestine Dowling had broken my heart out of a meanness that I couldn’t understand. Why would she hate me for being able to read well? I wasn’t hurting her. I would have been glad to check out books from the back door or window. I wouldn’t’ve treated
