“Yes, sir.”
“He’ll be able to keep an eye on you. Assuming you make it through orientation,” he added. “If you decide you want to back out after this week, we’ll understand.”
“Okay,” I said. “Thank you.” I walked back to my seat, ignoring the curious looks from other students who were no doubt wondering what I’d done to merit Hosea Williams’s attention. I felt unsettled but determined as I took my seat again. I hadn’t realized that Reverend Filburn had gone out on a limb for me. I didn’t want to let him down.
* * *
It was a challenge to sit on those hard chairs for speech after speech, but I grew more alert with each one. Every speaker mentioned that President Johnson would be signing the Voting Rights Act in early July, making it easy—or at least easier—for us to register voters. The act would get rid of literacy tests and other obstacles to registering. I kept thinking of our former maid, Louise, and that dirt road through Turner’s Bend and all those run-down houses. I imagined myself going up to one of those houses by myself, knocking on the door, trying to persuade whoever answered to register to vote. The thought was outlandish, and I understood for the first time why we’d have Negro canvassing partners. No one would trust us otherwise.
During the breaks, I struggled to connect with people and I felt my old childhood shyness returning. It seemed that everyone already had his or her own little group of friends, which made sense, since nearly all of them had come from a college with their fellow students. I seemed to be the only loner, or at least that’s how I felt. It was like being in junior high school all over again.
Late into the night, Mrs. Clark taught us more freedom songs. There was one that I really liked—“I’ll Fly Away”—which I knew from church but which touched me in a new way all of a sudden, especially when all the harmonies kicked in in that big open space.
Mrs. Clark was a wonderful teacher. “Now you young folks from the North,” she said, “y’all need to learn how to sing Southern! There ain’t no ‘g’ in ‘i-n-g.’ It’s ‘singin’，’ not ‘singing.’” Finally, a skill that came easily to me.
She introduced us to a song called “I Love Everybody.”
“People who have nothin’—no runnin’ water, not hardly a thin’ to eat—still sing this song about lovin’ everybody,” she said. Then she led us in the song, which included, by name, people in power who’d beaten or killed civil rights workers. We even sang that we loved the racist governor of Alabama, George Wallace. I pictured Aunt Carol rolling over in her grave. She hated that man.
I began to really feel the emotion of the songs and by the time we ended with “We Shall Overcome,” I was more awake and joy-filled than I’d been all day.
Once the events of the evening were over, I crossed the dark campus, hoping Peggy would still be up. I felt inspired to make a new start with her, hoping she had the same positive feelings about the day that I did. She wasn’t in the room when I got there, though, and it was way past curfew. I climbed into bed, but was too fired up to sleep. Something had happened to me in the last twenty-four hours. I couldn’t name it. Couldn’t even understand it. I felt hope and fear, determination and cowardice, all mixed together. I wondered if that’s what all those speakers had wanted us to feel.
* * *
I was still awake when Peggy slipped quietly into the room an hour after I went to bed. I sat up.
“You don’t need to be quiet,” I said. “I’m awake. You can turn on the light.”
She flipped the switch and I blinked at the brightness. Peggy’s curly auburn hair glittered in the light. She dragged her suitcase onto the floor and ignored me as she rummaged in it for something.
“Today was really good, wasn’t it?” I asked.
She didn’t look up but I could feel her roll her eyes. “If you say so,” she said.
“I learned so much.”
She looked at me then. “They probably don’t teach you much in your little segregated schools in Podunk, North Carolina.”
I bristled. I was sick of tiptoeing around this girl. “First of all,” I said, “my high school was integrated.” Not by much, but it definitely had not been the lily-white school she was picturing. “And second of all, I got into the University of North Carolina, which was no easy feat, so I must have had a decent education. And third of all, can we please try to get along? Because that’s why we’re down here, right? To learn how to help people get along? And if you and I can’t even do that, there’s really no hope.”