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17. 1912–1914. In Which Woodrow Wilson, Jack Johnson, & James Reese Europe Figure . . . & Other Unsought Happenings
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( 165 ) Gets but 41% of the pop vote, but is 28th President after the Electoral College turns the trick. Says, “America lives in the heart of every man everywhere who wishes to find a region where he will be free to work out his destiny as he chooses.” Wilson believes in predestination. “God ordained that I should be the next President,” he declares. He has, just in case, Du Bois’s endorsement, & vote. “I am,” Wilson admits, “a vague, conjectural personality, more made up of opinions & academic prepossessions than of human traits & red corpuscles.” Or, he fails to include, racial compassion. The band plays on. As will Lillian Gish in Birth of a Nation, & Stepin Fetchit in Judge Priest, J(ohn). Edgar Hoover, proudly does major domo duty as senior captain of his high school ROTC marching along Pennsylvania Avenue at Wilson’s inaugural inaugural. 2, 3, 4. Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute. Tuskegee, Alabama. Principal Booker Taliaferro Washington. Educator, country gentleman every inch. Poses. Picture of patience & selfcontrol . Fedora, cravat, 3-piece suit, & gaiters or greaves, leather, shiny black Statue still, astride his gelding. As if bronzed in black & white, as in distant D.C. the parade passes him by. 2-3-4. Hoover, a year later, is a government clerk. 01 Harris text.indd 165 12/13/11 11:26 AM ( 166 ) Hum hm hmummm 2-3 Hum hm huummummm Iris out. Fade in. Jack Johnson, pardoned for his athleticism, (natural to negroes as whiskers on felines), but not for the arrogant funk he sprays like a Tomcat, nor the liberties he thinks go with it, like marrying into the “other world.” &, ah, though the wheels of justice grind slowly, grind they do. “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up,” the U.S. reasons, as Edison has it in his quote. “The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” For acting like a man, Johnson, the 1st ever (on their 2d try) is convicted for trumped-up Mann Act violation, interstate rail transport of a woman for purposes of prostitution & debauchery, a.k.a. the White Slave Act (wink & nod). It is in absentia, since Jack, seeing the cursive on the writ, gets his hat & exiles himself & his golden grin from the U.S.’s purple mountains, alabaster cities, & fruited plains for greener European pastures where his acting in relations “with people of other races as if prejudice did not exist” played to a bigger audience. “Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.” “There is always,” Edison says, echoing America’s antiJohnson attitude, “a better way.” 01 Harris text.indd 166 12/13/11 11:26 AM [52.91.0.68] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 02:27 GMT) ( 167 ) The federal judge, with his ruling, warning all black men off white women, amens Edison. BT says he does not defend or condemn Jack. But calls that of which Jack is accused evil. Scolds that the individual Negro is as capable of doing harm & bringing shame to the race as whites combined. Rests his case. An other Johnson, James P. (1894– 1955), colored pianist & composer, calling on the spirit of Jack Johnson, no direct blood relation, conjures the Carolina Shout. It is rough & rural, strides loose & bluesy, reminds of boll weevils, Jim Crow, hot Dixie nights, floods, lynchings, the Galveston Giant’s k.o.s. Is uplifting. Moves the black peasantry like Norfolk and Western hopper cars move cargos of coal, & they hear it & Hop like bull frogs, Lope like buzzards, Trot like turkeys, Scratch like barnyard hens ragging till the break of dawn. James Reese, feeding downtown’s desire to slum uptown, concocts a dance comingling ragtime’s One Step with the Turkey Trot & the march. Gets the Castles, Vernon (1881– 1918) & Irene (1893– 1969), a white dancing couple, who earlier hitched on his bandwagon, to front for him. Acknowledging their debt to dances long done by “Your colored people,” they scrape off just enough black & blue of its spontaneous nature to gussie it up in the cosmetic veneer fit in ballrooms of chic. The Castles & the dance sweep country & Continent. 01 Harris text.indd 167 12/13/11 11:26 AM ...