That’s what really upset her; she leaned very close to me and her eyes were angry. “He could be cheap. Dee, he could be as tightfisted as a boxer. But all of my friends and me too, we believe in the Society. We believe they’re doing something important and doing it well. But for him to sum up all their work that way…a piece of cardboard. I don’t expect you to understand how I feel about this.” She looked me in the eye.

But I did understand. I don’t think much about race, and certainly didn’t then, but I know next year I’ll go up North to college like Dewey and there’ll be colored people there and I’m sort of looking forward to it because Dewey says it’s really an education in itself. But that wasn’t even what she was talking about. She was surprised and hurt to find he didn’t believe at all in something she believed in very strongly.

Then, she said, the person who’d asked for the dollar said to Tucker that it was more than a piece of cardboard, that the Society was working for Tucker’s rights and the rights of all colored people.

This is when he started to sound stupid, sitting there just looking at the Society-person, and maybe even smiling a little, and then not smiling any more and saying: “They ain’t working for my rights. Ain’t nobody working for my rights; I wouldn’t let them.”

The Society-person said that whether or not Tucker let them, they were doing it anyway, that the decisions they won in the courts would help his children go to school and get a good education.

“So what?” That was Tucker’s answer. “So what?” he said in that high, chirpy voice like an old man’s.

Bethrah was looking around the room apologizing with her eyes, and some people turned away, not angry, just ashamed, and her very close friends looked at her with pity, and that was the most painful thing of all.

The Society-person went on: “Don’t you want your children to have a good education?”

“I don’t care about that,” Tucker said.

“Well, whether you like it or not, the Society is fighting your battles in the courts and you should support them.”

Tucker just sat there. “Ain’t none of my battles being fought in no courts. I’m fighting all my battles myself.”

“You can’t fight all this alone. What battles?”