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Back The Great Pretenders
Chapters (55)
  1. Cover
  2. Praise for The Great Pretenders
  3. Dedication
  4. Epigraph
  5. PART I
  6. Chapter One
  7. Chapter Two
  8. Chapter Three
  9. Chapter Four
  10. Chapter Five
  11. Chapter Six
  12. Chapter Seven
  13. PART II
  14. Chapter Eight
  15. Chapter Nine
  16. Chapter Ten
  17. Chapter Eleven
  18. Chapter Twelve
  19. Chapter Thirteen
  20. Chapter Fourteen
  21. Chapter Fifteen
  22. Chapter Sixteen
  23. Chapter Seventeen
  24. PART III
  25. Chapter Eighteen
  26. Chapter Nineteen
  27. Chapter Twenty
  28. Chapter Twenty-one
  29. Chapter Twenty-two
  30. Chapter Twenty-three
  31. Chapter Twenty-four
  32. Chapter Twenty-five
  33. Chapter Twenty-six
  34. PART IV
  35. Chapter Twenty-seven
  36. Chapter Twenty-eight
  37. Chapter Twenty-nine
  38. Chapter Thirty
  39. Chapter Thirty-one
  40. Chapter Thirty-two
  41. Chapter Thirty-three
  42. Chapter Thirty-four
  43. Chapter Thirty-five
  44. PART V
  45. Chapter Thirty-six
  46. Chapter Thirty-seven
  47. Chapter Thirty-eight
  48. Chapter Thirty-nine
  49. Chapter Forty
  50. AUTHOR’S NOTE
  51. Readers Guide
  52. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
  53. Acknowledgments
  54. About the Author
  55. What’s next onyour reading list?

Thursday

Little Liza Jane,

I have to rethink my every breath and step here. Which fountain to drink from, which window to go to for an ice cream, which door to enter. At least I don’t have to remember to ride at the back of the bus. No one here is riding the bus. They walk. Miles and miles. As Dr. King says, the boycott is not just a right, a legal right, it is a duty. The Montgomery Improvement Association has set up places, lots owned by black businesses, and people come there, and drivers will take them to and from work. Any Negro with a set of wheels is driving. People can’t pay the drivers, that would break the law, but they give money to the MIA, and they pay the drivers.

These drivers know they’ll get arrested for going 29 in a 25 zone, for going 29 in a 30 zone. They’ll arrest you for looking up or looking down. For speaking or humming or doing anything but shuffling along and whistling Dixie. I am in the land of cotton, all right. They arrested Mrs. Cooke for having a broken taillight that wasn’t broken before the cop asked her to step outside the car to look at it. Then he broke it.

Write me at the address on this envelope, honey, Reverend Cooke’s house. I’m moving out of the hotel after Christmas. His youngest son is at Howard University, and I can have his room. Reverend Cooke has been really good to me. Staying with him, I’ll be closer to the MIA leaders, and he’ll let me use his phone to call Ben Tupper with my stories. I can’t use Western Union or I’m sure to be arrested as an outside agitator. My press card means shit here. White folks refuse to recognize me as a reporter. I can’t even interview city officials. Newspapermen from all over the country, television cameras too, are crawling all over Montgomery, and they’re labeled outside agitators, even the white guys.

Living with a preacher’s family will keep me nice and proper. I’ll have to watch myself for sure. When I see you next, baby, I’ll probably call you ma’am, and I will surely rise when you walk in the room. (Any room except the bedroom.) Keep yourself sweet and safe, baby.

Love,

Terrence

PS: I have to tell you, Liza Jane, something strange. I keep thinking of my daddy, ever since I got here. He hardly ever crossed my mind at home in California, but here, I feel like I keep seeing him or his ghost or some such thing I have no word for. Not yet anyway. What would I say to him? What would he say to me?