“Well, if you think that’s from cryin, you wrong. They red from overflowin! Thanks for lookin out for me, youngblood. Later on.”

“The cat should a known better,” Otis said, when I told him. “He definitely didn’t have no smarts.”

“But what he was sayin was true.”

“That ain’t got nuthin to do with it. Whether it’s broads or not, you never let anyone know what’s really on your mind. If he had really been slick he would a got somebody else to go inside with the police.”

“But if you could a heard him. He was serious. He didn’t care about the police.”

“Then he got what he deserved. Talkin that political talk is all right when you in school. But you don’t be runnin that shit in the street.”

“All he did was say what was on his mind.”

“And all the police did was put something on his ass! Would you a done what he did?”

“I don’t know.”

“Shit, you know what you would a done and so did everybody else who was there. That’s why he’s the only one that got the ass-whippin!”

A distance had begun to crack between us. Otis still believed he had all the answers. But questions were insinuating themselves into me. I was no longer a ready echo for whatever Otis said. And he was surprised to find that more and more after one of his assertions I would not follow up with a refrain but with a theme of my own. This development in our friendship crescendoed when Otis decided to go into the Marines and I opted for college.

One afternoon during my first semester at City College I was sitting in the snack bar leafing through a textbook.

“Hey, my man, didn’t you hear about the meeting?” A billy-goat-faced dude stood over me, going through a grab bag of nervous mannerisms that resembled a third-base coach flashing signs.

“What meeting?” I asked.

“The meeting to discuss what’s happening in the South and the ways we can support The Movement. You comin?”

“Yeah, I guess I’ll check it out.”

“My name’s Theodore Sutherland. What’s yours?”

“Melvin Ellington.”

There were about twenty people in the student lounge, either sprawling in chairs or sitting on the floor. Just about everyone sported the roguey attire of faded dungarees, work shirts, and desert boots. The racial composition was an unequally distributed keyboard favoring treble white over bass black. Theodore, who was one of the organizers of the meeting, was the first to speak.

“As you know, the purpose of this meeting is to form a group that will be a second front for The Movement in the South. Since the press has been reluctant to publicize the recent bombings in Alabama, we see it as our function to pressure our elected officials in Congress to call for an investigation by the Justice Department of these criminal acts.