TEACHING TOLERANCE A PROJECT OF THE SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER TOLERANCE.ORG

The Fog Machine FROM CHAPTER 21 // WEDNESDAY, JULY 29: I HAVE A DREAM Susan Follett’s novel, The Fog Machine, is set during Freedom Summer. In this excerpt, Freedom School students gather for an “I Have a Dream” assembly, where several students share speeches about their own dreams.

C.J. SAT ANXIOUSLY BESIDE JOAN BARNES, waiting for the assembly to begin. Her pocketbook rested in her lap while she tried to keep her head down and scan the crowd for Zach at the same time. Why hadn’t it occurred to her last night to ask Charlie about his teachers? It wasn’t until he began taking her around to his classes that she’d begun to worry she would walk into a room and find herself facing Zach in front of other people. Now Zach was somewhere in this auditorium, among the teachers and well over a hundred students.

The chatter among the audience faded to murmurs as one of the teachers walked onto the stage, where those selected to read portions of their compositions were seated. When Jacob clapped his hands and shouted, “Freedom, freedom, freedom,” everyone fell silent.

“I guess everyone knows we’ve been listening to Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech in some of the classes. More than two hundred thousand people heard Dr. King give this speech in Washington last August. Thousands more watched on TV. The speech was historic because it showed that Negroes have dreams and aren’t afraid to tell the world what those dreams are. The teachers asked you all to share your dreams. The younger kids drew fantastic pictures. You can see them taped to the wall all along the hallway. The older kids wrote essays. Now, six of them are going to share what they wrote with the whole school.” Jacob gestured toward the center of the stage.

C.J. shifted and stretched. There were Charlie, Rosalee, and four kids she did not know.

A girl stood first. “I’m Lynette,” she said shyly before turning her attention to her paper and reading hesitantly. “This summer we’ve been learning that we’re smarter than we thought. Not just us kids, but all kinds of Negroes. There have been Negro scientists like George Washington Carver for many years now. One day, if lots of our dreams come true, there could even be a Negro president. But my favorite to learn about was poets like Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Gwendolyn Brooks. They made me dream I could be a poet, too. I dreamed so hard that I wrote my very first poem. It’s called ‘I Didn’t Know.’ I also dreamed I could read my poem in front of a big crowd like Martin Luther King did. So, here goes.”

Lynette dropped the hand with the paper to her side and looked around the room as she recited from memory. Her voice was suddenly strong. “I didn’t know my people, how smart we are, what we have done, what we can do. I didn’t know my rights, how much like everyone else’s they are, what responsibility they bring, what that means I must do. I didn’t know my skin, how to love it, what to feel about it, what to do in it. But in the Freedom School, I learned to dream, and now I think I know.”

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A tall, broad-shouldered boy, looking very serious, was the next to step forward. “I’m Jackson. My daddy was a soldier. He fought next to white men, but when he came home he got treated same as before. I have a dream that I can be a soldier. Like my daddy, but different because I’ll be fighting for a country where my rights are the same as white soldiers.” He looked down then and shuffled his feet. “I used to dream there was people interested in what I think and schools where asking questions don’t get you in trouble.” When he looked up again, an impish grin had taken over his face. “Now I already got one dream come true!”

“Hi, I’m Theo,” said the third student, a cheerful-looking, bright-eyed boy. “I love to eat.” He laughed nervously but seemed to relax when the kids laughed with him. “I dream about never being hungry because I can go in any restaurant I see, right through the front door, and sit down to eat.”

C.J. glanced at Joan, whose attention was firmly fixed on Theo. Did it surprise her to hear that Theo would like to be able to eat where she ate? She wondered that and so much more. [...]

“You see,” Theo continued. “All I really want is freedom. Jacob told us having a dream isn’t about the pie in the sky. But I think maybe freedom is like a pie, a pie so big that white folks could share it and still have enough not to feel hungry themselves.”

“My name’s Annie,” said the girl who followed Theo. She was thin and angular, almost as hard-edged as her words. Her hands gripped the sides of her paper as she read, never looking up. “I had a dream about Negroes and whites together, being friends and whatnot, anywhere in America. And nobody saying nothing stupid. Like look over yonder at that white man and nigger gal. Let’s kill the both of them.”

C.J. began to tremble, hearing Zach as clearly as if he suddenly stood behind her and spoke into her ear. I’m going to fight for a world where we can be whatever we want to be to each other.

The next to speak was Charlie’s beautiful girl. “I’m Rosalee,” she said. “My daddy got very sick once and had to go to the hospital. They put him down in the basement. Do you know what all is in the basement? There’s cockroaches and rats that scurry about, even with the lights on. There’s the boiler that heats the water and the pipes that carry it upstairs to the nice rooms where the white people go to be sick. I have a dream of freedom for anybody who gets sick to go to the nice part of the hospital.”

Sweet Jesus, don’t let my daddy have to be down in the basement with the rats, C.J. prayed.

And then Rosalee broke out in glorious song. Line by line, one student at a time joined her in “Come and Go with Me to That Land,” singing of the day when there would be no Jim Crow or burning churches, until their powerful young voices, creating a crescendo of conviction, concluded with, “There’ll be freedom in that land where I’m bound.”

At last, it was Charlie’s turn. He waited patiently for the voices to subside. Standing tall and proud, he said, “My name is Charles. I came to Meridian because my brother-in-law got me work on a garbage truck. That was plenty good enough for me. I never did see much point in schooling.”

C.J. thought about how hard the entire family had pushed Charlie about school. Would she have to be satisfied — if he couldn’t see his way clear to share the dream she had for him — with the high school diploma that would thrill their momma?

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“I came to this school the first time because I saw a beautiful girl sitting out in the yard under the oak tree. It’s one crazy school for sure.” He shook his head. “The teachers say the main thing we’re learning isn’t reading or arithmetic or any of that. It’s how to question.”

C.J. shook her head, too. Where was Charlie going to need that in a world such as this?

“I came back because a teacher kept asking me to. This special teacher is named Zach.”

C.J. gripped the strap of her pocketbook.

“So, I started thinking on questions. And one came to me. Wonder how come some folks want educating and some don’t? Zach loaned me this here book called The Mis-Education of the Negro, by a man name of Dr. Woodson.” Charlie held it high, then opened it and began to read.

“If we had a few thinkers we could expect great achievements on tomorrow.” His voice was deep and strong. “Some Negro with unusual insight would write an epic of bondage and freedom which would take its place with those of Homer and Virgil.”

C.J. was so proud of the way he was reading. Slowly and carefully, but with feeling.

“Some Negro with es — es-the-tic appreciation would construct from collected fragments of Negro music a grand opera that would move humanity to repentance. Some Negro of phil-o-soph-ic pen-e-tra-tion would find a solace for the modern word in the soul of the Negro, and then — “

Charlie closed the book. C.J. held her breath along with everyone else.

“Men would be men because they are men.”

He grinned at his sniffling audience. “Any of y’all wants help making out parts of what I read, y’all see me later.”

C.J.’s laughter mingled with that of the crowd, appreciating Charlie’s joke and his right to call himself Charles.

“So, what’s that got to do with a dream?” He searched the audience until he found her. “I’m set on going to college. Because I learned any man’s hope is in education. Even ours. And what I reckon is important is that going to college has become my dream.”

Her eyes brimmed with tears. She assumed the assembly was done and hurriedly dug in her purse for a handkerchief. The six kids on the stage shouted out in unison, “What do you dream, Jacob?”

He looked startled, seemed to take a long moment to think. “I guess I’m like all of you. I have one dream that already come true — having bright, enthusiastic students who have good questions and dare to ask them. But I have a dream that I’m not a white man, at least not where that means you have to yessir me, or you automatically respect or hate me. I dream that everyone, Negro and white, will see me as an individual.”

Republished with permission from Susan Follett.

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