A History of the African-American People (Proposed) by Strom Thurmond by Percival Everett, James Kincaid Page B

weekend?
    How was Halloween? Strange you didn’t mention it. Did you get to feed from anyone’s breast? Was Mother there in the flesh? Big Sis?
    Barton

    O FFICE OF S ENATOR S TROM T HURMOND
217 R USSELL S ENATE B UILDING
W ASHINGTON , D.C. 20515
    November 10, 2002
    Dear Percival and Jim,
    Should it be “Jim and Percival”? Or should I alternate? You let me know, if you would, as I cannot be expected to guess and do not want to hear, somewhere down the road, “Barton, you have caused a rift.” But why put it negatively? I wish not to avoid disharmony so much as to conjure concord.
    Enough of that, though you must understand that I have no wish to be impersonal. Tell me more about yourselves. Which one is black? Forgive me if you’ve already said this, but I sometimes forget some things in the rush of doing other things. Only one of you is black, right? Neither name is much of a giveaway, is it? But then they seldom are. Jackson, perhaps, or Johnson, but then you can get into serious troubles by making such assumptions, believe you me. Now, if one of you were named Shumoonunu Ackabawka, then I wouldn’t have to ask. But neither of you is, so I must.
    Anything else you’d care to add in the personal line, do.
    I think the reason you haven’t sent me anything is that I haven’t given you enough to chew on and work up properly. So here’s some more. Part of it is a little lengthy, but just take a deep breath and go at it, working it up.
    First comes an excerpt from a little-known speech by the greatest Negro of his time and probably any other time, Booker Taliaferro Washington. This is a speech given in 1884. This is not the celebrated speech he gave later. That was in 1895. Don’t confuse the two, as I will give you some of the latter later in this message. But they are different.
    “Any movement for the elevation of the Southern Negro, in order to be successful, must have to a certain extent the cooperation of the Southern whites…. The best course to pursue in regard to the civil rights bill in the South is to let it alone; let it alone and it will settle itself. Good schoolteachers and plenty of money to pay them will be more potent in settling the race question than many civil rights bills and investigating committees.”
    Let me just add here that it is common for certain historians (all from guess where?) to dismiss Washington as an “Uncle Tom,” a leader who would sell his people for the humiliation of vocational education and some patronizing. I know this, but I will warn you two that history is never so simple. Neither are men. Neither is Stowe’s Uncle Tom, for that matter. He’s actually a tough old bird and resists to the death. That’s another issue, though. Don’t confuse me.
    Note this. In the crucial year of 1904, just twenty years later you will note, Washington published in the important magazine, The Outlook, an essay, “Cruelty in the Congo Country.” I can send it to you if you like. In it, Washington brilliantly shows how the United States government, having established Liberia as what it regarded as an African showcase, then cooperated with Belgium to ensure the existence of the Congo under Leopold’s vile rule. Moreover, our government had done nothing to halt the abuses in the Congo, abuses that Washington outlines with grisly clarity and with his wonderful, judicious acumen. He was no dummy. He showed how King Leopold of Belgium worked by using one tribe to police another, taking a small portion of the “tributes” he was collecting to pay off those he was inciting to acts of horror. King Leopold, Washington says, is not really capitalizing on the native savagery and brutality; he is instilling these qualities, importing them from Europe. The heart of darkness (cf. Conrad) beats not in the African but in the European who transplants it there—with the blithe cooperation of the United States of America.
    Mix that in with your liberal acid and shoot it up.
    Second is a short