Miami and the Siege of Chicago by Norman Mailer

never mount his hill, so he went off again on “communities”—the hard “u” concealed certain new mysteries of the larynx—and relations to re mun eration. He ended by saying, “Part of our Mule Train will be here on Miami Beach in front of this hotel and Convention Hall to dramatize poverty ”—he stated the word as if it were the name of a small town—“in this beautiful city of luxury.”
    In the questioning, he was better. Asked if he considered Ronald Reagan a friend of the Blacks, Abernathy smiled slowly and said with ministerial bonhomie, “Well, he may have some friends....” Queried about the failure of the Poor People’s March on Washington, he offered a stern defense, spoke of how every campaign of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference had been described as a failure, an obvious cuff at those who had once described King’s work as failure, and then for a moment he rose above the dull unhappy scandals of Resurrection City, the mess, the breakdowns of sanitation, the hoodlumism, and the accusations by his own that some had lived in hotels while they had been squalid in tents, and spoke of what had been gained, funds pried loose from the government “to the tune of some many millions,” he said in his musical voice, and named the figure, more than 200 million, and the fact of the continuation of the Poor People’s Campaign, and the sense came again of the painful drudgery of the day to day, the mulish demands of the operation, the gloom of vast responsibility and tools and aids and lieutenants he could count on even less than himself, and the reporter, as though washed in bowls of his own bile, was contrite a degree and went off to have lunch when the conference was done, a little weary of confronting the mystery of his own good or ill motive.
    Of course, having lunch, the reporter, to his professional shame, had not the wit to go looking for it, so here is a quotation from Thomas A. Johnson of The New York Times concerning the immediate aftermath of Abernathy’s appearance:
    When the news conference ended about 12:30 P.M. , 65 members of the Poor People’s Campaign, dressed in straw hats and blue work shirts, entered the lobby of the Fontainebleau Hotel.
    With raised fists, they greeted Mr. Abernathy with shouts of “Soul Power! Soul Power!”
    Convention delegates, few of whom are Negroes, crowded around. In the background, two white girls dressed in red and blue tights, paraded through the hall singing “When Ronnie Reagan comes marching in,” to the tune of “When the saints come marching in.”
    The Negro demonstrators would not be interrupted, however.
    Thirteen-year-old James Metcalf of Marks, Miss., wearing an army jungle fatigue jacket that came down to his knees led the group in a chant.
    â€œI may be black,” he shouted.
    â€œBut I am somebody,” the demonstrators responded.
    â€œI may be poor.”
    â€œBut I am somebody.”
    â€œI may be hungry.”
    â€œBut I am somebody.”
    It was a confrontation the reporter should not have missed. Were the Reagan girls livid or triumphant? Were the Negro demonstrators dignified or raucous or self-satisfied? It was a good story but the Times was not ready to encourage its reporters in the thought that there is no history without nuance.

12
    After lunch, in a belated attempt to catch up with the Governor of California and the direction of his campaign, the reporter had gone up to one of the top floors of the Deauville where Mrs. Reagan was scheduled to have a conference at 2:30 P.M. , indeed the listing in the National Committee News had stated that the Press was requested to be present by 2:15, but embarrassment prevailed in the high headquarters of the Deauville, for Mrs. Regan was not there and could not be found: the word given out was that she had not been informed. The inevitable deduction was that no one in his