Sources of Light by Margaret McMullan Page A

behind the camera and snapped picture after picture. Then I quit taking pictures of what was happening. I took pictures of the crowd of angry white men yelling at the people at the lunch counter sitting there doing nothing. There were others in the crowd watching what was happening. They could have been looking at a circus performance or a child's running race. They were smiling and cheering. They shared cigarettes. They were having a good time.
    The policemen stood by and watched.
    There we all were in a town some called "A Fine Family Place," a town Miss Jenkins said William Tecumseh Sherman had burned to the ground ninety-nine years ago. Maybe we should have just left it that way.
    I was still taking the pictures, my right eye glued to my camera, when I saw him, Stone. His face was one of the angry faces I snapped. He saw me and squeezed through the crowd, asking me what I was doing there.
    "There's nothing here for you but
trouble,
" he said in a voice not at all like his. "Now go. Go."
    "Why are
you
here? What are you doing?" I was shouting over the crowd now. My voice barely carried. There was a lot of pushing and shoving. I felt a hand on my arm. It was Willa Mae pulling me toward the door. When I turned back around, Stone was gone.
    Outside, men were swinging baseball bats and billy clubs at black women carrying handbags and wearing white kid gloves. These women were all dressed up to go shopping, and these men came out of the drugstore and charged at them because ... because I don't know why. Because they were angry white men? That was all there was to it, all I could think of, and it was nothing but
wrong.
    Willa Mae and I were both of the crowd and separated from the crowd. We were outside, our backs up against the building. I stepped forward and started taking pictures again. On what, on whom, and where to focus: it was like my camera knew what to do and I was just following its lead. People were yelling, their voices shouting, "They're not going to eat with us and they're not going to vote with us!"
    "Your mother will kill us both if we don't get out of here." Willa Mae's voice rose above all the noise.
    I rewound the film in my camera the way Perry taught me, unloaded the exposed film and put it in my pocket, then loaded a new roll. The drugstore waitress from behind the counter ran out shouting to a policeman that I had taken pictures and that I was "one of them outside agitators." The policeman headed toward me. When he caught up with me, he yelled for me to hand over my film.
    For a scary moment I didn't know what to do. My heart was thumping. Could the policeman hear it? I thought of taking off, running as fast and as far as I could. I wiped the sweat from my palms on my shirt. I didn't hold my breath but tried to breathe, then lifted my camera to my right eye and snapped a picture of his angry face.
    "Yessir," I said. I rewound the film, opened my camera, unloaded, and then gave him the roll with the one shot of himself, the full roll still safe in my pocket. The policeman walked away, stuffing the roll of film in his pocket.
    Willa Mae stepped away from the drugstore and joined me. We hurried from the policeman. All around us men in pickup trucks drove past, their guns visible. People didn't show their guns, especially in town. You only saw guns when men went out hunting deer, rabbits, or squirrels.
    Willa Mae touched me on the arm and said, "This way."
    She led me to a shortcut back toward our subdivision. Finally, when we were clear of the town and the crowd, we slowed to a walk and then caught our breath. I rearranged my camera strap around my neck and tugged at my new bra. Willa Mae kept looking behind us.
    I was still scared, but then my fear turned to anger. Why did these white people who had houses and cars, jobs and families, hate black people who were trying to make something of their lives or who looked to have nothing? I understood jealousy just fine, but this? Did it make them feel more