Read Online Three Days Before the Shooting ... by Ralph Ellison - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Ralph Ellison
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playacting, his crushed body was no mere piece of stage property. In fact, it was rapidly becoming the only “normal” detail in the entire chaotic scene. Even so, now that the idea had gripped me, I couldn’t rule out the possibility that the Senator had indeed seized upon his own shooting as a final opportunity to arouse widespread consternation, a means of making what might well be his parting assault on the public’s credulity.
Because from what I knew and had heard about the Senator, it wasn’t at all beyond him to have conceived of such a ploy, even while going down under a hail of lead. Was it possible that he had planted the Negroes there to interrupt his speech, and then had had the plot explode in his face with the deadly and unscheduled appearance of the gunman? Had Fate stepped in to give a sinister twist to his cynical scheme? It all seemed possible. And where I had begun to think that we had been the unwitting witnesses to a single outrageous plot, it now seemed quite possible that there were two, separate and unconnected: one to deprive us of an important politician, the other to sever us from our sanity. What on earth had happened to this nation?
CHAPTER 3
A ROUND ME NOW, LEGISLATORS , reporters, and lobbyists were going over the Senator’s career, much of it in whispers, recalling his combination of geniality and viciousness, his technique of delivering jabs below the belt in the guise of humor, the manner in which his obsession with racial matters had recently led to sharp discontinuities of argument, non sequiturs, gaffes—all erupting during moments when he seemed most seriously concerned with major legislation. Some noted his excellence in debate and his great skill in mimicry (a gift which provided his opponents with much discomfort), his frequent violations of private confidences in public debate, during which he was apt to say almost anything . And from a position of apparent logic, and in the interest of the highest principles.
Others were rehearsing how the Senator, a Northerner, flaunted his association with the Southern bloc to the embarrassment of his party, and how he boldly asserted the realism of his actions. Several of the discussants held that the Senator was more honest and responsible to the public than those who pretended that such collaborations across party and sectional lines were both unnecessary and immoral. To pretend that such wheeling and dealing isn’t necessary, the Senator has insisted, is to misguide and miseducate the public as to the real difficulties of governing a diversified nation, and to obscure from the electorate the true nature of its conflicting interests. Certain party leaders have regarded the Senator’s position as an attack upon the very foundation of their power.
The talk then returned to the news concerning the Senator and Hickman, and this sparked an intense discussion of the malicious attacks which Senator Sunraider had made against Negroes and Jews, whose working alliance he seems bent upon destroying by dividing their leaders over issues usually assumed to reflect their common interests as political minorities. On several occasions he has remarked that such collaboration not only presented possibleviolation of the principle demanding separation of church and state, but were to be distrusted by both sides because of the basic religious differences of the parties involved. For Jews, he claims, are Jews, while Negroes are “black white Anglo-Saxon Protestants,” and that such alliances were unnatural. This caused quite an outcry and presented the occasion for McGowan to create a most unlikely—and inaccurate—acronym. “Well, I’ll just be damn,” he said, “here I been thinking all along that ole Brer Rabbit and ole Uncle Remus and Sam the waiter were just nigras, but now ole Senator Sun-raider swears they aren’t nigras at all, they’re goddamn burrwasps!”
That others have made such statements is bad enough, but the Senator’s
Because from what I knew and had heard about the Senator, it wasn’t at all beyond him to have conceived of such a ploy, even while going down under a hail of lead. Was it possible that he had planted the Negroes there to interrupt his speech, and then had had the plot explode in his face with the deadly and unscheduled appearance of the gunman? Had Fate stepped in to give a sinister twist to his cynical scheme? It all seemed possible. And where I had begun to think that we had been the unwitting witnesses to a single outrageous plot, it now seemed quite possible that there were two, separate and unconnected: one to deprive us of an important politician, the other to sever us from our sanity. What on earth had happened to this nation?
CHAPTER 3
A ROUND ME NOW, LEGISLATORS , reporters, and lobbyists were going over the Senator’s career, much of it in whispers, recalling his combination of geniality and viciousness, his technique of delivering jabs below the belt in the guise of humor, the manner in which his obsession with racial matters had recently led to sharp discontinuities of argument, non sequiturs, gaffes—all erupting during moments when he seemed most seriously concerned with major legislation. Some noted his excellence in debate and his great skill in mimicry (a gift which provided his opponents with much discomfort), his frequent violations of private confidences in public debate, during which he was apt to say almost anything . And from a position of apparent logic, and in the interest of the highest principles.
Others were rehearsing how the Senator, a Northerner, flaunted his association with the Southern bloc to the embarrassment of his party, and how he boldly asserted the realism of his actions. Several of the discussants held that the Senator was more honest and responsible to the public than those who pretended that such collaborations across party and sectional lines were both unnecessary and immoral. To pretend that such wheeling and dealing isn’t necessary, the Senator has insisted, is to misguide and miseducate the public as to the real difficulties of governing a diversified nation, and to obscure from the electorate the true nature of its conflicting interests. Certain party leaders have regarded the Senator’s position as an attack upon the very foundation of their power.
The talk then returned to the news concerning the Senator and Hickman, and this sparked an intense discussion of the malicious attacks which Senator Sunraider had made against Negroes and Jews, whose working alliance he seems bent upon destroying by dividing their leaders over issues usually assumed to reflect their common interests as political minorities. On several occasions he has remarked that such collaboration not only presented possibleviolation of the principle demanding separation of church and state, but were to be distrusted by both sides because of the basic religious differences of the parties involved. For Jews, he claims, are Jews, while Negroes are “black white Anglo-Saxon Protestants,” and that such alliances were unnatural. This caused quite an outcry and presented the occasion for McGowan to create a most unlikely—and inaccurate—acronym. “Well, I’ll just be damn,” he said, “here I been thinking all along that ole Brer Rabbit and ole Uncle Remus and Sam the waiter were just nigras, but now ole Senator Sun-raider swears they aren’t nigras at all, they’re goddamn burrwasps!”
That others have made such statements is bad enough, but the Senator’s
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