Mama Dolly's Tale

The following article contains anti-Black racial slurs.

I used to stay in the home of a strong community leader in southwest Georgia named Mama Dolly when I was working in the Civil Rights Movement. Seeing I was upset about leaving Georgia for the Mississippi Delta, she told me, “Well, son, every goodbye ain’t gone.” Ever since then I’ve tried to get back to places that I’ve been before, especially when there’re people there I want to keep up with.

Mama Dolly’s dead now but I was visiting with her during the early ’70s after “Black Power!” had turned up the temperature so much that some Jews felt like they had to pull their support out of the Civil Rights Movement. I asked Mama Dolly what she thought about what was going on.

As best as I can recollect, this is the story she told:

 

I tell you what, baby. I been living in Lee County since the day I was born and, the Good Lord willing, that will be 97 years on the 26th day of July next, the Good Lord willing, yes indeed. So I was an old woman when the first Jew I ever knew to live in Lee County got here. The first time he come here he sat right there in the same chair you sitting in right now, yes he did. He looked like an ordinary white man to me. If you was to look at him I’ll wager you couldn’t tell the difference between him and a white man neither.

To tell you the truth, when Reverend Wells come over here to ask me if I would keep one of the “Jewish Freedom Riders” who were coming in here to do voter registration work the only Jews I knew anything about were the ones you find in the Bible.

No, that’s not exactly true. . . . Christine Pruitt’s daughter, Angeline, hooked up with a man that called himself a “black Jew, a Hebrew Israelite.” He moved in with Angeline and they had a child and it looked like they was going to do all right. He always wore white clothes and a little white skull cap, but he was a good worker and everything. He said his whole family was Hebrew Israelites, that he had been born in that condition. Said his people had sent him down here looking for land they could “colonize.”

That Israelite had took to preaching in the empty lot behind Booker T.’s club on Saturdays, which he said Saturday was his Sunday, so he said it was like holding church to him. People listened to him cause he was such a curiosity, the way he dressed and all, but fact of the business, he could hold his own with any Baptist Preacher I ever heard. He said the Israelites were African people and that Jesus was a black man, and he was preaching the Black man’s natural religion.

He got to where he was getting so many people down there on Saturday afternoons that it got too crowded so he told them that day to “come on, let’s go up to the court house square, they got plenty of room up there!” Well, don’t you know, it was several people didn’t have no better sense than to march down there with him!

It didn’t take no more than about five minutes for Billy Noble to get there and tell him he had to move on. That boy looked Billy Noble square in the eye and told him, “This is a public square. We got every right to be here.” Billy said, “Nigger, I told you it was time to move on!” “I am not a ‘Nigger.’ I am a Hebrew Israelite, a black Jew! We got the right to be here like anyone else. If it’s a ‘Nigger’ round here it bound to be you.”

The Hebrew Israelite won the war of words but Billy Noble won the fight, yes he did. He beat that boy to within an inch of his life. Angeline’s little girl must be about 20 years old now. I ain’t heard nothing about that Hebrew Israelite since he left town. Anyway, he’s the first one I ever met who was known to be a Jew before Larry came so I didn’t think twice when Reverend Wells asked if I could keep a “Jewish Freedom Rider.”

When the Reverend brought him in here, I told him straight to his face, “I wasn’t expecting no white Freedom Riders.” Larry said, “I’m not white, I’m Jewish.” I told him, “That don’t make a hair’s breadth of difference. Far as I’m concerned, you the first white person to even much as set foot on my land since 1937. When the High Sheriff wants to see me he puts a letter in my mailbox.”

“What keeps the white people from coming here?”

“That 12-gauge, double-barreled shotgun yonder by the door. I got another one by the back door and a 30/30 rifle ’neath my bed. I cleans and oils them all every Saturday night.”

“But I thought this was a non-violent movement.”

“That’s right, son, and we aim to keep it that way.”

 

Well, baby, Larry was to stay here for most of a year. I don’t know that he did all that much good work but some good things did come from him being here though it was sometimes a sure ’nough struggle. I never could get it straight what it was he meant by saying he was a Jew. For an instance, the first morning he was here, trying to be hospitable, I got up early and made a big breakfast: biscuits and gravy, ham and eggs, home-fried potatoes, apple butter, fresh apple juice, fresh milk from the cow, everything. He picked at the food for a while, but I could see he wasn’t going to eat it, so I asked him, “What’s wrong, Larry, you don’t like Soul Food?”

“It looks like most everything is cooked in lard and it’s against the Jewish religion to eat pork.”

We settled that right quick. I told him if he was going to have special rules ’bout what he could and could not eat, he was going to have to do his own cooking. It took him a while to get the knack of it but he got to be a right good cook before he left here.

Since he was so religious I invited him to go to church with me that first Sunday he was here. The way he started jumping around, I thought he was going to get happy himself when the Young People’s Gospel Choir got to singing, “Satisfied With Jesus,” but then when the sermon got hot and the preacher shifted into high gear, Larry looked like he thought the man had gone crazy or something. Then when Doreen McCalister got happy and started shouting, I just knew that Larry was set to buck and run. Coming home from church that day he had a million questions. When I finally got a word in edgewise, I asked him, “What do they do at your church, Larry?”

“First of all, Mama Dolly, they call a Jewish church a synagogue, and I’m not all that religious myself, so I really haven’t been to synagogue that often — ”

“So what did you mean by saying eating pork is against your religion if you ain’t got no religion for it be against?”

“Well, what I mean is that . . . well, being Jewish is a way of life.”

“So if I was to join the Jewish church, would I be Jewish?”

“Yes, we have converts, like Sammy Davis Jr., he’s a Jewish convert.”

“Yes, uh huh, poor thing. So being Jewish is kinda like being Baptist, huh?”

“Yeah, I’d say so . . .”

“So I guess they have white Jews and black Jews and all different kinds of Jews, huh?”

“That’s certainly true!”

Then I told him about Angeline Pruitt’s husband and I said, “I don’t think he meant the same thing about being Jewish as you do. And I still can’t say that I understand how you figure that you ain’t white. You could join the New Zion Baptist Church but it sure would not make you Colored. Naw, it seems to me that as long as you got black you going to have white. It don’t seem to make too much difference how many different brands of white folk you got in some other country, they all get white when they get to America, that’s just the way it is.”