One
The Mask That Grins and Lies
February 1996
Reverend David Kennedy stood in his shirtsleeves at the edge of the pasture, studying the police officer loping toward him across the grass. The man was tall and lanky, hair close-cropped and side-parted, and he had a kind of hangdog manner about him--the way he rolled his shoulders forward and tucked his chin to his chest, as if trying to render himself invisible. The cop flicked away the butt of his cigarette, and Kennedy watched the glowing ember streak across the dark. A wind kicked up, bowing the trees. Kennedy crossed his arms against his chest and shivered.
“They see me talkin to you, Rev, and they gon terminate me,” the cop said, extending his hand. “But I got to share this with you.”
Kennedy had recognized the officer’s voice when he called earlier that afternoon--the reedy quality, the cowboy cadence. Calls like these weren’t altogether unusual; cops and reverends tend to weave in and out of each other’s lives in small towns, brushing past one another in the city jail or milling around together in the marble halls of the county courthouse. Kennedy knew just about everybody in the Laurens City Police and the Laurens County Sheriff’s Office. Quite a few state troopers, too. What made this call unusual had been the officer’s request to speak with the reverend alone, someplace private. “Safe,” actually, was the word he had used, and this was the spot Kennedy had chosen, a plot of brown pasture beneath a towering oak tree adjacent to the Beasley Mortuary, a black-owned funeral parlor in the southernmost reaches of Jersey. About the safest spot in town for a white cop who didn’t want to be seen.
“You can share it with me,” Kennedy said. “It won’t go nowhere.” The reverend was a garrulous man by nature, but he spoke now in the practiced, almost detached manner of a priest taking confession. Not too eager, never excited. Almost aloof.
“You can’t tell no one,” the officer said.
“I won’t.”
“I know I can trust you. That’s why I called you.”
Kennedy gave an almost imperceptible nod and waited.
“I saw some stuff,” the cop said finally, shaking his head. He glanced over his shoulder, lowered his voice, and shoved his hands into the pockets of his windbreaker. “I found out what they’re doin at the old Echo theater.”
Exactly what had been going on at the Echo was a question folks in Laurens had been putting to themselves for several months. It was under new ownership, that much seemed certain, and some kind of renovation or refurbishment was under way. But whatever was going on, it was being kept a total mystery, a closely guarded secret. There had been no signage on the doors, no “Grand Opening” announcements in the local papers. The windows were dark and papered over.
Kennedy hadn’t so much as stepped foot inside the Echo in nearly three decades, which was about how long the theater had been closed. As a boy, he’d preferred the Harlem theater, the movie house for black patrons over on Back Street, a small African American business district just east of the square. At the Harlem, he could watch the westerns he loved, Shane or the Billy the Kid flicks, without the indignity of having to enter through a side door and trudge upstairs to the colored balcony, without being hollered at for talking too much or having the audacity to laugh “too loudly.”
One day when he was ten or eleven, however, Kennedy convinced his mother to let him go to the movies all by himself, for the very first time. An Elvis picture was showing at the Capitol--the Echo’s sister theater, on the south side of the square. David bought his ticket and purchased a soda and found a seat in the balcony. Halfway through the film, around the time Elvis finished crooning “Puppet on a String,” David shimmied out of his row, approached the white man who’d sold him his ticket, and asked for directions to the men’s room.
“He wouldn’t tell me,” Kennedy remembered, years later. “I said, ‘There’s nowhere we could use the restroom?’ He said no.”
If Kennedy was angry or confused, those feelings quickly gave way to a more pressing emotion: panic. He had to relieve himself. Now. But finding a secluded spot somewhere outside, mere steps from the courthouse and City Hall and the police station, was out of the question. He thought fleetingly of making a run for the Back Street, but he knew he’d never make it in time. So instead, with a kind of sickening realization of the inevitable, he tiptoed back to the balcony, sat as far away from everyone else as he could manage, and tied a sweater around his waist to cover the growing wet spot on his trousers. The minute the house lights went up, he bolted.
“I hit that door real fast, and ran home. That’s how I remember the Capitol theater.”
For a black child growing up in the Jim Crow South, the Echo and the Capitol were one and the same--both located on the courthouse square, both operated by the same proprietor, and both seemingly designed to humiliate you in your otherness. They were shuttered around the same time, too, in the mid-1960s, amid growing competition from drive‑in theaters and the rising popularity of television, though Kennedy had not been particularly sad to see either of them go. Over the coming decades, retail businesses would sometimes take up residence in the former lobby of the Capitol, but for some reason the Echo was never included in the city’s revitalization plans, never benefited from the public-private funds raised back in the 1980s to improve the historic district. The building and all of its contents--projector, screen, concessions equipment--were sold at auction in 1989, but still the theater sat empty, slipping further and further into a state of disrepair. Until the construction started, it seemed as though the Echo might be vacant forever.
“What’d you see?” Kennedy asked the officer. “What’s the problem?”
The cop shifted his weight from foot to foot. From beyond the tree line came the whining blast of a CSX freight engine. “At first I thought it was just ’sposed to be a southern pride thing. Confederate-flag T‑shirts and license plates and all that. But then I started lookin around.”
Kennedy listened with growing interest, and then something closer to disgust, as the officer described the merchandise displayed inside the theater’s lobby: Maltese and Celtic cross patches lined up in rotating display racks, just like postcards; vintage whites only placards and segregation-era signs; T‑shirts and bumper stickers emblazoned with all manner of racist invective. The walls were lined with photos of cross burnings and Klan rallies. In the center of the room was a slender mannequin, the kind you might find in a ladies’ dress shop, outfitted in a Klansman’s hood and robe.
“I reckon they’ll open for business any day.” The cop shook his head again, in sadness or in resignation. “I don’t know what’s going on in Laurens.”
It was obvious now why the officer had called him: Reverend Kennedy’s reputation as a local civil rights leader. He’d built his congregation, New Beginning Missionary Baptist, from the ground up, and he’d founded the Laurens County Soup Kitchen, through which members of his congregation served an average of 1,500 meals each week. He knew, had heard of, or was related to just about everybody in Laurens. A simple crosstown errand could stretch to the better part of three hours, since he felt compelled to stop and chat with almost everyone he happened to pass on the way. He was quick with a hug and known for delivering one of his trademark phrases: “hallelujah up there” if the word was good, or a reminder to “pump it up for Jesus!” for someone down on his luck. He was used to taking calls at all hours of the day and night, to receiving visitors unannounced at the church and at his home, and to providing assistance to people seeking all manner of favors.
Granted, the wisdom he dispensed these days tended to have less of a spiritual nature and be more concerned with matters of practical guidance. Help for a parishioner facing the threat of eviction. The name of a sympathetic lawyer or bail bondsman. Lately he’d been called more and more to help with the most basic of needs, especially food. David Kennedy kept stockpiles of food so that he’d always have something to offer--collards, okra, loaves of white bread, canned fruit, all of it donated from area businesses or members of his congregation and then tucked into the closet in his office or the trunk of his car. Every day he struggled to live his faith: blessed are the poor and the hungry, blessed are they who are persecuted. He served as coordinator of the local minority rights group, Project Awakening, and as a staff member at the Carolina Alliance for Fair Employment. Over the last ten years, he’d organized protests and marched alongside local and state-level politicians, never failing to speak out against prejudice and hate. But as he watched the cop climb back into his car and head off down Harper Street, an uneasy feeling came over him.
“That cop was nervous,” he said later. “I can see him now, just shaking.”
One
The Mask That Grins and Lies
February 1996
Reverend David Kennedy stood in his shirtsleeves at the edge of the pasture, studying the police officer loping toward him across the grass. The man was tall and lanky, hair close-cropped and side-parted, and he had a kind of hangdog manner about him--the way he rolled his shoulders forward and tucked his chin to his chest, as if trying to render himself invisible. The cop flicked away the butt of his cigarette, and Kennedy watched the glowing ember streak across the dark. A wind kicked up, bowing the trees. Kennedy crossed his arms against his chest and shivered.
“They see me talkin to you, Rev, and they gon terminate me,” the cop said, extending his hand. “But I got to share this with you.”
Kennedy had recognized the officer’s voice when he called earlier that afternoon--the reedy quality, the cowboy cadence. Calls like these weren’t altogether unusual; cops and reverends tend to weave in and out of each other’s lives in small towns, brushing past one another in the city jail or milling around together in the marble halls of the county courthouse. Kennedy knew just about everybody in the Laurens City Police and the Laurens County Sheriff’s Office. Quite a few state troopers, too. What made this call unusual had been the officer’s request to speak with the reverend alone, someplace private. “Safe,” actually, was the word he had used, and this was the spot Kennedy had chosen, a plot of brown pasture beneath a towering oak tree adjacent to the Beasley Mortuary, a black-owned funeral parlor in the southernmost reaches of Jersey. About the safest spot in town for a white cop who didn’t want to be seen.
“You can share it with me,” Kennedy said. “It won’t go nowhere.” The reverend was a garrulous man by nature, but he spoke now in the practiced, almost detached manner of a priest taking confession. Not too eager, never excited. Almost aloof.
“You can’t tell no one,” the officer said.
“I won’t.”
“I know I can trust you. That’s why I called you.”
Kennedy gave an almost imperceptible nod and waited.
“I saw some stuff,” the cop said finally, shaking his head. He glanced over his shoulder, lowered his voice, and shoved his hands into the pockets of his windbreaker. “I found out what they’re doin at the old Echo theater.”
Exactly what had been going on at the Echo was a question folks in Laurens had been putting to themselves for several months. It was under new ownership, that much seemed certain, and some kind of renovation or refurbishment was under way. But whatever was going on, it was being kept a total mystery, a closely guarded secret. There had been no signage on the doors, no “Grand Opening” announcements in the local papers. The windows were dark and papered over.
Kennedy hadn’t so much as stepped foot inside the Echo in nearly three decades, which was about how long the theater had been closed. As a boy, he’d preferred the Harlem theater, the movie house for black patrons over on Back Street, a small African American business district just east of the square. At the Harlem, he could watch the westerns he loved, Shane or the Billy the Kid flicks, without the indignity of having to enter through a side door and trudge upstairs to the colored balcony, without being hollered at for talking too much or having the audacity to laugh “too loudly.”
One day when he was ten or eleven, however, Kennedy convinced his mother to let him go to the movies all by himself, for the very first time. An Elvis picture was showing at the Capitol--the Echo’s sister theater, on the south side of the square. David bought his ticket and purchased a soda and found a seat in the balcony. Halfway through the film, around the time Elvis finished crooning “Puppet on a String,” David shimmied out of his row, approached the white man who’d sold him his ticket, and asked for directions to the men’s room.
“He wouldn’t tell me,” Kennedy remembered, years later. “I said, ‘There’s nowhere we could use the restroom?’ He said no.”
If Kennedy was angry or confused, those feelings quickly gave way to a more pressing emotion: panic. He had to relieve himself. Now. But finding a secluded spot somewhere outside, mere steps from the courthouse and City Hall and the police station, was out of the question. He thought fleetingly of making a run for the Back Street, but he knew he’d never make it in time. So instead, with a kind of sickening realization of the inevitable, he tiptoed back to the balcony, sat as far away from everyone else as he could manage, and tied a sweater around his waist to cover the growing wet spot on his trousers. The minute the house lights went up, he bolted.
“I hit that door real fast, and ran home. That’s how I remember the Capitol theater.”
For a black child growing up in the Jim Crow South, the Echo and the Capitol were one and the same--both located on the courthouse square, both operated by the same proprietor, and both seemingly designed to humiliate you in your otherness. They were shuttered around the same time, too, in the mid-1960s, amid growing competition from drive‑in theaters and the rising popularity of television, though Kennedy had not been particularly sad to see either of them go. Over the coming decades, retail businesses would sometimes take up residence in the former lobby of the Capitol, but for some reason the Echo was never included in the city’s revitalization plans, never benefited from the public-private funds raised back in the 1980s to improve the historic district. The building and all of its contents--projector, screen, concessions equipment--were sold at auction in 1989, but still the theater sat empty, slipping further and further into a state of disrepair. Until the construction started, it seemed as though the Echo might be vacant forever.
“What’d you see?” Kennedy asked the officer. “What’s the problem?”
The cop shifted his weight from foot to foot. From beyond the tree line came the whining blast of a CSX freight engine. “At first I thought it was just ’sposed to be a southern pride thing. Confederate-flag T‑shirts and license plates and all that. But then I started lookin around.”
Kennedy listened with growing interest, and then something closer to disgust, as the officer described the merchandise displayed inside the theater’s lobby: Maltese and Celtic cross patches lined up in rotating display racks, just like postcards; vintage whites only placards and segregation-era signs; T‑shirts and bumper stickers emblazoned with all manner of racist invective. The walls were lined with photos of cross burnings and Klan rallies. In the center of the room was a slender mannequin, the kind you might find in a ladies’ dress shop, outfitted in a Klansman’s hood and robe.
“I reckon they’ll open for business any day.” The cop shook his head again, in sadness or in resignation. “I don’t know what’s going on in Laurens.”
It was obvious now why the officer had called him: Reverend Kennedy’s reputation as a local civil rights leader. He’d built his congregation, New Beginning Missionary Baptist, from the ground up, and he’d founded the Laurens County Soup Kitchen, through which members of his congregation served an average of 1,500 meals each week. He knew, had heard of, or was related to just about everybody in Laurens. A simple crosstown errand could stretch to the better part of three hours, since he felt compelled to stop and chat with almost everyone he happened to pass on the way. He was quick with a hug and known for delivering one of his trademark phrases: “hallelujah up there” if the word was good, or a reminder to “pump it up for Jesus!” for someone down on his luck. He was used to taking calls at all hours of the day and night, to receiving visitors unannounced at the church and at his home, and to providing assistance to people seeking all manner of favors.
Granted, the wisdom he dispensed these days tended to have less of a spiritual nature and be more concerned with matters of practical guidance. Help for a parishioner facing the threat of eviction. The name of a sympathetic lawyer or bail bondsman. Lately he’d been called more and more to help with the most basic of needs, especially food. David Kennedy kept stockpiles of food so that he’d always have something to offer--collards, okra, loaves of white bread, canned fruit, all of it donated from area businesses or members of his congregation and then tucked into the closet in his office or the trunk of his car. Every day he struggled to live his faith: blessed are the poor and the hungry, blessed are they who are persecuted. He served as coordinator of the local minority rights group, Project Awakening, and as a staff member at the Carolina Alliance for Fair Employment. Over the last ten years, he’d organized protests and marched alongside local and state-level politicians, never failing to speak out against prejudice and hate. But as he watched the cop climb back into his car and head off down Harper Street, an uneasy feeling came over him.
“That cop was nervous,” he said later. “I can see him now, just shaking.”
/
