The Thomas Berryman Number

BUT AS WE DID NONE OF THESE THINGS FOR JIMMIE LEE HORN, SINCE WE IN FACT CONSPIRED TO RETARD HIS DEVELOPMENT, WE ARE A CITY IN SHOCK TODAY. WE ARE IN SHOCK, AND MANY OF US ARE IN SHAMEFUL AWE AT THE WAY JIMMIE HORN HAS COME UP OUT OF SHANTYTOWN, AND BECOME OUR MAYOR, AS WELL AS EVERYTHING ELSE HE IS TODAY

I personally got to know Horn and his family fairly well after his election in ’70.

Since that may sound like false modesty coming from a man who won prizes writing about him, I should say that Horn had the most elaborate set of defenses I’ve ever seen any man build around himself.

Not the least of these defenses was a quick, joking manner that had led some other reporters to create a media myth that Horn was just a “happy-go-lucky nigger.”

I don’t believe Horn was a happy man at all. In fact, that’s one thing I’m fairly certain of. He was a driven man. He had conditioned himself to be a successful black leader and a spokesman. That was his life. With the exception of a few unguarded moments (and those usually had an ulterior purpose), I never saw what I would characterize as the

private man

in Jimmie Horn.

Over the years though, I built up a collection of tapes on the

public man:

on Horn the thinker, the writer, the bull-thrower.

Jimmie Horn Speaking on Jim Crow:

“Just after Vietnam got important, in 1967, my youngest brother’s best friend—he was a veteran, and also an Esso gas-pump jockey—was fished out of the Cumberland River with his testicles in the pockets of his bluejeans.

“You see, he’d been gossip-associated with a white woman. More than that, he’d been loving her regularly.

“So now, we come to the middle 1970s. And now, barring some unforeseen and unlikely event, the pundits say I could become one of Tennessee’s senators. Just like it was Massachusetts down here.

“Well, I don’t know about that. I don’t know if anything has changed quite like that.

“Jim Crow may be gone, technically, but he’s not forgotten.”

On Beulahland:

“Believe it or not, I have always embraced the southern values of honor, hospitality, and graciousness.

“I like the way things are up-front down here, much better than I liked it up North.

“A sheriff in Jackson City says, ‘The only thing I like better than arrestin’ niggers is catchin’ a big seven-pound bass.’ I like that. I like knowing who is

they

and who is

we.”

On James Earl Ray:

“The damndest pity I know of.

“The entire Memphis court proceedings, following one of the most spectacular and heinous crimes of the century, King’s murder in cold blood, took one hundred and forty-four minutes … After a little more than three hours, during which no formal legal procedures took place, it was over. There was no cross-examination of James Earl Ray/Galt/St. Vincent Galt/Bridgeman/Sneyd, or anyone else for that matter. It was history as the mosquito bite, the blink of an eye.

“Then, three years ago, after throwing my weight around in some ways I don’t care to remember, I got to visit Ray at Bruskey State Prison.

“Ray was wearing a bluejean jacket and work shirt, and he was dusting leaves along a sidewalk. He seemed to me to have the natural look of a groundskeeper.

“We sat down on a front yard bench and for some unknown reason he offered me a cigarette. ‘You want to know how I did it, too,’ he said.

“No, I told him. I’d like to know who did it.

“Ray smiled and lighted a second cigarette for himself—one already being in his mouth. He puffed on two cigarettes for the next five minutes or so, staring straight at the ground. He said absolutely not one more word. I think he was playing with me.

“For the first time, and I don’t know exactly why, I believed that he’d actually done it. I believed that he’d done it for his own personal satisfaction, and I felt he was proud of what he’d done.

“Then recently they moved him to Nashville of all places. He’s appealing again. Now nobody believes he did it again.”

On a Magazine Article Claiming He’d Read

Amy Vanderbilt

to His Wife:

“This is true. Last night, in fact, Maureen and I discussed a lesson in etiquette for upwardly mobile black people.

“In the lesson, two up-and-coming black painters, both foremen, are working on a tall building and one of them falls. ‘Hey, now, don’t fall,’ his friend says. ‘I can’t help it, I already fell,’ the falling man answers. ‘Well, you’re goan fall right on a white lady down there,’ the friend comes right back. And that falling man stops falling, and returns to the roof.

“That is etiquette for black people. Just as I read it in Miss Vanderbilt’s fine book.”

On Being Shot:

“I read that Dr. King thought about it a lot. For him, it seemed to be a means of guaranteeing his legacy. I doubt he looked forward to it, though, as some have written.