Three Naked Men in a Tub
Ruben Anderson and Change in Mississippi
I was born into a world where nearly every position of power and consequence was held by white men of a certain class and a certain age. The only black men with any power or position were either ministers or performers.
Some performers didn’t consider their position in the culture more important than just proof that they were entertaining. People like Flip Wilson and Sammy Davis Junior were said to be a credit to their race, a phrase that took too long to be uncovered as offensive.
Some performers, like Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier, made it clear that just being a performer was not enough. Black writers probably had more power and freedom than anybody. Writers like Richard Wright had the advantage of writing about things that the people who hated him would never see because they didn’t read.
My favorite was James Baldwin, who flew not only his blackness but also his sexuality completely under the radar of the men who hated him and found himself in a position where he could say whatever the hell he wanted and have people who made a difference read it. The photograph of Baldwin’s tiny frame, flanked by Charlton Heston, Marlon Brando, and Sidney Poitier at the Selma March, always stuck with me as an example of something good that was happening in my country.
In my home, handing the keys of power and consequence from white to black hands took longer than most places. Somebody had to be the breakout leader who smashed the ceilings. In Jackson, Mississippi, that was Ruben Anderson.
Doing a newspaper search, you can track Anderson’s star rising as late as the end of the sixties. Four years after the “Battle of Oxford,” Anderson entered the University of Mississippi School of Law. He was part of a very small group of lawyers pushing their way through the thick ice of racism that held Mississippi frozen in its grip.
His first position was representing the NAACP, which was and is a very moderate institution. At the time, and for much of my life, it was often described as a branch of the Soviet Communist Party. People in America somehow have no concept of what communism actually is. They tend to use the phrase to describe any position that’s not slightly to the right of the Status Quo.
Again and again, I found examples of where the Clarion Ledger came to him for opinions impacting the Black Community, including the shootings at Jackson State. In retrospect, he was remarkably young, but the paper wanted the opinion of a black man that carried some weight, and there weren’t yet many black lawyers to talk to.
Once Anderson made the transition from Lawyer to Judge, he really started ticking off the career checkpoints. When Anderson made it to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, the power brokers in the moderate political and business environment began making noises that he should be ushered into their level of social commerce.
As I heard the story later, the idea began with Bill and Elise Winter, particularly the former first lady. You always hear stories about William Winter, but Elise was as much of an agent of change as he was. A gentile lady of moderate politics, she might not have gotten as much press as she deserved, but she knew what she was doing. Elise decided that Ruben and his wife Phyllis should be introduced to society, using the honored tradition of the dinner party.
Millsaps and Trustmark wanted to curry favor with the Andersons and make their position on him both public and clear. Frank Day had a reputation for throwing lavish parties but didn’t yet have a spouse, so he decided to throw his effort in with the Millsaps folks.
Bill Goodman represented Millsaps as lead council member and board member. Also representing Watkins & Eager at the dinner party was a bonus. They were eager to have a hand in this. His wife Edwina was a lady of immeasurable talents who would help my mother organize the party to be held at our Honeysuckle Lane home.
The guest list included Frank Day and Barbara Reed, Bill and Edwina Goodman, Rowan Taylor and his wife (this was one of their last appearances together), Jane and Leon Lewis, Bill and Elise Winter, and my mother and father.
Mother and Mrs. Goodman decided on a menu of Shrimp and Grits. I was worried that it might come off as an attempt for this little white woman to cook ethnically. I hadn’t yet gotten the word that Bill Neal’s cookbook was taking Jackson by storm. Many years later, I had shrimp and grits at City Grocery in Oxford and thought about how this little dish had really established itself.
Anderson was a graduate of Tougaloo. Millsaps and Tougaloo have always existed like two comets with their tails tangled with one another. Bill Goodman and Ruben Anderson both had JD degrees from the University of Mississippi, something like fifteen years apart. Rowan had a JD from the Jackson School of Law and was a strong advocate for Millsaps buying the Jackson School of Law, which would have happened had we found the money.
Daddy hired Johnny Gore to serve drinks. I worried that having a black man serve drinks, even a black man locally famous as Johnny Gore, might send the wrong message, so I offered myself as his bar back. Seeing a white boy schlep ice and boxes around while Johnny Gore got to wear a bowtie and serve drinks like a gentleman seemed like a good compromise; it also gave me the opportunity to be a fly on the wall.
Anderson’s career continued progressing at an upward angle long after that night. Other young black men would start filling in places of power, Judge Banks being one of the first, but Anderson was always the point man.
Several years later, I was abusing my body at the Downtown YMCA. The operating theory at the time was that heat and more heat would heal your overworked muscles, so I took steam and then crawled into this giant hot tub they had.
The gentleman’s club at the Downtown YMCA was a place where you were mostly naked except for a towel and flip-flops. I’d heard about the notorious bathhouses of New York and San Francisco; this was a far less interesting version of that.
The Jackson Bathhouse was full of men, past their prime, trying to fend off the advances of the years using tactics from the Roman Empire. Hot baths and Hot steam made you feel better, but I don’t know if they ever made you any healthier.
Courtesy at the Gentlemens Club of the Downtown YMCA was that you always averted your eyes not to expose yourself to each other’s nakedness. Toward that end, they always kept five or six copies of the Clarion Ledger spread around. It never escaped my notice that the men who used the Gentleman’s Club of the Downtown YMCA were often mentioned in the Clarion Ledger. There were even a few times when I saw men read about themselves.
With my face buried in a fold of paper, I heard a body enter the water across from me. From my peripheral vision, I could see a mocha latte body dipping into the same hot, swirling water I was in. Satisfied that enough of him was in the water to be modest, I folded my paper down, nodded, and said, “Evenin’ Judge.” then went back to my paper. The hot tub was not a conversation place unless you knew somebody particularly well.
A few minutes later, I heard another body get in the water. I recognized the groan. Rowan Taylor had taken up serious jogging in what seemed to me at the time like his twilight years, even though he lived much longer than that. He was seemingly constantly tearing and injuring muscles. If there was any therapeutic use of hot swirling water, he probably needed it more than most.
“Boyd, you still seeing that girl?”
Obviously, “that girl” wasn’t her name, but this is one of those times when I will pretend I don’t remember the name. Rowan wasn’t asking about my love life. He was asking for confirmation that, once again, Brum Day and I were seeing the same girl at the same time. For years, Brum loved Barbara Reed, but in his mid to late fifties, he wasn’t yet ready to settle down, and there were so many women in Jackson. We both liked smart women with a noticeably aggressive attitude. If they had brown eyes, it was a bonus.
“Yeah, she’s still out there. I doubt anything will come of it.”
I figured that was a non-committal, non-incriminating answer. In a painfully short few years, Brum would contract ALS. God himself made him choose between Barbara and the rest of the world. He chose her.
Three naked men were sitting in a tub. I was the youngest and the least accomplished. We represented, let's say, two-and-a-half generations of life in Mississippi. An awful lot can happen in two-and-a-half generations. Here we are, I thought. “Here we are.”
I drive past that YMCA now. It’s abandoned, with broken windows and a falling roof. There was a time when I thought I knew where Jackson was going, and I was glad about it. I’m not so sure now. Most of the old guard are dead now. Nobody seems to give a good goddamn about moderate politics in Mississippi. The mayor is objectively a communist, and the governor is objectively a fascist. Neither men actually are these things, but that’s the political timber of the day.
Three naked men in a tub, and the future seemed so clear. It didn’t turn out that way, though.
