Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

SEPTEMBER 21, 1986

Evelyn had promised Mrs. Threadgoode that she would take her troubles to the Lord and ask the Lord to help her through these bad times. Unfortunately, she didn’t know where the Lord was. She and Ed had not been to church since the children were grown, but today she felt desperate for help, for something to hold on to; so she got dressed and drove over to the Highland Avenue Presbyterian Church, where they used to be members.

But when she got there, for some reason she just drove on by and, all of a sudden, found herself across town, sitting in the parking lot of the Martin Luther King Memorial Baptist Church—the largest black church in Birmingham—wondering what in the hell she was doing there. Maybe it had been all these months of hearing about Sipsey and Onzell. She didn’t know.

All her life she had considered herself to be a liberal. She had never used the word nigger. But her contact with blacks had been the same as for the majority of middle-class whites before the sixties—mostly just getting to know the maid or the maids of friends.

When she was little, she would sometimes go with her father when he would drive their maid to the south side, where she lived. It was just ten minutes away, but seemed to her like going to another country: the music, the clothes, the houses … everything was different.

On Easter they would drive over to the south side to see the brand-new Easter outfits: pinks and purples and yellows, with plumed hats to match.

Of course, it was the black women who worked inside the homes. Whenever a black man was anywhere nearby, her mother would get hysterical and scream at her to run put on a robe because, “there’s a colored man in the neighborhood!” To this day, Evelyn was not comfortable with black men around.

Other than that, her parents’ attitude about blacks had been like most back then; they thought most were amusing and wonderful, childlike people, to be taken care of. Everyone had a funny story to tell about what this maid said or did, or would shake their heads with amusement about how many children they kept having. Most would give them all their old clothes and leftovers to take home, and help them if they got in trouble. But as Evelyn got a little older, she didn’t go to the south side anymore and thought little about them; she had been too busy with her own life.

So, in the sixties, when the troubles began, she, along with the majority of whites in Birmingham, had been shocked. And everyone agreed that it was not “our colored people” causing all the trouble, it was outside agitators who had been sent down from the North.

It was generally agreed too that “our colored people are happy the way they are.” Years later, Evelyn wondered where her mind had been and why she hadn’t realized what had been going on just across town.

After Birmingham suffered so badly in the press and on TV, people were confused and upset. Not one of the thousands of kindnesses that had taken place between the races was ever mentioned.

But twenty-five years later Birmingham had a black mayor, and in 1975, Birmingham, once known as the City of Hate and Fear, had been named the All-American City by Look magazine. They said that a lot of bridges had been mended, and blacks, who had once gone north, were coming back home. They had all come a long way.

Evelyn knew this, but nevertheless, as she sat in the church parking lot, she was amazed at all the Cadillacs and Mercedeses driving up and parking all around her. She had heard that there were rich blacks in Birmingham, but she had never seen them before.

As she watched the congregation arrive, all of a sudden that old fear of black men came back.

She glanced around the car to make sure that all her doors were locked, and was getting ready to drive away when a father and mother with two children walked by her car, laughing; then she snapped back to reality and calmed down. After a few minutes, she mustered up all her courage and went inside the church.

But even after the usher with the carnation smiled at her and said, “Good morning,” and led her down the aisle, she was still shaking. Her heart pounded all the way to her seat, and her knees were weak. She had hoped to sit in the back, but he had escorted her to the middle of the church.

In moments, sweat was pouring off Evelyn and she was short of breath. Few people seemed to look at her. A couple of children turned around in their seats and stared; she smiled, but they did not smile back. She had just decided to leave when a man and a woman came into the pew and sat down beside her. So there she was, stuck in the middle, just like always. This was the first time in her life she had ever been surrounded by only blacks.

All at once, she was the belly of a snake, the Pillsbury Doughboy, a page in a coloring book left uncolored, a pale flower in the garden indeed.

The young wife beside her was stunning, and dressed like someone Evelyn had seen only in magazines. She could have been a high-fashion model from New York, in her pearl-gray silk outfit, with snakeskin shoes and a purse to match. As she looked around the room, Evelyn realized that she had never seen so many beautifully dressed people in one place in her life. She was still uneasy about the men—their pants fit too tight to suit her—so she concentrated on the women.

But then, she had always admired them, their strength and compassion. She had always wondered how they could love and care for white children and nurse old white men and women with such gentleness and care. She didn’t think she could have.

She watched the way they greeted each other, their wonderful and complete easiness with themselves, the way they moved with that smooth and natural grace, even the heavyset ones. She didn’t ever want one of them to get mad at her, but she’d love to see somebody call one of them a fat cow.

She realized that all of her life she had looked at blacks but she had never really seen them. These women were good-looking; thin brown girls with cheekbones like Egyptian queens, and those big, magnificent-looking, balloon-breasted women.

Imagine all those people in the past trying to look white; they must be laughing from their graves at all the middle-class white-boy singers trying so hard to sound black, and the white girls in their corn rows and Afros. The tables have turned …

Evelyn began to relax and feel a little more comfortable. Somehow, she had expected the inside of the church to look much different. As she looked around, Evelyn was convinced it could have been any one of the dozens of white churches all over Birmingham; then, all of a sudden, the organ struck a chord and the 250 members of the choir, in bright red and maroon robes, stood up and sang out with a power and a force that almost knocked her off her seat:

After they sat back down, the Reverend Portor, a huge man with a voice that filled the church, rose from his chair and began his sermon, entitled “The Joy of a Loving God.” And he meant it. Evelyn felt it all through the church. As he preached, he would throw his massive head back and shout and laugh with happiness. And the congregation and the organ that accompanied him would answer back with the same.

She had been wrong; this was not just like the white churches, certainly not the dried-up, bloodless sermons she was used to.

His enthusiasm for the Lord was contagious and spread like wildfire throughout the room. He assured them, with a great and mighty authority, that his God was not a vengeful God, but one of goodness … love … forgiveness … and joy. And he began to dance and strut and sing out his sermon to the rafters, sweat sparkling on his shining face, which he would mop off occasionally with the white handkerchief he kept in his right hand.

As he sang out, he was answered from all over the church:

“YOU CANNOT HAVE JOY UNLESS YOU LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR …”

“That’s right, sir.”

“LOVE YOUR ENEMIES …”

“Yes sir.”

“LET GO OF THOSE OLD GRUDGES …”

“Yes sir, let go.”

“SHAKE LOOSE OF THAT OLD DEVIL, ENVY …”

“Yes sir.”

“GOD CAN FORGIVE …”

“Yes He can.”

“WHY CAN’T YOU? …”

“You’re right, sir.”

“TO ERR IS HUMAN … TO FORGIVE, DIVINE …”

“Yes sir.”

“THERE IS NO RESURRECTION FOR BODIES GNAWED BY THE MAGGOTS OF SIN …

“No sir.”

“BUT GOD CAN LIFT YOU UP …”

“Yes He can.”

“OH! GOD IS GOOD …”

“Yes sir.”

“OH! HOW GOOD IS OUR GOD …”

“You’re right, sir.”

“WHAT A FRIEND WE HAVE IN JESUS …”

“Oh yes sir.”

“YOU CAN BE BAPTIZED, CIRCUMCISED, GALVANIZED, AND SIMONIZED, BUT IT DONT MEAN A THING IF YOU AIN’T A CITIZEN OF GLORY …”

“No sir.”

“THANK YOU, JESUS! THANK YOU, JESUS! GOOD GOD ALMIGHTY! WE PRAISE YOUR NAME THIS MORNING AND THANK YOU, JESUS! HALLELUIAH! HALLELUIAH JESUS!”

When he had finished, the whole church exploded in “Amens!” and “Halleluiahs!” and the choir started again, until the room began to throb with …

“ARE YOU WASHED IN THE BLOOD … THE SOUL-CLEANSING BLOOD OF THE LAMB … OH TELL ME, SWEET CHILDREN … ARE YOU WASHED IN THE BLOOD …”

Evelyn had never been a religious person, but this day she was lifted from her seat and rose high above the fear that had been holding her down.

She felt her heart open and fill with the pure wonder of being alive and making it through.

She floated up to the altar, where a white Jesus, wan and thin, wearing a crown of thorns, looked down from the crucifix at her and said, “Forgive them, my child, they know not what they do …”

Mrs. Threadgoode had been right. She had taken her troubles to the Lord, and she had been relieved of them.

Evelyn took a deep breath and the heavy burden of resentment and hate released itself into thin air, taking Towanda along with them. She was free! And in that moment she forgave the boy at the supermarket, her mother’s doctor, and the girls in the parking lot … and she forgave herself. She was free. Free; just like these people here today, who had come through all that suffering and had not let hate and fear kill their spirit of love.

At which point Reverend Portor called for the congregation to shake hands with their neighbors. The beautiful young woman sitting next to her shook her hand and said, “God bless you.” Evelyn squeezed the woman’s hand and said, “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

As she left the church, she turned at the door and looked back one last time. Maybe she had come today hoping she could find out what it was like to be black. Now she realized she could never know, any more than her friends here could know what it felt like to be white. She knew she would never come back. This was their place. But for the first time in her life, she had felt joy. Real joy. It had been joy that she had seen in Mrs. Threadgoode’s eyes, but she hadn’t recognized it at the time. She knew that she might never feel it again. But she had felt it once, and now she would never forget the sensation as long as she lived. It would have been wonderful if she could have told everyone in the church how much that day had meant to her.

It would have been wonderful, too, if Evelyn had known that the young woman who shook her hand had been the eldest daughter of Jasper Peavey, pullman porter, who, like herself, had made it through.