Civil rights activist Roger Wilkens is dead at 85. His autobiography, A Man’s Life, is well worth reading, but its title wasn’t always so bland. In 1982, a less correct time, when the book was first published, it was called Blue Chip Nigger, because, as Wilkens explained it, he was entirely middle class in his upbringing, instincts and values. Among whites, he felt alienated because he was black. Among blacks, he felt alienated because he was “white” inside. Riding the crest of the wave of the civil rights movement in the late sixties, Wilkens soon became a “fashionable” black man, which only added to his confusion: “Instead of standing with my nose pressed to the window, I often found myself inside rooms with people whose names were Mailer, Vidal, Javits, Kennedy or Bernstein,”
The best anecdote in the book is the first. Wilkens tells about going for a walk alone when he was about six, coming across a white man digging a ditch.1 “What’s your name?” the man asked him. Wilkens told him and asked his. “I don’t have a name, little boy. I’m too poor. I’m just here, doing Mr. Roosevelt’s job.”
- This may have been the first white person Wilkens had seen, but I can’t remember for sure. ↩︎
