"Gonna integrate me a pool."

Off he strolled. He wouldn't say more. And in an hour, he was in the SNCC Office, water running from his sodden trousers, his face and hands dried by the long run from the pool. He had picked up two of his boys. The three had vaulted the fence, taken a dip in the forbidden pool, and exited by the front gate under the gaping, ineffectual stares of the whites.

"I jump in an' that sorry little life guard yells, "Hey, hey, hey." Knight slumped down in a chair. "Duv' off that board a few times, he was blowin' that foolsh little whistle, and baby, we walked out just as straight!"

People get into the Movement in strange ways. This was Knight's way. Two evenings later, we told about it at mass meeting. The jump was one of those brilliant, total, solid-silver triumphs that satisfy so perfectly a basic human need, and Knight was applauded to the speaker's stand.

"Well, we had a fine little swim all right. Even got me a tan." Knight looked down at the black of his hand and laughed, and then he looked around the church and grew serious.

"Only--" He hesitated here, almost stopped, but something made him go further.

"Only we still had to jump the fence, and I want to see the day we can all go through the gate."

Amid cheers, Knight walked back to his seat, committed now to integrating Tift Park pool. A few days later, when we demonstrated against segregation in public accommodations, he went to jail with us.

* * *

We were walking in a column, carrying no signs, singing softly. Knight was just ahead of me, singing too, very proud, very straight. We had intended to walk into the white downtown area. But the cops stopped us long before we reached it. When they came down on us, I watched Knight's reaction, and I could see that it was painful for him to submit to the roughing up and the arrest without a fight.

But then there was a fight--Knight against himself, Knight fighting to forget a great part of his past. And the fight continued: Ordinarily, once subdued, Knight would have "Tommed" to the cops. That is, he would have suppressed all pride, all hate, all honesty, presented only the laughing, awkward, servile, lewd surface that they wanted to see, and so maybe got an occasional pack of cigarettes and a soft job on the work gangs. That was the game: Fight in vengeance, fight to escape, but if caught, make the best of it.

But this time Knight was cold and aloof and proud, and the cops were troubled by it. Knight the drunk or Knight the thief they expected and even wanted, but Knight with the Movement was a threat and a challenge. In the jailhouse, they attempted to show him how he had gone wrong. They tried cajoling:

"Knight boy, you been misled. You been listenin' to that damn communist over there, but boy you don't know what he got in the back of his mind. You ought to be proud of your race. You ought to be ashamed, messing around with this integration trash."

And when Knight merely yawned, thew grew desperate and angry:

"You goddam Movement nigger. You don't want nothin' but a white woman nohow, do you?"