Sometimes when he had coffee at the shiny, brushed steel tables of the new coffee shop on Head House Square, Hendon Chait could swear he was in Europe. In colonial times, the main business of Philadelphia was carried out seven blocks north around Market Street near Independence Hall and the massive neoclassical First and Second Banks of the United States. As the city expanded south, people got tired of walking all the way to Market Street to do their shopping, so the New Market was established—a square on Second Street that runs two blocks from Pine to South. At the north end of the square is its defining structure, the Head House, a cunning, three-story brick building topped by a cupola built in 1805 as a fire house. Attached to the Head House is a charming 18th-century brick arcade with peaked roof known as the Shambles; built in 1745 and running the full block from Pine to Lombard, it was built originally for merchants to set up their stalls and shops. Today, the Shambles is still used for this same purpose on summer weekends, as crafts people from New Jersey, Delaware and Lancaster County set up shop to serve the tourist trade. Only once during the summer—this fourth weekend in July—did the Shambles craft show fail to open because of the probability of looting by 200,000 marauding black teenagers in the barbarian binge that follows the Greek Picnic.
  Surrounding the square are restaurants and shops. On the less-traveled side of the Shambles in front of the Dickens Pub, the street has the original bumpy cobblestone, also known as Belgian block—those brick-sized chunks of rock used for ballast in the holds of the sailing ships that arrived empty of goods at the port of Philadelphia to haul the loot of the colonies back to Europe.
Farther up the plaza were a convenience store, bank, big pharmacy, tanning parlor and, at the south end of Head House Square, Bridget Foy’s restaurant, its sidewalk tables behind a low iron rail fence affording a view of the entire scene.
  For Greek Weekend, Head House Square had been transformed into a satellite riot control center. As Chait walked over from Society Hill Towers, and rounded the corner by the First Union Bank across from the Head House, he could see through the Shambles arch in the distance, yards of yellow plastic police ribbon cordoning off the parking spaces in the center of the square. Three police vehicles were already parked in the square—a squad car, a paddy wagon and a police ambulance. Some 30 police officers were milling about, surveying the area and making plans for crowd containment. For Philadelphia’s finest, it would be a long day.
At the far end of the square. Hendon ran into Donn who was sauntering down South Street with a bemused expression on his face. “What the fuck is going on?” he asked.
  “Greek Weekend.”
  “This is serious shit.”
  “Very serious.”
They walked to Bridget Foy’s. Just behind them was a young black couple with an older woman, perhaps a mother or mother-in-law. Donn opened the door and, holding it open, stood aside to let the trio to precede them in. The older black woman turned to Donn and said, “Why thank you, sir.”
  Donn nodded and said, “Yes, ma’am.” One element in Donn’s makeup was his unfailing politeness, sometimes to the point of obsequiousness, to everybody—regardless of age or color or social status—until they crossed him. Then he would erupt.
  They decided against a sidewalk table overlooking the square for two reasons: it was beastly hot and humid and, instead of the splendid vista of the open plaza with the Shambles in the distance, they would be looking at some 20 portable toilets that had been set up to help reduce the unrestrained public urination that always went along with Greek Weekend. As they sat down, Donn nodded to the wall of Port-a-Potties and cracked, “This gives new meaning to Head House Square.”
  It is important here to recount their conversation, because by the end of lunch, Hendon was absolutely convinced that Donn Kilgore was not a racist, and, in fact, absolutely believed that black people could excel to heights far beyond whites or Asians or anybody else—if only they were given the chance. Following the Massacre, Hendon Chait, acting as Donn’s spokesperson, had the near-impossible task of convincing the media of this, but what follows is the conversation over lunch as reported both by Hendon and later corroborated by Donn Kilgore.
  They ordered Bloody Marys and Donn said, “Tell me again what’s going on?”
  “Greek Weekend, a reunion of African-American fraternities--alumni and college students,” Chait explained. “It started last Sunday and there were events throughout the week. But today is the big bash, a giant picnic in Fairmount Park. Some 200,000 Greeks come to Philadelphia for this weekend, and the city loves them because they pump around $24 million into the economy. Trouble is, the picnic is over late in the afternoon and by tonight another 100,000 non-Greeks will hit town and start making trouble.”
  “Greeks? Non-Greeks? What are you talking about?”
  “Members of Greek-letter organizations—you know, like Delta Kappa Epsilon and Beta Theta Pi, only these are black fraternities with Greek-letter names. Center City residents with any sense leave town.”
  Donn stared out the window at the phalanx of blue uniforms.
  “The city should call this thing off,” Chait said.
  “The city has no choice.”
  “Why not?”
  “Twenty years ago my friend, Alan Westin, of the American Civil Liberties Union had commandeered some ACLU money for a test mailing to get subscribers to a new magazine—I forget the name of it now. Everything was ‘go.’ Then George Lincoln Rockwell announced a neo-Nazi march and rally in Illinois. Skokie of all places, America’s heartland. The town was furious and the city council banned the march. It became a huge First Amendment controversy.”
  “I thought the First Amendment had to do with abridgment of free speech.”
  “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” Donn intoned, “or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble...”
  “You can quote the Constitution?”
  “I learned it by heart. At one point in my life I wanted to be a Supreme Court Justice. I also memorized the Declaration of Independence. Then I spent a year in pre-law at Columbia and hated it. Anyway, the Nazis were going to march in Skokie and the ACLU took on their defense. As Alan Westin said to me, ‘Sometimes you have to hold your nose when you uphold the Constitution.’ The ACLU was powered by Jewish money and when it started defending Rockwell, all that Jewish money dried up and the ACLU nearly went out of business. Rockwell was assassinated shortly afterwards and the party eventually disappeared. But, in a word, Philadelphia cannot stop Greek Weekend, any more than it can stop the Ku Klux Klan or anybody else.”
  “Damn shame,” Chait muttered. “It’s a miserable weekend. Wait’ll you see tonight.”
  “Life would be more miserable without the First Amendment.”
The drinks arrived and they toasted Xenia and the girls in London and hopes for a peaceful evening.
  Donn looked out the window at the incipient mayhem in Head House Square and said softly, almost to himself. “It’s so different today.”
  “What do you mean?
  “When I was living in New York in the 60s I used to go to Harlem all the time and I had dozens of black friends. Louis Lomax was a friend of mine. We all loved each other. Langston Hughes was a friend of mine. I went with him to the opening night of his Black Nativity in a funny little theater on Third Avenue and the audience wouldn’t let the cast off the stage. And Billy Strayhorn was a friend of mine.”
  “Billy Strayhorn?”
  “Duke Ellington’s arranger and composer. Without Billy, Duke would never have become such an icon. For instance, Billy wrote, Take the A Train, which became Duke’s signature piece. Billy was such a lovely guy, funny, quick. A genius. Duke was a great performer, but Billy was the consummate musician. Duke never paid Billy anything. Just picked up all his expenses. Everywhere Billy went, he’d sign his name and the bills went to Duke’s office and they were paid. When Billy was dying of cancer, he’d lost so much weight none of his clothes fit. I picked him up at the hospital and took him in a taxi to Bond’s on 42nd Street to buy him clothes. He was so tiny we had to shop in the boy’s department. God, how I miss those days—and those wonderful, wonderful people.” Donn raised his glass. “To times gone by and lost friends,” he said mournfully. He sat in silence for a moment and then muttered, “Treemonisha., my God.”
  “What?”
  “Treemonisha. Scott Joplin.”
“The ragtime guy? What about him?”
  “What most people don’t know is that Joplin composed an opera, Treemonisha, about a group of recently freed slaves in Arkansas. He wrote it around the turn of the century in between piano playing gigs in saloons and whorehouses in Missouri. He spent the last 10 years of his life trying to get it produced. Music publishers were making a fortune on the song sheets of his ragtime music. But when he brought them an opera, they mocked him from Chicago to New York. How dare the King of Ragtime attempt grand opera, they said. This was a white man’s art form. Joplin became consumed with trying get this thing published. At the same time, he was dying of syphilis and his mind was going. Finally he scraped the money together and published it himself and saved it from oblivion.”
  “What happened to it?”
  “Fifty years later it surfaced. Robert Shaw put on a concert version in Atlanta in the early 1970s. Then the Houston Grand Opera staged it in 1974. It won the Pulitzer Prize. Hen, you’ve got to hear this thing. Joplin turned out to be one of the greatest composers of choral music the country has ever produced.
  “Better than Porgy & Bess”?
  “Porgy & Bess and Four Saints in Three Acts are both pseudo-black operas composed by white boys. Comparing Gershwin to Joplin is like comparing Elton John to Bach. This came from deep within Joplin’s soul with layers of melody and counterpoint. Joplin died of a broken heart and four generations of Americans were deprived of this gorgeous, gorgeous music for one single reason—the guy was black. It seems to me that 134 years after the Thirteenth Amendment...”
  “Which was...?”
  “The abolition of slavery. Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and the Thirteenth Amendment became law in 1865. Now 134 years later, skin color shouldn’t even be noticed, let alone celebrated or reviled or anything else. I hate the term African-American. I have no patience with hyphenated Americans, God dammit. I don’t go around calling myself Jewish-English-American. I’m an American. We’re all Americans, through and through, from toes to nose. That’s the whole point of this democracy. I bet right now probably thousands of Scott Joplins are all over this country with huge talent aching to break free, yet they’re imprisoned in ignorance with nobody around to liberate them. The education establishment can’t motivate them and the government agencies are mired in bureaucracy and incompetence. But you know the real problem?”
  “Which is....”
  “No black role models.”
  “Tiger Woods.”
  “Ah, Tiger Woods. A triumph of eugenics.”
  “Meaning....”
  “Pure Asian intelligence combined with pure black athleticism. And uncorrupted by any white genes. Superman!”
  “Isn’t he a role model?”
  “He’s on the PGA—like Briana Scurry described herself last week: ‘a fly in the milk.’”
  “Colin Powell.”
  “No, no, no. You don’t understand. A role model is like a mentor— somebody you see every day and work with. A guy who shows up on television every couple of weeks for a sound bite is not a role model. In most families, the parents are role models. In many black families there’s no father, so the kids drift—especially the boys. They have no discipline. They aren’t pushed to excel.”
  “What about teachers? Can’t they be role models?”
  “Black kids are in open rebellion. They do not want to learn. The smart kids dumb themselves down because they’re scared of alienating their peers. Black school children today read an average 30 percent below whites, and there’s no excuse for it. Read Martin Gross’s book on the failure of the education establishment in this country. Fact is, if black kids are given the same quality of education as white kids, they do just fine. Teachers blame poverty and environment. But teachers are no longer teaching the way we learned 50 years ago. We learned reading via phonics and we learned arithmetic by rote. Today kids are being taught whole word recognition and individual problem solving. Christ, they take calculators into math tests!”
  “We used to take log books into algebra tests at Andover,” Hendon said. “And you know something? I never understood logarithms and I still don’t. And the people at Andover made me feel very, very stupid.”
  “Well, teachers in public schools make black kids feel dumb. One aspect of the black experience nobody likes to talk about is that in the 17th century—and over many generations—black rulers in Africa rounded up their own people and sold them into slavery by the hundreds of thousands. Maybe in the millions. Racists argue that the smart blacks rounded up the dumb blacks and sold them to the white Portuguese and Spanish and English slave traders. Racists would say what came to this country was a weak gene pool—victims of Mendel’s law. The latest iteration of that theory was The Bell Curve. And it’s all pure bullshit.”
“Explain.”
  “The entire thesis of The Bell Curve is that Asians are the smartest people in the world and that whites are dumber than Asians and blacks are dumber than whites. The premise is based entirely on how poorly black kids do on tests. Tests are based on education and environment. Give a test to kids who have trouble reading and doing arithmetic—black, white or Asian—and they’ll fail. In my opinion, The Bell Curve is the most racist book since Mein Kampf. Stop by the house after lunch and I’ll give you my copy.”
  The waiter came over with menus and they ordered hamburgers, fries and another round of drinks. Out the windows the police presence was intensifying in Head House Square. Sawhorse barricades were being set up to control traffic.
  “Twenty-five years ago, Daniel Patrick Moynihan predicted there would be two separate societies—one white and one black,” Donn said. “He was right. The public schools are graduating kids who can’t read or write and who cannot speak the King’s English. Did you know the average 18-year-old black high school graduate reads at the fifth grade level? Yet, if teachers crack down, they’re accused of racism and trying to negate the black experience. So they graduate illiterates.”
  “Do you see any hope?”
  “Maybe if some very charismatic black man or woman with an impeccable family life and a great education got into a high-profile position, then black parents could point to that person as an example. But the only job that could keep such a person constantly in the public eye is the presidency. And Alma Powell was right when she said that person would be assassinated, just as Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Huey Newton and Martin Luther King were. Believe me, Hen, I’d give up everything I have if I could somehow make a difference. This is the great challenge of the next century. Not the environment. Not foreign policy. It’s bringing the black and white communities together. And, frankly, I don’t see any hope.” Donn jerked his thumb toward the activity outside. “So long as the black leaders insist on preaching anger and victimhood and separation, we’re in for a long siege.”
  The drinks came and conversation drifted away to other things as Donn and Hendon had one of those long, lazy lunches laced with couple of beers. Chait bought.