Billi Dyer (Excerpt) If you were to draw a diagonal line down the state of Illinois from Chicago to St. Louis, the halfway po

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问题    Billi Dyer (Excerpt)
   If you were to draw a diagonal line down the state of Illinois from Chicago to St. Louis, the halfway point would be somewhere in Logan County. The county seat is Lincoln which prides itself on being the only place named for the Great Emancipator before he became President. Until the elm blight reduced it in a few months to nakedness, it was a pretty late-Victorian and turn-of-the-century town of twelve thousand inhabitants. It had coal mines but no factories of any size. " Downtown" was, and still is, the courthouse square and stores that after a block or two in every direction give way to grass and houses. Which in turn give way to dark-green or yellowing fields that stretch all the way to the edge of the sky.
   When Illinois was admitted into the Union there was not a single white man living within the confines of what is now the county line. That flat farmland was prairie grass, the hunting ground of the Kickapoo Indians. By 1833, under coercion the chiefs of all the Illinois Indians had signed treaties ceding their territories to the United States. The treaties stipulated that they were to move their people west of the Mississippi River. In my boyhood — that is to say, shortly before the First World War — arrowheads were turned up occasionally during spring plowing.
   The town of Lincoln was laid out 1853, and for more than a decade only white people lived there. The first Negroes were brought from the South by soldiers returning from the Civil War. They were carried into town rolled in a blanket so they would not be seen. They stayed indoors during the daytime and waited until dark for a breath of fresh air.
   Muddy water doesn’t always clean overnight. In the running conversation that went on above my head, from time to time a voice no longer identifiable would say, " So long as they know their place". A colored man who tried to attend the service at one of the Protestant churches was politely turned away at the door.
   The man cleaned out stables and chicken houses, kept furnaces going in the wintertime, mowed lawns and raked leaves and did odd jobs. The women took in washing or cooked for some white family and from time to time carried home a bundle of clothes that had become shabby from wear or that the children of the family had outgrown. I have been told by someone of the older generation that on summer evenings they would sit on their porches and sing, and that the white people would drive their carriages down the street where these houses were in order to hear them.
   I am aware that "blacks" is now the only acceptable form, but when I was a little boy the polite form was "coloured people" ; it was how they spoke of themselves. In speaking of things that happened long ago, to be insensitive to the language of the period is to be, in effect, an unreliable witness.
   In 1953, Lincoln celebrated the hundredth anniversary of its founding with a pageant and a parade that outdid all other parades within the living memory. The Evening Courier brought out a special edition largely devoted to old photographs and sketches of local figures, past and present, and the recollections of the elderly people. A committee came up with a list of the ten most distinguished men that the town had produced. One was a Negro, William Holmes Dyer. He was then sixty-seven years old and living in Kansas City, and the head surgeon for all the Negro employees of the Santa Fe line. He was invited to attend the celebration, and did. There was a grand historical pageant with a cast of four hundred and the Ten Most Distinguished Men figured in it. Nine of them were stand-ins with false chin whiskers, stovepipe hats, frock coats, and trousers that fastened under the instep. Dr. Dyer stood among them dressed in a dark-blue business suit and four nights running accepted the honour that was due him.

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答案 比里-戴尔(节选) 如果你划一条从芝加哥到圣路易斯、斜穿伊利诺伊州的对角线,则中点大约在洛根县附近。洛根县址所在林肯镇,这使该镇引以自豪:在这位解放黑奴的伟人成为总统之前,这是惟一一个以他的名字命名的地方。这里曾发生过榆枯病,几个月之间全镇变得赤裸一片;此前它是一个非常漂亮的具有维多利亚晚期风格的、世纪之交的小镇,约有一万两千居民。小镇有几座煤矿,但是大小工厂一个也没有。县政府办公大楼前的广场和几家商店一直是“繁华地带”,再走过一两个街区,四面尽是草地和民房。再往外看,便是墨绿色或金黄色的田野,一直伸展到天际。 伊利诺伊州加入美国时,在今天的洛根县境内没有一个白人居住。那一片平展的农田曾经是基克普印第安人的大草原和猎场。1833年伊利诺伊州的印第安酋长们迫于威吓,签下了一系列协议,将领土割让给美国。协议规定,酋长们必须带着他们的人民迁至密西西比河以西。还在我的孩童时代——即第一次世界大战前夕——春天耕地的时候,不时会有印第安人的箭头翻露出来。 林肯镇1853年建镇,之后大约十几年中一直只有白人在那里居住。首批黑人是内战时从南方归来的士兵带回的。为了不被发现,黑人是被用毯子裹着带到镇里的。白天他们呆在家里,天黑了才能出去透口新鲜空气。 混乱的情况不会一夜之间得到澄清。在那些没完没了的、使我懵懵懂懂的谈话中,有一个我难以辨认的声音常常会说:“只要他们规规矩矩的。”一个黑人要去参加基督教堂的礼拜仪式,会在门口被人客客气气地拦回去。 男人们清扫马厩和鸡舍,冬日里要烧旺壁炉,修剪草坪,耙走枯叶,还干一些其它的零活儿;女人们要为白人家庭洗涮、做饭,时常也会把一大包穿旧的、或是那家的孩子穿不得的衣服带回家。一些上了年岁的人告诉我,夏天的夜晚黑人们常常坐在廊道里唱歌,白人们会驾着马车到他们居住的街上去听他们唱歌。 我意识到现在“黑人”是惟一可以接受的词语,但在我还小的时候,礼貌的词语是“有色人”:当时的黑人也是这么称呼自己。当你谈及很久以前的事情时,如果对那一时期的语言不敏感,实际上你对那一时期所作的见证是不可靠的。 1953年林肯镇举行了建镇百年纪念。那年举行的盛大庆典和游行是人们记忆中最为辉煌的一次。《信使晚报》为此出过专刊,主要登载了旧照片、小镇里已故的和健在的名人简介,以及年长者的回忆。一个委员会推出小镇的“十大杰出人物”名单,其中一位是黑人,名叫威廉-霍姆斯-戴尔。他时年67岁,住在堪萨斯城,是负责治疗圣菲铁路线上黑人员工的主任外科医生。人们邀请他参加庆典仪式,他欣然前往。这场气势雄伟、名垂小镇的盛典有演员400余人,“十大杰出人物”也身在其中。其余九人都是替身,他们粘上假胡须,戴着高筒礼帽,穿着双排纽扣的礼服,裤子系到脚背下。戴尔医生身着深黑色商务服装,跻身其中,一连四个晚上接受属于他的礼遇。

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