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FREEDOMWAYS                 SECOND QUARTER 1973

said Ted, "he's an artist." The Giggler carefully put down the cocktail glass he was polishing. "He's a WHAT?," he asked. "He's an artist, Man," answered Ted, "draws pictures an' then paints 'em in colors." The Giggler braced himself. "You mean he do that for a living'?," he whispered, the muscles around his mouth beginning to bump and grind. "That's right," said Ted. "He's a artist by profession." CBS should have been there then. The Giggler never got himself together until closing time at five, and by that time he had dropped a dozen glasses. No one will ever know how many male and female Afro-Americans never made it to work the next day due to sore belly muscles. 
But not everyone fell out over the idea. Harlemites are very kind people really. Most folks said nothing but simply raised their eyebrows with that expression which clearly says , "Man! Why don't somebody put this poor cat into a straitjacket before he bite somebody!" With Mister Charlie it was another story. The very idea of a [] (apologies here; that was our official designation then) having the audacity to even think of joining maestros Michelangelo Buonarroti. Rembrandt Van Rain and Walt Disney, made Charlie mad. Lenny, another Black art student, who regularly regaled us with what he called his PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG PICKANINNY, explained how he had been alerted to this danger by his father. 
"My daddy was a red-dirt sharecropper in fugginassssed Georgia," explained Lenny. One day Lenny's daddy caught him drawing with a stick of charcoal snatched from the hearth. "He grabbed a big, fat, green switch and tore my backsides loose," Lenny told us. "Whitefolks catch you doin' foolishness like this an' they got' string yolilllblagggasss up in the tallest tree in Georgia!" A little while later, looking out of the corner of his eye, Lenny saw a glistening tear roll down his daddy's face. The old sharecropper wept silently but when Lenny slipped over and put a skinny arm over his shoulder he jumped up from his stool grumbling, "Better swaller me a spoonful of turpentine an' sugar before this cold turn into the pneumonia!"
My awful comedian at Small's did shake me up but not enough to give me the stutters like poor Sam, the singing waiter who occupied the room next to mine at the Harlem Y. I did develop weird pains in the gut though. Whenever I thought about it I tried to put myself in the Giggler's place. After a while I began to understand. He hadn't be giggling over a little haffassssed nigger wanting to

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