Gwendlyn Bennett

’s "Wedding Day" Essay, Research Paper

Wedding Day

His name was Paul Watson and as he shambled down rue Pigalle he might have

been any other Negro of enormous height and size. But as I have said, his name was Paul

Watson. Passing him on the street, you might not have known or cared who he was, but any

one of the residents about the great Montmartre district of Paris could have told you who

he was as well as many interesting bits of his personal history.

He had come to Paris in the days before colored jazz bands were the style.

Back home he had been a prize fighter. In the days when Joe Gans was in his glory Paul was

following the ring, too. He didn’t have that fine way about him that Gans had and for that

reason luck seemed to go against him. When he was in the ring he was like a mad bull,

especially if his opponent was a white man. In those days there wasn’t any sympathy or

nicety about the ring and so pretty soon all the ringmasters got down on Paul and he found

it pretty hard to get a bout with anyone. Then it was that he worked his way across the

Atlantic Ocean on big liner–in the days before colored jazz bands were the style in

Paris.

Things flowed along smoothly for the first few years with Paul’s working here and there in

the unfrequented places of Paris. On the side he used to give boxing lessons to aspiring

youths or gymnastic young women. At that time he was working so steadily that he had

little chance to find out what was going on around Paris. Pretty soon, however, he grew to

be known among the trainers and managers began to fix up bouts for him. After one or two

successful bouts a little fame began to come into being for him. So it was that after one

of the prize-fights, a colored fellow came to his dressing room to congratulate him on his

success as well as invite him to go to Montmartre to meet "the boys."

Paul had a way about him and seemed to get on with the colored fellows who

lived in Montmartre and when the first Negro jazz band played in a tiny Parisian cafe Paul

was among them playing the banjo. Those first years were without event so far as Paul was

concerned. The members of that first band often say now that they wonder how it was that

nothing happened during those first seven years, for it was generally known how great was

Paul’s hatred for American white people. I suppose the tranquility in the light of what

happened afterwards was due to the fact that the care in which they worked was one

in which mostly French people drank and danced and then too, that was before there were so

many Americans visiting Paris. However, everyone had heard Paul speak of his intense

hatred of American white folks. It only took two Benedictines to make him start talking

about what he would do to the first "Yank" that called him "nigger."

But the seven years came to an end and Paul Watson went to work in a larger cafe with a

larger band, patronized almost solely by Americans.

I’ve heard almost every Negro in Montmartre tell about the night that a

drunken Kentuckian came into the cafe where Paul was playing and said:

"Look heah, Bruther, what you all doin’ ovah heah."

"None ya bizness. And looka here, I ain’t your brother, see ."

"Jac, do you heah that nigger talkin’ lak that tah me."

As he said this, he turned to speak to his companion. I have often wished that I had been

there to have seen the thing happen myself. Every tale I have heard about it was different

and yet there was something of truth in each of them. Perhaps the nearest one can come to

the truth is by saying that Paul beat up about four full-sized white men that night

besides doing a great deal of damage to the furniture about the cafe. I couldn’t tell you

just what did happen. Some of the fellows say that Paul seized the nearest table and mowed

down men right and left, others say he took a bottle, then again the story runs that a

chair was the instrument of his fury. At any rate, that started Paul Watson on his seige

against the American white person who brings his native prejudices into the life of Paris.

It is a verity that Paul was the "black terror." The last

syllable of the word, nigger, never passed the lips of a white man without the quick

reflex action of Paul’s arm and fist to the speaker’s jaw. He paid for more glassware and

cafe furnishings in the course of the next few years than is easily imaginable. And yet,

there was something likable about Paul. Perhaps that’s the reason that he stood in so well

with the policemen of the neighborhood. Always some divine power seemed to intervene in

his behalf and he was excused after the payment of a small fine with advice about his

future conduct. Finally, there came the night when in a frenzy he shot the two American

sailors.

They had not died from the wounds he had given them hence his sentence had

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