So Much For Ebony And Ivory - Beacon Hill And The Projects, A Rich White Boy Snookered By A Goddess Of The 'Hood

Harrington Potter grew up on Beacon Hill in Boston, home of English patriots, colonial heroes, wealthy slave traders, and blueblood aristocrats since William Blackstone built a house and orchard on the area's south slope. in 1625. In the 19th century the south slope became the seat of Boston wealth and power.

The residents of opulent homes there, called the Boston Brahmins, had residences designed by Charles Bullfinch, and appointed with ancestral portraits, Townsend and Chippendale furniture, and Chinese porcelains. The Brahmins were known for their humanitarianism, Enlightenment values, Yankee shrewdness, and New England exclusiveness. 

Literary salons and publishing houses were founded in the 19th century and influential thinkers lived in the neighborhood, including Daniel Webster, Henry David Thoreau, and Wendell Philips. 

Harrington was the latest in a long line of Potters, all of whom were of historical interest. Isaiah Potter was one of the first founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and his son Alfred was a member of John Davenports Puritan mission down the Connecticut River to found New Haven.  Frederick Potter was a shipbuilding magnate who built the ships that plied the lucrative Three Cornered Trade - molasses, slaves, and rum. 

Subsequent Potters made their fortune in Wall Street.  Zebadiah Potter was a partner of J.P. Morgan and the Drexel, Morgan & Company investment bank, and his offspring helped build Bear Stearns, and Morgan Stanley. 

Wealth, privilege, the social register, homes in Palm Beach, Nantucket, and Biarritz - all were Harrison Potter's and how he fell so far off the scale of rectitude and propriety was a tale repeated throughout the salons of Boston and New York for years. 

Harrington's affair had all to do with Harvard which in a moment of ragged progressivism, recruited a number of students from American inner cities. Most were desultory students at best, matriculated because their street experience and slave inheritance would provide the diversity that the university needed.  More importantly it would force the likes of Harrington Potter to rub shoulders with 'the real world', and to come tooth by jowl with African Americans whose forbears were chained in the holds of his ancestors' slave ships.

Delilah Evans was one of these specially-recruited students.  She came from Anacostia, the most pestilential of Washington, DC's slums - a young woman who had caught the eye of the Councilman from Ward 8 and engaged as his aide in City Hall.  The Councilman was drawn to her stunning Ethiopian/Fulani beauty, her charm, and her intelligence, and hoped that as well as influential political aide, she might one day become his lover. 

Delilah knew which side of her toast was buttered, knew that the Councilman was her meal ticket and a fast track up and out of the projects, so a few 'favors' were nothing compared to the long term benefits of their friendship. 

So, it was to Harvard she went on a full scholarship, and as she kissed goodbye to MLK Avenue, the Frederick Douglass projects, and to her godfather Pharoah Jones, wondered if she would ever return. 

Now, Delilah surprised Harvard administrators who never thought they were going to get a black person with brains, at least one who could compete at Harvard.  She turned out to be a talented student, quick at differential calculus and organic chemistry, and chameleon-like talked white, acted white, and if you were in a dark room, would be convinced she was white. 

All a charade, for Delilah never forgot her roots, never forgot Anacostia, and missed her street days with Uncle Pharoah, hanging out on the stoop of D Block, smoking weed and drinking a six pack of Colt 45 magnums - a sister, queen of the projects, the Nefertiti of Anacostia. 

And so it was that one day she met Harrington Potter in a carrel of the Widener library.  She knew who he was, of course, for she passed the statue of the first Harrington Potter, one of the founding fathers of Harvard, scion of New England intellectual aristocracy, and important figure in university history.  

Most white Harvard students in those ultra-progressive, affirmative action years would have changed seats if a black person approached, but it must be remembered that Delilah was a Nubian princess - dark black but with fine Caucasian features, Egyptian poise, and a Naomi Campbell runway elegance; and even the most racist student could not have turned away. 

 

She turned up the whiteness, cited Kant and Roentgen, but all the while stoking up her ghetto fires, and honing in on this most desirable of prey. Harrington invited her for a drink, and she accepted, and soon the couple was an item in Harvard Yard. 

Harrington was enthralled - taken with her modesty, her native sophistication, and her gumption. Escaping the slums was no mean feat, and he was increasingly proud of her ambition and desire.

'What do you know about this girl?', said old Great Uncle Jepson, dyed in the wool New England patriot, keeper of the Potter legacy and fortune, traditionalist and staunch Episcopalian in a thinly veiled reference to her color and presumably suspect background. 

Harrington went on to talk about Delilah's wizardry at math, mastery of the worst and hardest of organic chemistry, her charm, her elegance....

'Stop right there, old boy', interrupted Jepson. 'Where's she from?'

Harrington, caught off guard, stumbled before saying that she was from good stock given her sophistication and versatility. 

'Have you met her family? Of course you haven't' to which Harrington, trussed and tied to this beautiful black goddess, completely hers and hers alone, shouted 'racist', got up and left his uncle standing behind his Revere desk, under the portrait of John Adams. 

 

'When can I meet your folks?', Harrington asked Delilah one night, an expected and predictable request, but she demurred. She had not yet secured her fortune. Not that securities, cash, or property were an option; but appointments, references and job placement were.  The Potters were her way into Harvard Business School, a Bear Stearns internship, and a fast track to partner. 

Uncle Pharoah had always wanted an in to one of the big New York investment banks - they were the key to legitimate support of one of his 'companies'; and with Delilah's canniness, appeal, and fidelity, investment would be assured. 

'Patience, my love', she told Harrington. 'Patience' and with that let time roll on. 

Thanks to Harrington's determination, threats (rocking the Potter boat was not an option) insider family influence ,and a persistence not seen since Cousin Abigail forced an unheard of compensation from the family trust, Great Uncle Jepson capitulated, did the needful, and Delilah proceeded to Harvard Business School and Bear Stearns. 

 

The great thing about the 'hood - just like the Mafia in the old days of the Gambino family - was its uncanny ability to find and exploit a weak link, and Delilah with her street savvy, intelligence, and charm, was able to find one at Bear Stearns.  She would make the john a rich man if he worked his magic with creative swaps which had largely disappeared after Enron, but were still available, profitable and if arranged carefully, untraceable.  A few hundred thousand in the john's offshore bank account were nothing to Pharoah Jones compared to the millions to be realized from the swap. 

It worked like a dream. Pharoah made millions, Delilah was favored, and her reputation in Anacostia grew manyfold. It was time to return, and why not with Harrington?

The best part of a scam, the royal hoodwink, was to let the conned know he had been had; and when Harrington rolled up to the Frederick Douglass projects, and was greeted by Uncle Pharoah and his home boys, all bling, ho's and pimps in Sunday finery, tricked out Escalades on the curb, the smell of weed drifting across the porches, he knew he had been had, conned, snookered and left hanging out to dry. 

 

'Harrington, meet my godfather, Pharoah Jones', said Delilah as she gave the Big Man a kiss. 'Everything I have, I owe to him'.  The projects were a particularly noisy backdrop to the silent moment played out on the stoop.  Howls, shots and screams - as though orchestrated, and they well might have been - were heard from the open windows and terraces of D Block. It was a scene from hell, a marvelously staged Grand Guignol to show the white boy just where his black goddess came from 

He made his bows and a quick exit, headed across the Anacostia to Capitol Hill, across the Potomac, to the airport and tail between his legs, back to Boston and Beacon Hill.