25 VANISHED Charm Rules That Made Women Chase Black Men in the 1960s

In 1962, the house saxophone man at the Crawford Grill on Wylie Avenue in the Hill District of Pittsburgh never once crossed that room to speak to a woman. He did not have to. He played his set, packed his horn, and took his coffee [music] at the end of the bar, and by the second cup, there were women who had crossed the floor to stand near him.

He was not [music] the handsomest man in there, or the loudest, and he was never the richest. What he had was a set of rules learned from the old horn player who taught him. Rules about how a man conducts himself in front of a woman he respects. Young men in that band watched him all night and could not figure out how he did it.

And the one rule underneath every bit of it, the plainest thing, the one he’d have named above all the rest, is number one on this [music] list. He was not rare. In every black neighborhood in the country, there were men exactly like him. On the [snorts] bandstand, on the church steps, on the porch on a Sunday. Men women turned to look at for reasons that had nothing to do with a face.

>> [music] >> It was never just charm, it was a craft. And in the world these men were sent into, >> [music] >> it was also armor. A black man’s conduct [music] was weighed everywhere he went, so he learned to carry himself so correctly that no room could find a thing to hold against him. They turned courtship into a discipline so complete, they never thought of themselves as smooth.

They just thought they were treating people right. We inherited all of it. Most of us were never taught a word of it, and we have been quietly poorer for it. Number 17 took less than 2 seconds. A look held one beat, then let go warm. >> [music] >> And women remembered the man who did it for years. Number eight contradicts everything a young man is told about getting noticed, and yet it emptied the room of competition without a word spoken.

And number three, the thing that horn player had that no amount of talk could buy, the reason a stranger in a new city could be welcomed at a woman’s family table by Sunday, is the rule his whole life was built on. It is where this list ends. Number one. These were never about tricks or lines or getting over on anybody.

They were about being a man worth crossing a room [music] for in a world that told women a black man was not worth much at all. The world changed shape, and we let this knowledge go quiet. Not because it stopped [music] working, but because we mistook it for old-fashioned. We are turning it back up. Every rule on this list that horn player lived by heart.

Hit that subscribe button, and let us count down the 25 vanished charm rules that made women chase black men in the 1960s. Number 25. Greet the whole table >> [music] >> first. You did not walk up to a woman sitting with her people and [music] speak to her alone. You greeted the table, her friends, her cousin, the aunt [music] at the end, and only then did you turn to her.

Ellis Vance [music] did it at every table in the Rondo neighborhood of St. Paul, hat in hand, a word for each. You did not approach a woman, you approached her people and let them approve of you first. Number 24, >> [music] >> hat off at her door. Standing on a woman’s porch, the hat came off before the knock, not after the door opened.

Lifted with one hand and held at the side, chin level, eyes up. Benny Rowland stood on porches all through Paradise Valley in Detroit that way and the mothers behind those curtains missed nothing. >> [music] >> The hat off before the knock said he had thought about that door before he reached it [music] and her mother’s word carried the whole house.

Number 23, the ask, never the grab. You did not take a woman’s hand and pull her to the floor, you stood, offered an open palm, took one step back to leave her the room to refuse, and [music] waited. The horn player watched a hundred men a night get this wrong at the grill >> [music] >> and watched the one who got it right dance every song he wanted.

>> [music] >> The step back was the whole thing. Her yes was worth having only because her no was possible. Any man could reach for a woman. A gentleman asked and waited. Number 22, her name said right. When she told you her name, you got it right and you [music] used it. Once when she gave it, once in the middle of the talk, once when you said good night.

Curtis Amory ran a corner store in Brownsville and could tell you the name of every woman who ever came through his door. That was the horn player’s rule, too. Her name was not a detail, it was the test. Number 21, never interrupt her. A man let a woman finish all the way to the end of her sentence and a half second [music] past it in case there was more.

Silas Hooks would let his wife talk out a whole day at the table in the Fillmore in San Francisco without once cutting in. Number 20, the long way home. When you walked her home, you took the long way >> [music] >> and you did not fill the walk with talk. Marion Teel walked women home through the Hayti district of Durham at the speed of the conversation, never his own.

The long way home said the time with her was the point. Number 19, compliment what she chose, not what she was born with. Any man could tell a woman she was beautiful. She had heard it since she was 14 and it told her nothing about him. The rule was to praise the things she [music] had decided, the hat she picked, the song she requested.

Odell Nash on Sweet Auburn in Atlanta told a woman her taste in music [music] was better than his and she remembered that sentence for 50 years. The look was luck. Her choices were her and the man who saw the difference stood out from every man in the room. Number 18, the coat off his back. When the cold came, the coat came off and there [music] was no discussion about it, not draped on a chair for show, settled around her shoulders while he stood in his shirt sleeves at the streetcar stop. Lucius Bramble did it

every winter in Bronzeville and never once mentioned being cold. He He not offer it. He just put it on her. Number 17, the eye. Held a beat, then let go warm. You met her eyes, held them one beat past comfortable, and then let go warm. A small smile and your [music] gaze moved on. Not a stare, not a flinch. The horn player did it once from the bandstand, over the top of his horn and half the room felt [music] it while only one woman knew it was for her.

The beat said, “I see you.” The letting go said, “I will not crowd you with [music] it.” 2 seconds and it outlasted every line spoken in that building that night. Here is the part nobody talks about. That horn player had to cross a floor. He had to stand in front of a woman with his whole self visible, his shoes, his hands, his nerve, and be judged in the open by a woman who could say no in front of everybody.

Today, a man swipes a thumb across glass in a room by himself and calls it courting. We took the hardest, most human thing a young man could do [music] and made it cost nothing. What those rooms did was force a man to become someone before he was ever chosen. There was no version of this he could do [music] from a chair alone.

He had to walk over. He had to be worth the walk. >> Before we go on, I made something special for you. A guide for men who still believe a good name and quiet dignity carry weight the way our fathers and grandfathers did. It’s the black gentleman’s code, the forgotten rules black men once lived by. But this knowledge is disappearing and once it’s gone, it’s gone for good.

So don’t spend another year being the man people overlook. Scan the QR code on your screen or click the link below. Go ahead. I’ll be right here waiting. >> Number 16, face the family. You met her people early on purpose before you were asked. You sat on the porch, took the glass of tea, answered the father’s questions, [music] and let the aunts look at you.

Wardell Pike sat on a Greenwood [music] porch three Sundays running before he ever took a woman to a picture show. She knew which by how fast he came [music] up those steps. Number 15, the curb side. Walking with a woman, you [music] took the street side every time without a word, switching places at every corner so you stayed between her and the traffic.

Roland Metz did it down [music] Central Avenue in Los Angeles so automatically that women only noticed when they walked with some other man who did not. He never announced it. >> [music] >> He was just there, every corner, the whole walk. Number 14, learn the steps. A man learned to dance, actually learned, in a kitchen from an older woman or a cousin who would not let him quit.

Not to show off so that when the band hit, he could offer his hand and know exactly what to do with the four minutes that followed. The horn player watched from the bandstand as the men who could not dance stayed at the wall all night in their good suits. The band gave you four minutes with her and the man who had done the work knew what to do with them.

Number 13, the note, written by hand. A man wrote a few plain lines on real paper in his best hand, sent for no occasion at all, nothing flowery. That he had thought [music] of her Tuesday and hoped her mother’s cough had broken. Julius Rance wrote from the road on Beale Street stationery, three sentences at a time, and those notes stayed in a drawer 40 years.

A man’s handwriting made his case long after he had gone home. Number 12, never speak her name in the shop. Whatever happened between a man and a woman, the barber shop never heard it. Not a hint, not a grin, not a name. Amos Kittridge [music] sat through every kind of talk on Farish Street in Jackson and never contributed a word about the woman he was seeing.

The horn player was the same, [music] 30 years in a nightclub and no one ever heard him name a woman. Women knew which men could not hold a name because it always got back. Discretion was not shyness, it was proof. Number 11, wait till the light came on. You walked her to the door and you did not leave.

You stood at the bottom of the steps until [music] she was in, the door shut, and the front room light came on behind the curtain. Then you went. Cleveland Dobbs did it on every porch [music] in the Ville in St. Louis, hat in hand, waiting on that light. She saw him through the glass, still standing there. That was the part she told her sister about.

Number 10, bring something small. A man did not arrive at a door empty-handed, not something [music] expensive, something thought about. A paper of peppermints for the grandmother. The newspaper [music] off the porch, handed over folded. A single flower cut from somebody’s yard. Junius Ray came to a hill district porch every Sunday with something in his hand worth less than a quarter and was welcome in that house for 30 years.

The gift was not the point. [music] Having thought of them before he left his own house was. Number nine, ask what she thinks and wait. A man asked a woman her opinion on a real thing and then he was quiet long enough to hear all of it. Not the polite question, the real one about the news, about the preacher, about him.

The horn player asked women what [music] they thought of the band’s second set, then stood there and listened to the whole answer. The question was free. The waiting was the gift. Here is the part of his story we have been circling. That horn player did not start on the bandstand. He started carrying another man’s cases into the Crawford Grill through the back door.

A boy watching the old horn player run his nights. Watching him take his coffee at the end of the bar. Watching him never once chase. Watching women cross that floor to him year after year. He watched for a long time before anyone [music] let him play a set. And the night the old man handed him the last number >> [music] >> and stepped off into the dark at the side of the stage, the boy understood he was not being given a chair in a band.

He was being handed a room, [music] a code, and a line of men who had carried themselves this way going back further than either could name. He [music] would play that room 30 years the way it had been played for him. And the one rule the old man taught him first with a case in each hand is still coming. It is number one.

Number eight. Let the loud man have the room. Everything tells a young man to be noticed, be the funniest, the loudest, get the table laughing. These men knew the opposite emptied the field. You let the loud man work. You stayed easy, said Little, and let a room full of noise make the quiet man interesting. The horn player never competed with anybody at that bar, and by the end of the night the loud man was still talking while he was still being talked to.

The loud man had the room’s [music] attention. The quiet man had hers. Number seven. Take no the first time. When a woman said no, the answer was yes, ma’am, said Warm, and that was the end of it. >> [music] >> No second ask, no sulk, no working an angle. Parnell Hodge was told no at a rondo dance, told her honestly that it was her right, [music] and went and had a fine evening.

The man who could hear no with grace was the only man a woman could be safe around, and every woman there knew it. >> [music] >> Number six. Be good to her people. She watched how he treated her little brother, her grandmother, the cousin nobody had patience for. Not performing, actually good when he thought she was in the kitchen.

Wesley Frame taught a woman’s baby brother to throw a curveball on an Overtown street in Miami, and never mentioned it to her. She heard it from the boy. A woman was not only choosing a man, she was choosing who her people would live beside. He was auditioning for the whole house, and he knew it. Number five, the slow courtship.

[music] A man let it take the time it took. Weeks of porches and walks and church suppers [music] before he ever asked for anything. Elbert Choice courted 11 months in Brownsville and never rushed a single Sunday. He was not passing time, he was building something, and he let her watch him build it. Number four, the promise kept.

If he said Thursday at 7:00, he was on the step at 7:00 Thursday in every kind of weather without an excuse in his mouth. Harmon Deal walked 4 miles in an ice storm in Jackson Ward in Richmond rather than let a woman stand at a window wondering. Anyone could say anything on a porch. The man who showed up when he said had already told her who he was.

Number three, vouched by the mothers. The deepest rule of it all, a man could not talk his way into a woman’s world, but the church mothers and the older women could open it for him. They watched a man for years, how he treated his own mother, whether his word held, how he acted when no one was looking, and when [music] they spoke for him, doors opened everywhere they had influence.

Their word bound him, too. If he shamed it, he shamed them. The horn player had been vouched for by those women 30 years running, >> [music] >> which is why a stranger’s family took him in on a Sunday. To be spoken for by the mothers >> [music] >> was worth more than any face or any dollar. They did not speak for just anyone.

Number two, the listening. A man listened with his whole self, turned square to her, eyes steady, the rest [music] of the room gone. He remembered what she said in September and asked about it in November. The horn player would sit at the end of that bar and give a woman a stillness so [music] complete she felt she was the only person in the building and she left having told him things she had told nobody.

He did not perform attention, he gave it whole. And attention [music] has always been the rarest thing one person can hand another. Number one, be the same man everywhere. The plainest rule on the list and the one the horn player would have named above every other. That the man on the bandstand and the man at his mother’s table and the man on the corner and the man on her porch are all one man with nothing to hide and nothing to switch off.

No performance for her, no different face for the boys. It was the first thing the old man taught him with a horn case in each hand and the last thing he taught the boy who took his chair 30 years later. Every other rule on this list was really just a way of doing that one. A man being so completely himself that a woman could check on him from any direction and find the same thing standing there.

Because here is what those women were doing when they crossed that floor. They were not chasing charm. [music] They were walking toward the one man in the room who was not pretending. That was the whole code and it required nothing but the nerve to be one person. Be the same man everywhere. Everything else was just details.

None of this required a smooth line, a fine [music] car, or a face like a singer. It required a decision, a man deciding who he was going to be and then being that [music] whether anyone was watching or not. The men who came up on those bandstands [music] and porches and church steps understood something this country has spent a long time trying to sell us out of.

That a woman worth having is not one she is convinced by evidence gathered [music] slowly in daylight. These were men who chose against everything to be worth choosing and [music] taught their sons to do the same. The rooms that taught them have mostly gone quiet. But the thing those rooms did is not complicated and it is not lost.

Somewhere a man is still sitting at the end of a bar not chasing anybody, being exactly who he says he is, and somebody is crossing the room.