"In the barber shops and beauty shops, even in the churches," Haynes marveled with an air of dejection, "everybody was talking about this thing. 'Did you hear what Cosby said?' Now the question is: Where do we go from here?"
Joe Madison, a local radio talk show host on WOL-AM, says the calls he's getting from listeners have been mixed: Some have questioned the accuser's motivation. Some believe Cosby's credibility has been damaged. Some say it's a private matter; let it play out however it plays out.
"He dodged a legal bullet," says Madison, who then adds,"I guess it boils down to what people think."
What is it that makes us believe or disbelieve our icons? To keep our faith in them or abandon it?
"The main concern I would have is how will kids perceive it," says Madison. "You can't go around lecturing people about their behavior and not be honest about your own."
In 1997, Cosby admitted to having an adulterous affair with the mother of then-22-year-old Autumn Jackson, who claimed to be his out-of-wedlock daughter and who was sentenced to 26 months for trying to extort $40 million from the entertainer. During her trial, Cosby acknowledged paying $100,000 over the years to support the mother and her daughter, even though he doubted he was Jackson's father. He agreed to submit to a paternity test; Jackson refused.
Madison believes Cosby should simply face fallout from the latest controversy and get back on the road with his town-hall meetings.
"I would seek redemption," Madison says. "And often the best way to receive redemption is to shine a light on those demons, shine a light on the mistakes you've made. . . . If this man can sell Jell-O, he can sell his own redemption."
That anyone would be talking about redemption for Bill Cosby is in itself remarkable. His popularity is anchored to the wholesome image he has cultivated during four decades on the national stage -- through his clean comedy routines, his children's books, his pudding commercials and especially "The Cosby Show" of the 1980s, on which he played the firm but affable Cliff Huxtable and became "America's Favorite Dad."
After initially canceling several concert performances, Cosby has returned to his paid gigs -- last week he played the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo and had two nights of California casino appearances. But he has yet to resume his campaign for personal responsibility. And it's not clear at this point when or if he will.
"There was almost palpable citywide disappointment" when Cosby canceled his Cleveland appearance, says Fulwood, who heard from "a lot of people -- blacks and whites -- who thought it was a setup to silence Cosby."
Some whites, who were happy to see an African American celebrity blame blacks for their own social dysfunction, figured there must be a conspiracy to stop this kind of truth-telling. And some blacks figured it was part of the same old historical pattern, another black icon brought down.
Meanwhile, Cleveland, the nation's poorest large city, decided to go on without Cosby. Tomorrow night, a scaled-down "youth summit meeting" will be held at a high school, where organizers say some 1,200 to 1,500 people are expected.
An Inner Debate
Cosby's town-hall meetings are rooted historically in the black custom of gathering and debating the course of the race. Such meetings, often not reported on by the media, led to lunch-counter sit-ins in the 1960s and the first major black presidential campaign in 1984.
Some scholars trace the beginning of this tradition to the National Negro Convention, held in Philadelphia in 1830. Led by AME Church founder Bishop Richard Allen, that session pondered the question whether conditions in the United States were so hopeless that they should emigrate to Canada. That meeting sparked a trend that continued for decades: Blacks held conventions often and everywhere, and from those forums emerged permanent organizations to champion black rights.
While Cosby has been criticized by some black people for "airing dirty laundry," Duke University history professor Raymond Gavins says, "He stands in a long tradition of speaking out from within."
Kelly Miller, a prominent black intellectual of the early 20th century, openly criticized the Harlem Renaissance, believing that jazz and vaudeville perpetuated the notion of blacks as frivolous. Richard Wright accused Zora Neale Hurston of portraying blacks as minstrel characters in her fiction. In the mid-1960s, Stokely Carmichael publicly took on the civil rights establishment, denouncing integration and calling for "Black Power." And on and on.
One of the most important and long-running debates about black direction featured Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois. But their relationship was more complex than is commonly portrayed. Amid their feuds, each had respect for the other's abilities.
Washington, who founded Alabama's Tuskegee Institute in 1881 -- less than 20 years after slavery's end -- put a high premium not just on education but on personal behavior. Moral values, discipline, work ethic and especially hygiene -- "the gospel of the toothbrush," he called it -- were central to his philosophy for black self-improvement.
Washington also believed that at a time when blacks were facing alarming racial violence and a general backlash to Reconstruction, there needed to be an accommodation made with whites. In his famous "Atlanta Compromise" address of 1895, he signaled to whites that blacks were prepared to forgo "social equality" in exchange for gradual economic progress.
