(From _The Atlantic Monthly_)
I
Confronted suddenly by daylight, King Solomon Gillis stood dazed and
blinking. The railroad station, the long, white-walled corridor, the
impassible slot-machine, the terrifying subway train--he felt as if he
had been caught up in the jaws of a steam-shovel, jammed together with
other helpless lumps of dirt, swept blindly along for a time, and at
last abruptly dumped.
There had been strange and terrible sounds: ‘New York! Penn
Terminal--all change!’ ‘Pohter, hyer, pohter, suh?’ Shuffle of a
thousand soles, clatter of a thousand heels, innumerable echoes.
Cracking rifle-shots--no, snapping turnstiles. ‘Put a nickel in!’
‘Harlem? Sure. This side--next train.’ Distant thunder, nearing.
The screeching onslaught of the fiery hosts of hell, headlong,
breath-taking. Car doors rattling, sliding, banging open. ‘Say,
wha’ d’ye think this is, a baggage car?’ Heat, oppression,
suffocation--eternity--‘Hundred ’n turdy-fif’ next!’ More turnstiles.
Jonah emerging from the whale.
Clean air, blue sky, bright sunlight.
Gillis set down his tan-cardboard extension case and wiped his black,
shining brow. Then slowly, spreadingly, he grinned at what he saw:
Negroes at every turn; up and down Lenox Avenue, up and down One
Hundred and Thirty-Fifth Street; big, lanky Negroes, short, squat
Negroes; black ones, brown ones, yellow ones; men standing idle on the
curb, women, bundle-laden, trudging reluctantly homeward, children
rattle-trapping about the sidewalks; here and there a white face
drifting along, but Negroes predominantly, overwhelmingly everywhere.
There was assuredly no doubt of his whereabouts. This was Negro Harlem.
Back in North Carolina Gillis had shot a white man and, with the aid
of prayer and an automobile, probably escaped a lynching. Carefully
avoiding the railroads, he had reached Washington in safety. For
his car a Southwest bootlegger had given him a hundred dollars and
directions to Harlem; and so he had come to Harlem.
Ever since a traveling preacher had first told him of the place, King
Solomon Gillis had longed to come to Harlem. The Uggams were always
talking about it; one of their boys had gone to France in the draft
and, returning, had never got any nearer home than Harlem. And there
were occasional ‘colored’ newspapers from New York: newspapers that
mentioned Negroes without comment, but always spoke of a white person
as ‘So-and-so, white.’ That was the point. In Harlem, black was white.
You had rights that could not be denied you; you had privileges,
protected by law. And you had money. Everybody in Harlem had money. It
was a land of plenty. Why, had not Mouse Uggam sent back as much as
fifty dollars at a time to his people in Waxhaw?
The shooting, therefore, simply catalyzed whatever sluggish mental
reaction had been already directing King Solomon’s fortunes toward
Harlem. The land of plenty was more than that now: it was also the city
of refuge.
Casting about for direction, the tall newcomer’s glance caught
inevitably on the most conspicuous thing in sight, a magnificent figure
in blue that stood in the middle of the crossing and blew a whistle and
waved great white-gloved hands. The Southern Negro’s eyes opened wide;
his mouth opened wider. If the inside of New York had mystified him,
the outside was amazing him. For there stood a handsome, brass-buttoned
giant directing the heaviest traffic Gillis had ever seen; halting
unnumbered tons of automobiles and trucks and wagons and pushcarts and
street-cars; holding them at bay with one hand while he swept similar
tons peremptorily on with the other; ruling the wide crossing with
supreme self-assurance; and he, too, was a Negro!
Yet most of the vehicles that leaped or crouched at his bidding
carried white passengers. One of these overdrove bounds a few feet and
Gillis heard the officer’s shrill whistle and gruff reproof, saw the
driver’s face turn red and his car draw back like a threatened pup. It
was beyond belief--impossible. Black might be white, but it couldn’t be
that white!
‘Done died an’ woke up in Heaven,’ thought King Solomon, watching,
fascinated; and after a while, as if the wonder of it were too great
to believe simply by seeing, ‘Cullud policemans!’ he said, half aloud;
then repeated over and over, with greater and greater conviction, ‘Even
got cullud policemans--even got cullud----’
‘Where y’ want to go, big boy?’
Gillis turned. A little, sharp-faced yellow man was addressing him.
‘Saw you was a stranger. Thought maybe I could help y’ out.’
King Solomon located and gratefully extended a slip of paper. ‘Wha’ dis
hyeh at, please, suh?’
The other studied it a moment, pushing back his hat and scratching his
head. The hat was a tall-crowned, unindented brown felt; the head was
brown patent-leather, its glistening brush-back flawless save for a
suspicious crimpiness near the clean-grazed edges.
‘See that second corner? Turn to the left when you get there. Number
forty-five’s about half-way the block.’
‘Thank y’, suh.’
‘You from--Massachusetts?’
‘No, suh, Nawth Ca’lina.’
‘Is ’at so? You look like a Northerner. Be with us long?’
‘Till I die,’ grinned the flattered King Solomon.
‘Stoppin’ there?’
‘Reckon I is. Man in Washin’ton ’lowed I’d find lodgin’ at dis
ad-dress.’
‘Good enough. If y’ don’t, maybe I can fix y’ up. Harlem’s pretty
crowded. This is me.’ He proffered a card.
‘Thank y’, suh,’ said Gillis, and put the card in his pocket.
The little yellow man watched him plod flat-footedly on down the
street, long awkward legs never quite straightened, shouldered
extension-case bending him sidewise, wonder upon wonder halting or
turning him about. Presently, as he proceeded, a pair of bright green
stockings caught and held his attention. Tony, the storekeeper, was
crossing the sidewalk with a bushel basket of apples. There was a
collision; the apples rolled; Tony exploded; King Solomon apologized.
The little yellow man laughed shortly, took out a notebook, and put
down the address he had seen on King Solomon’s slip of paper.
‘Guess you’re the shine I been waitin’ for,’ he surmised.
As Gillis, approaching his destination, stopped to rest, a haunting
notion grew into an insistent idea. ‘Dat li’l yaller nigger was a sho’
’nuff gen’man to show me de road. Seem lak I knowed him befo’--’ He
pondered. That receding brow, that sharp-ridged, spreading nose, that
tight upper lip over the two big front teeth, that chinless jaw-- He
fumbled hurriedly for the card he had not looked at and eagerly made
out the name.
‘Mouse Uggam, sho’ ’nuff! Well, dog-gone!’