Afterward I shook hands all round.
Matty Smith, the negro girl, as black as soot, and thoroughly African,
stood by me as introducer. If I had shut my eyes, her manner of speech
might not have been told from that of any cultured white woman's. She
was as refined and sensitive a human being as I have ever met.
As I walked back to my attic over the plumber shop, it was with head
erect and heaving chest. I deemed myself a champion of the negro race. I
was almost putting myself alongside of Lincoln and John Brown.
Their reason for inviting me was that I had had a scathing poem printed,
in the New York _Independent_, on the lynching of a negro in Lincoln's
home State of Illinois.
* * * * *
Within two days of my talk at the First Methodist African Church, I met
simultaneously in front of the library, two women, each going in
opposite directions....
"Good afternoon, Mr. Gregory!"
It was Matty Smith. She was hesitating for a cue from me. She wished to
stop and thank me again for my speaking.
But from the other side Vanna Andrews was passing.