EAST OF STATE STREET
I had in due time heard from Orlean saying she and Mrs. Ewis had arrived
safely home. She wrote: "When I came into the house mama grabbed me and
held me for a long time as though she was afraid I was not real. She had
been so worried while I was away and was so glad I had returned before
father came." They had received a telegram from her father saying that
he had again been appointed presiding elder of the Cairo district and
would be home within a few days.
I judged from what Mrs. Ewis had told me that the Reverend was not much
of a business man and a hard one to make understand a business
proposition or to reason with. He had only two children, and Orlean, as
Mrs. Ewis informed me, was his favorite. She had always been an obedient
girl, was graduated from the Chicago high school and spent two years at
a colored boarding school in Ohio that was kept up by the African M.E.
Church, had taught two years, but had not secured a school that year.
She had saved a hundred dollars out of the money she had earned teaching
school. The young man who married her sister worked for a trading-stamp
corporation and received thirteen dollars a week, while the Reverend was
supposed to receive about a thousand dollars a year as presiding elder.
There were some twelve or fifteen churches on his circuit, where
quarterly conference was held every three months, and each church was
expected to contribute a certain amount at that time. Each member was
supposed to give twenty-five cents, which they did not always do.
In a town like M--boro, for instance, where the church had one hundred
members, not over twenty-five are considered live members; that is, only
twenty-five could be depended upon to pay their quarterly dues
regularly, the others being spasmodic, contributing freely at times or
nothing at all for a long time.
Orlean often laughed as she told me some of the many ways her father had
of making the "dead ones" contribute, but with all the tricks and turns
the position was not a lucrative one, there being no certainty as to the
amount of the compensation. Mrs. Ewis told me the family had always been
poor and got along only by saving in every direction. I could see this
as Orlean seemed to have few clothes and had worn her sister's hat to
Dakota.
Her sister was said to be very mean and disagreeable, and if anyone in
the family had to do without anything it was never the sister. She was
quarrelsome and much disliked while Orlean was the opposite and would
cheerfully deprive herself of anything necessary. Her mother, Mrs. Ewis
went on to tell me, was a "devil, spiteful and mean and as helpless as a
baby." I believed a part of this but not all. I had listened to Mrs.
McCraline, and while I felt she was somewhat on the helpless order, I
did not believe she was mean, nor a "devil." Meanness and deviltry are
usually discernible in the eyes and I had seen none of it in the eyes
of either Mrs. McCraline or Orlean, but I did not like Ethel, and from
what little Miss Ankin told me about the Reverend I was inclined to
believe that he was likely to be the "devil," and Mrs. Ewis' information
regarding Mrs. McCraline was probably inspired by jealousy.
I remembered that back in M--pls the preachers' wives were timid
creatures, submissive to any order or condition their "elder" husbands
put upon them, submitting too much in order to keep peace, never raising
a row over the gossip that came to their ears from malicious "sisters"
and church workers. As long as I could remember the colored ministers
were accused of many ugly things concerning them and the "sisters,"
mostly women who worked in the church, but I had forgotten it until I
now began hearing the gossip concerning Rev. McCraline.
Orlean, her father and her brother-in-law had begun buying a home on
Vernon avenue for which they were to pay four thousand, five hundred
dollars. Of this amount three hundred dollars had been paid, one hundred
by each of them. It was a nice little place, with eight rooms and with a
stone front. Ethel had not paid anything, using her money in preparation
for her wedding, which had taken place in September. Claves and her
father had spent two hundred on it, which seemed very foolish, and were
pinched to the last cent when it was done.
Claves had borrowed five dollars from his brother when they went on the
wedding trip, to pay for a taxi to the depot. The wedding tour and
honeymoon lasted two weeks and was spent in Racine, Wisconsin, sixty
miles north of Chicago. They had just returned when I went to Chicago.
When I first called, Mrs. Claves did not come down but when we returned
to the house she condescended to come down and shake hands. She put on
enough airs to have been a king's daughter.
With the three hundred dollars already paid on the home, they figured
they should be able to pay for it in seven years in monthly installments
of thirty-five dollars, paying the interest upon the principal at the
same time, excepting two thousand which was in a first mortgage and drew
five per cent and payable semi-annually. The house was in a quiet
neighborhood much unlike the south end of Dearborn street and Armour
avenue where none but colored people live.
The better class of Chicago's colored population was making a strenuous
effort to get away from the rougher set, as well as to get out of the
black belt which is centered around Armour, Dearborn, State and
Thirty-first. Here the saloons, barbershops, restaurants and vaudeville
shows are run by colored people, also the clubs and dance houses. East
from State street to the lake, which is referred to by the colored
people of the city as "east of State," there is another and altogether
different class. Here for a long while colored people could hardly rent
or buy a place, then as the white population drifted farther south, to
Greenwood avenue, Hyde Park, Kenwood and other parts now fashionable
districts, some of the avenues including Wabash, Rhodes, Calumet, Vernon
and Indiana began renting to colored people and a few began buying.
Chicago is the Mecca for southern negroes. The better class continued to
desert Dearborn and Armour and paid exorbitant rent for flats east of
State street. Some lost what they had made on Armour avenue where rent
was sometimes less than one-half what was charged five blocks east, and
had to move back to Armour. As more colored people moved toward the lake
more white people moved farther south, rent began falling and real
estate dealers began offering former homes of rich families first for
rent then for sale, and many others began buying as Rev. McCraline had
done, making a small cash payment, and in this way otherwise unsalable
property was disposed of at from five to ten per cent more than it would
have brought at a cash sale.
The place they were buying could have been purchased for three thousand,
eight hundred dollars or four thousand dollars in cash. After moving
east of State street, these people formed into little sets which
represented the more elite, and later developed into a sort of local
aristocracy, which was not distinguished so much by wealth as by the
airs and conventionality of its members, who did not go to public dances
on State street and drink "can" beer. Here for a time they were secure
from the vulgar intrusion of the noisy "loud-mouths," as they called
them, of State street. The last time I was in Chicago State street, the
"dead line," had been crossed and a part of Wabash avenue is almost as
noisy and vulgar as Dearborn. Beer cans, rough clubs and dudes were
becoming as familiar sights as on Armour, and a large part of that part
of the east side is so filled up with colored people that it is only a
question of time until it will be a part of the black belt.
Orlean's brother-in-law had come to Chicago several years previous from
a stumpy farm in the backwoods of Tennessee. He was the son of a
jack-legged preacher and was very ignorant, but had been going with the
girl he married some six years and she had trained him out of much of it
and when he finally figured in the two hundred dollar wedding referred
to, he felt himself admitted into society and highly exalted. He thought
the Reverend a great man, Mrs. Ewis had told me, referring to him as a
Simian-headed negro who tried to walk and act like the Reverend. The
McCralines, especially Ethel, referred to themselves as the "best
people." I thought they were. They were not wicked, and I also guessed
that Ethel felt very "aristocratic," and I wondered whether I would like
the Reverend. He seemed to be regarded as a sort of monarch judging from
the way he was spoken of by the family, but I had a "hunch" that he and
I were not going to fall in love with each other. Still I hoped not to
be the one to start any unpleasantness and would at least wait until I
met him before forming an opinion. I received a letter from him when he
returned from the conference. He did not write a very brilliant letter
but was very reasonable, and tried to appear a little serious when he
referred to my having his daughter come to South Dakota and file on
land. He concluded by saying he thought it a good thing for colored
people to go west and take land.
I received another letter from Orlean about the same time telling me
how her father had scolded her about going to the theatre with me the
Sunday night I had taken her, and pretended, as he had to me, to be very
serious about the claim matter, but she wrote like this: "I know papa,
and I could see he was just pleased over it all that he just strutted
around like a rooster." She wanted to know when I was going to send the
ring, but as I had not thought about it I do not recall what answer I
made her, but do remember that my trip to get her and Mrs. Ewis and send
them home again, including my own expenses, amounted to one hundred
sixty dollars, besides the cost of the land, and having had to pay my
sister's and grandmother's way also and get them started on their
homesteads had taken all of the seven thousand, six hundred dollars I
had borrowed on my land; that I was snow-bound with my corn in the field
and my wheat still unthreshed. I began to write long letters trying to
reason this out with her. She was willing to listen to reason but seemed
so unhappy without the ring, and I imagined as I read her letters that I
could see tears. She said when a girl is engaged she feels lost without
a ring, "and, too," here she seemed to emphasize her words, "everybody
expects it." I was sure she was telling the truth, for with girls "east
of State street," and west as well, the most important thing in an
engagement is the ring, sometimes being more important than the man
himself.
When I lived in Chicago and since I had been living in Dakota and going
to Chicago once a year, I knew that Loftis Brothers had more mortgages
on the moral future and jobs of the young society men, for the diamonds
worn by their sweethearts or wives, than would appear comforting to the
credit man. It made no difference what kind of a job a man might have,
as all the way from a boot-black or a janitor to head waiters and
post-office clerks were included, and their women folks wore some size
of a diamond. I asked myself what I was to do. I could not hope to begin
changing customs, so I bought a forty dollar diamond set in a small
eighteen-karat ring which "just fit," as she wrote later in the sweetest
kind of a letter.
I had written I was sorry that I could not be there to put it on (such a
story!). I had never thought of diamond rings or going after my wife
after spending so much on preliminaries. What I had pictured was what I
had seen, while running to the Pacific coast, girls going west to marry
their pioneer sweethearts, who sent them the money or a ticket. They had
gone, lots of them, to marry their brawny beaux and lived happily "ever
after," but the beaux weren't negroes nor the girls colored. Still there
are lots of colored men who would be out west building an empire, and
plenty of nice colored girls who would journey thither and wed, if they
really understood the opportunities offered; but very few understand the
situation or realize the opportunities open to them in this western
country.
I had expected to get married Christmas but the snow had put a stop to
that plan. Besides, I was so far behind in my work and had no place to
bring my wife. I had abandoned my little "soddy" and was living in a
house on the old townsite, where I intended staying until spring. Then I
would build and move onto my wife's homestead in Tipp county. When
Christmas came grandma and sister came down from Ritten and stayed while
I went to Chicago. I could scarcely afford it but it had become a custom
for me to spend Christmas in Chicago and I wanted to know Orlean better
and I wanted to meet her father. I had written her that I wasn't coming
and when I arrived in the city and called at the house her mother was
surprised, but pleasantly. I thought she was such a kind little soul.
She promised not to tell Orlean I was in the city, (Orlean had secured a
position in a downtown store--ladies' furnishings--and received
five-fifty per week) but couldn't keep it and when I was gone she called
up Orlean and told her I was in the city. When I called in the evening,
instead of surprising Orlean, I was surprised myself. The Reverend
hadn't arrived from southern Illinois but was expected soon.
Orlean had worked long enough to buy herself a new waist and coat, and
Mrs. Ewis, who was a milliner, had given her a hat, and she was dressed
somewhat better than formerly. The family had wanted to give her a nice
wedding, like Ethel's, but found themselves unable to do so. The
semiannual interest on their two-thousand-dollar loan would be due in
January and a payment also, about one hundred and fifty dollars in all.
The high cost of living in Chicago did not leave much out of eighteen
dollars and fifty cents per week, and colored people in southern
Illinois are not very prompt in paying their church dues, especially in
mid-winter; in fact, many of them have a hard time keeping away from
the poorhouse or off the county, and when the Reverend came home he was
very short of money.
[Illustration: As the people were now all riding in autos. (Page 182.)]
I remember how he appeared the evening I called. He had arrived in town
that morning. He was a large man standing well over six feet and weighed
about two hundred pounds, small-boned and fleshy, which gave him a
round, plump appearance, and although he was then near sixty not a
wrinkle was visible in his face. He was very dark, with a medium
forehead and high-bridged nose, making it possible for him to wear
nose-glasses, the nose being very unlike the flat-nosed negro. The large
square upper-lip was partly hidden by a mustache sprinkled with gray,
and his nearly white hair, worn in a massive pompadour, contrasted
sharply with the dark skin and rounded features. His great height gave
him an unusually attractive appearance of which he, I later learned, was
well aware and made the most. In fact, his personal appearance was his
pride, but his eye was not the eye of an intelligent or deep thinking
man. They reminded me more of the eyes of a pig, full but
expressionless, and he could put on airs, such a drawing-up and
spreading-out, seeming to give the impression of being hard to approach.
When introduced to him I had another "hunch" we were not going to like
each other. I was always frank, forward and unafraid, and his
ceremonious manner did not affect me in the least. I went straight to
him, taking his hand in response to the introduction and saying a few
common-place things. They were very home-like for city people, inviting
me to supper and treating me with much respect. The head of the table
was occupied by the Reverend when he was at home and by Claves when the
Reverend was away. I could readily see where Ethel got her airs. It took
him about thirty minutes to get over his ceremonious manner, after which
we talked freely, or rather, I talked. He was a poor listener and,
although he never cut off my discourse in any way, he didn't listen as I
had been used to having people listen, apparently with encouragement in
their eyes, which makes talking a pleasure, so I soon ceased to talk.
This, however, seemed still more awkward and I grew to feel a trifle
displeased in his company.
On the following Sunday we went to morning service on Wabash avenue at a
big stone structure. It appeared to be a rule of the household that the
girls should go out together. This displeased me very much, as I had
grown to dislike Ethel and Claves did not interest me. Both talked of
society and "swell people" they wanted me to meet, putting it in such a
way as to have me feel I was meeting my betters, while the truth of the
matter was that I did not desire to meet any of their friends nor to
have them with us anywhere we went. When church services were over we
went to spend the time before Sunday School opened, with some friends of
theirs named Latimer, who lived on Wabash avenue near the church, and
who were so nearly white that they could easily have passed for white
people.
The family consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Latimer and Mr. Latimer's sister,
and were the most interesting people I had ever met on any of my trips
to Chicago. They inquired all about Dakota and whether there were many
colored settlers in the state, listening to every word with careful
attention and approving or disapproving with nods and smiles. While they
were so deeply interested, Claves, who had a reputation for "butting in"
and talking too much, interrupted the conversation, blurting out his
opinion, stopping me and embarrassing them, by stating that colored
people had been held in slavery for two hundred years and since they
were free they did not want to go out into the wilderness and sit on a
farm, but wanted to be where they could have freedom and convenience,
and this was sanctioned by a friend of Claves's who was still more
ignorant than he. This angered Orlean and when we were outside even
Ethel expressed her disgust at Claves' ignorance.
They told me that the Latimers were very well-to-do, owning considerable
property besides the three-story building where they lived. To me this
accounted for their careful attention, for it is my opinion that when
you find a colored man or woman who has succeeded in actually doing
something, and not merely pretending to, you will find an interesting
and reasonable person to converse with, and one who will listen to a
description of conditions and opportunities with marked intelligence.
Orlean and I attended a few shows at the downtown theatres during the
week, the first being a pathetic drama which our friends advised us to
see entitled "Madam X". I did not like it at all. The leading character
is the wife of a business man who has left her husband and remains away
from him two years, presumably discouraged over his lack of affection;
is very young and wants to be loved, as the "old story" goes, and the
husband is too busy to know that she is unhappy. She returns after two
years and asks forgiveness and love, but is turned away by the husband.
Twenty years later, in the closing act, a court scene decorates the
stage; a woman is on trial for killing the man she has lived with
unlawfully. She had been a woman of the street and lived with many
others before living with the one murdered. The young lawyer who has her
case, is her son, although he is not aware of this fact. He has just
been admitted to the bar and this is his first case, having been
appointed to the defense by the court. He takes the stand and delivers
an eloquent address on behalf of the woman, who appears to be so
saturated with liquor and cocaine as to be quite oblivious of her
surroundings. She expires from the effect of her dissipations, but just
before death she looks up and recognizes her son, she having been the
young wife who left her home twenty-two years before. The unhappy
father, who had suffered as only a deserted husband can and who had
prayed for many years for the return of the wife, is present in the
court room and together with the son, are at her side in death. As the
climax of the play is reached, suppressed sobs became audible in the
balcony, where we had seats. The scene was pathetic, indeed, and I had
hard work keeping back the tears while my betrothed was using her
handkerchief freely.
What I did not like about the play was the fact of her going away and
taking up an immoral life instead of remaining pure and returning later
to her husband. The husband, as the play goes, had not been a bad man
and was unhappy throughout the play, and I argued this with Orlean all
the way home. Why did she not remain good and when she returned he could
have gathered her into his arms and "lived happy ever after." Not only
my fiancee but most other women I have talked with about the play
contend that he could have taken her back when she returned and been
good to her. The man who wrote the play may have been a tragedian but
the management that put it on the road knew a money-maker and kept it
there as long as the people patronized the box office.
The next play we attended suited me better as, to my mind, it possessed
all that "Madam X" lacked and, instead of weakness and an unhappy
ending, this was one of strength of character and a happy finale. It was
"The Fourth Estate," by Joseph Medill Patterson, who served his
apprenticeship in writing on the Chicago Tribune. It was a newspaper
play and its interest centered around one Wheeler Brand, who, through
the purchase of a big city daily by a western man, with the bigness to
hand out the truth regardless of the threats of the big advertisers,
becomes managing editor. He relentlessly goes after one Judge Barteling
whose "rotten" decisions had but sufficed to help "big business" and
without regard to their effect upon the poor. The one really square
decision was recalled before it took effect. To complicate matters the
young editor loves the judge's daughter and while Brand holds a high
place in Miss Barteling's regard, he is made to feel that to retain it
he must stop the fight on her father. Brand pleads with her to see the
moral of it but is unable to change her views. One evening Brand secures
a flashlight photo and telephone witnesses of an interview with the
judge, the photo showing the judge in the act of handing him a
ten-thousand-dollar bribe. Late that night Brand has the article
exposing this transaction in type and ready for the press when the
proprietor, who has heretofore been so pleased with Brand's performance,
but whose wife has gained an entrance into society through the influence
of Judge Barteling, enters the office with the order to "kill the
story."
This was a hard blow to the coming newspaper man. The judge calls and
jokes him about being a smart boy but crazed with ideals, but is shocked
when he turns to find his daughter has entered the office and has heard
the conversation. He tells her to come along home with papa, but she
decides to remain with Brand. She has thought her father in the right
all along, but now that she has heard her father condone dishonesty she
can no longer think so. Wheeler disobeys orders and sends the paper to
press without "killing the story," and "all's well that ends well."
In a week or so I was back in Dakota where the thermometer registered
twenty-five below with plenty of snow for company. I received a letter
from the Reverend shortly after returning home saying they hoped to see
me in Chicago again soon. I did not know what that meant unless it was
that I was expected to return to be married, but as I had been to
Chicago twice in less than four months and had suggested to Orlean that
she come to Megory and be married there, I supposed that it was all
settled, but this was where I began to learn that the McCraline family
were very inconsiderate.
I had not claimed to be wealthy or to have unlimited amounts of money to
spend in going to and from Chicago, as though it were a matter of eighty
miles instead of eight hundred. I had explained to the Reverend that it
was a burden rather than a luxury to be possessed of a lot of raw land,
until it could be cultivated and made to yield a profit. I recalled that
while talking with the Reverend in regard to this he had nodded his head
in assent but with no facial expression to indicate that he understood
or cared. The more I knew him the more I disliked him, and was very
sorry that Orlean regarded his as a great man, although his immediate
family were the only ones who regarded him in that light. I had learned
to expect his ceremonious manner but was considerably tried by his
apparent dullness and lack of interest or encouragement of practical
ideas.
I put volumes into my letters to Orlean, trying to make clear why she
should condescend to come to Megory and be quietly married instead of
obliging me to return to Chicago. I had no more money, as it was
expensive to keep my grandmother and sister on their claims. They had no
money and I had no outside support, not even the moral support of my
people nor of Orlean's, who all seemed to take it for granted that I had
plenty of ready money. I had not taken a cent out of the crop I had
raised, the corn still standing in the field, with a heavy snow on the
ground and my small grain still unthreshed.
However, my letters were in vain. Miss McCraline could see no other way
than that if I cared for her I'd come and marry her at home, which she
contended was no more than right and would look much better. I sighed
wearily over it all and began to suspect I was "in the right church, but
in the wrong pew."