TWO months passed by. Kenneth had begun to secure more patients than
he could very well handle. Already he was kept busier than Dr.
Williams though there was enough practice for both of them. Kenneth
soon began to tire of treating minor ailments and longed to reach
the time when he could give up his general practice and devote his
time to surgery. Except for the delivery of the babies that came
with amazing rapidity in the community, he did little else than
treat colic, minor cuts, children's diseases, with an occasional
case of tuberculosis. More frequently he treated for venereal
diseases, though this latter was even more distasteful to him than
general practice while at the same time more remunerative.
A new source of practice and revenue began gradually to grow. The
main entrance to his office was on Lee Street. This door was some
fifty feet back from Lee Street, and the overhanging branches of the
elms cut off completely the light from the street lamp at the
corner. One night, as he sat reading in his office, there came a
knock at his door. Opening it, he found standing there Roy Ewing.
Ewing had inherited the general merchandise store bearing his name
from his father, was a deacon in the largest Baptist Church in
Central City, was president of the Central City Chamber of Commerce,
and was regarded as a leading citizen.
Kenneth gazed at his caller in some surprise.
"Hello, Ken. Anybody around?"
On being assured that he was alone, Ewing entered, brushing by
Kenneth to get out of the glare of the light. Kenneth followed him
into the office, meanwhile asking his caller what he could do for
him.
"Ken, I've got a little job I want you to do for me. I'm in a little
trouble. Went up to Macon last month with Bill Jackson, and we had a
little fun. I guess I took too much liquor. We went by a place Bill
knew about where there were some girls. I took a fancy to a little
girl from Atlanta who told me she had slipped away from home and her
folks thought she was visiting her cousins at Forsyth. Anyhow, I
thought everything was all right, but I'm in a bad way and I want
you to treat me. I can't go to Dr. Bennett 'cause I don't want him
to know about it. I'll take care of you all right, and if you get me
fixed up I'll pay you well."
Kenneth looked at him in amazement. Roy Ewing, acknowledged leader
of the "superior race"! He knew too much of the ways of the South,
however, to make any comment or let too much of what was going on in
his mind show on his face. He gave the treatment required. That was
Kenneth's introduction to one part of the work of a coloured
physician in the South. Many phases of life that he as a youth had
never known about or, before his larger experience in the North and
in France, had passed by him unnoticed, he now had brought to his
attention. This was one of them. He began to see more clearly that
his was going to be a difficult course to pursue. He determined anew
that as far as possible he would keep to his own affairs and meddle
not at all with the life about him.
When Ewing had gone, Kenneth returned to his reading. Hardly had he
started again when Bob came in.
"Can you stop for a few minutes, Ken? I want to talk with you."
With a look of regret at his book, Kenneth settled back and prepared
to listen.
"What world problem have you got on your mind now, Bob?"
"Don't start to kidding me, Ken. I don't see how you can shut your
eyes to how coloured people are being treated here."
"What's wrong? Everything seems to me to be getting along as well as
can be expected."
"That's because you don't go out of the house unless you are
hurrying to give somebody a pill or a dose of medicine. To-day I
came by the school to get Mamie and bring her home. You ought to see
the dump they call a school building. It's a dirty old building that
looks like it'll fall down any time a hard wind comes along. All
that's inside is a rickety table, and some hard benches with no
desks, and when it rains they have to send the children home, as the
water stands two or three inches deep on the floor. Outside of Mamie
they haven't one teacher who's gone any higher than the sixth or
seventh grade—they have to take anybody who is willing to work for
the twelve dollars a month they pay coloured teachers."
Bob's face had on it the look of discontent and resentment that was
almost growing chronic.
"Well, what can we do about it? I'm afraid you're getting to be a
regular Atlas, trying to carry all the burdens of the world on your
shoulders. I know things aren't all they ought to be, but you and I
can't solve the problems. The race problem will be here long after
we're dead and gone."
"Oh, for goodness' sake, shut up that preachy tone of long-suffering
patience, will you?—and forget your own little interests for a
while. I know you think I'm silly to let these things worry me. But
the reason why things are as bad as they are is just because the
majority of Negroes are like you—always dodging anything that may
make them unpopular with white folks. And that isn't all. There's a
gang of white boys that hang around Ewing's Store that meddle with
every coloured girl that goes by. I was in the store to-day when
Minnie Baxter passed by on her way to the post office, and that
dirty little Jim Archer said something that made me boil all over.
And it didn't help any to know that if I had said a word to him,
there would have been a fight, and I would have been beaten half to
death if I hadn't been killed."
"Yes, I've seen that, too. What we ought to do is to try and keep
these girls off of Lee Street, unless someone is with them. If we
weren't living in the South, we might do something. But here we are,
and as long as we stay here, we've got to swallow a lot of these
things and stay to ourselves."
"But, Ken, it isn't always convenient for someone to go downtown
with them. I'll tell you what let's do. Let's get the better class
of coloured people together like Reverend Wilson, Mr. Graham, Mr.
Adams, and some others, and form a Coloured Protective League here
in Central City. We can then take up these cases and see if
something can't be done to remedy them."
Bob leaned forward in his eagerness to impress Kenneth with his
idea.
"You see, if any one or two of us takes up a case we are marked men.
But if there are two or three hundred of us they can't take it out
on all of us."
"That's true. But what about the effect on the white people whose
actions you want to check? If Negroes start organizing for any
purpose whatever, there'll always be folks who'll declare they are
planning to start some trouble. No, I don't think we ought to do
anything just now. I tell you what I'll do. The next time I see Roy
Ewing, I'll speak to him and ask him to stop those fellows from
annoying our girls, The fellows can take care of themselves."
Bob rose and shrugged his shoulders and said nothing more. Kenneth
after a minute or two returned to his book.
Nothing further was said on the subject for several days. When
Mr. Ewing called the following week, Kenneth brought the matter up,
and told him what Bob had said about the boys in front of Ewing's
store.
"I've seen them doing it, Ken, and I spoke to them only to-day about
it. But you know, boys will be boys, and they haven't done any harm
to the girls. Their talk is a little rough at times, but as long as
it stops there, I don't see why anybody should object."
"But, Mr. Ewing, Bob tells me that they say some pretty raw things.
Suppose one of them said the same things to Mrs. Ewing, how would
you feel then?"
Ewing flushed.
"That's different. Mrs. Ewing is a white woman."
"But can't you see that we feel towards our women just as you do
towards yours? If one of those fellows ever spoke to my sister,
there's be trouble, and the Lord knows I want to get along with all
the people here, if I can. If this thing called democracy that I
helped fight for is worth anything at all, it ought to mean that we
coloured people should be protected like anybody else."
Mr. Ewing looked at Kenneth sharply.
"I know that things aren't altogether as they ought to be. It's
pretty tough on fellows like you, Ken, who have had an education.
While you were away, a bunch of these mill hands 'cross the tracks
got Jerry Bird, a nigger that'd been working for me nearly five
years. He came here from down the country some place after you left
for up North. Jerry was as steady a fellow as I've ever seen—as
honest as the day was long. I trusted Jerry anywhere, lots quicker
than I would've some of these white people 'round here. He had a
black skin but his heart was white. One night Jerry was over to my
house helping Mrs. Ewing until nearly ten o'clock. On his way home
this bunch of roughnecks from "Factoryville" stopped him while they
were looking for a nigger that'd scared a white girl. When Jerry got
scared and started to run, they took out after him and strung him up
to a tree. And he wasn't any more guilty of touching that white girl
than you or me."
"What did you do about it?" asked Bob.
"Nothing. Suppose I had kicked up a ruckus about it. They found out
afterwards that the girl hadn't been bothered at all. But just
suppose I had gone and cussed out the fellows who did the lynching.
Most of them trade at my store. Or if they don't, a lot of their
friends do. They'd have taken their trade to some other store and
I'd ‘a' gained nothing for my trouble."
"But surely you don't believe that lynching ever helps, do you?"
"Yes and no. Lynching never bothers folks like you. Why, your daddy
was one of the most respected folks in this town. But lynching does
keep some of these young nigger bucks in check."
"Does it? It seems to me that there isn't much less so-called rape
around here or anywhere else in the South, even after forty years of
lynching. Mr. Ewing, why don't you and the other decent white people
here come out against lynching?"
"Who? Me? Never!" Ewing looked his amazement at the suggestion.
"Why, it would ruin my business, my wife would begin to be dropped
by all the other folks of the town, and it wouldn't be long before
they'd begin calling me a ‘nigger-lover.' No, sir-ee! I'll just let
things rock along and let well enough alone."
"Mr. Ewing, if fifty men like you in this town banded together and
came out flat-footedly against lynching, there are lots more who
would join you gladly."
"That may be true," Ewing answered doubtfully. "But then again it
mightn't. Let's see who might be some of the fifty. There's George
Baird, he's president of the Bank of Central City, and Fred
Griswold, president of the Smith County Farmers' Bank. You can count
them out because they'd be afraid of losing their depositors. Then
there's Ralph Minor who owns the Bon Ton Store. He's out for the
same reason that I am. Then there's Nat Phelps, who runs the Central
City Dispatch. He has a hard enough time as it is. If he lost a
couple of hundred subscribers, he'd have to close up shop. And so it
goes."
"What about the preachers? It doesn't seem much of a religion
they're preaching if the commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill,' doesn't
form part of their creed."
"Oh, you needn't look for nothing much from them. Three years ago
old Reverend Adams down to the First Methodist took it into his head
he was going to tackle something easy—nothing like the race problem.
He started in to wipe out the bootleggers 'round here, thinking he
could get a lot of support. But he didn't, because most of the folks
he figgered on lining up with him were regular customers of the
fellows he was after." Ewing chuckled at the memory of the crusade
that had died "aborning." "When the next quarterly conference was
held, they elected a new pastor for the First Methodist. No, Ken, it
ain't so easy as it looks. You're asking me to do something that not
a Southern white man has done since the Civil War⸺"
Rising, he walked towards the door and remarked:
"My advice to you is to stay away from any talk like this with
anybody else. There probably ain't another man in town who would've
talked to you like this, and if the boys in the Ku Klux Klan knew I
had been running along like this with a coloured man, I don't know
what'd happen to me. See you later. So long!"
Kenneth walked up and down the room with his hands stuffed deep into
his pockets, his thoughts rushing through his head in helter-skelter
fashion. He was suddenly conscious of a feeling that he had been
thrust into a tiny boat and forced to embark on a limitless sea,
with neither compass nor chart nor sun nor moon to guide him. Would
he arrive? Or would he go down in some squall which arose from he
knew not where or when? The whole situation seemed so vast, so
sinister, so monstrous, that he shuddered involuntarily, as he had
done as a child when left alone in a dark room at night. Religion,
which had been the guide and stay of his father in like
circumstances, offered him no solace. He thought with a faint smile
of the institution known as the Church. What was it? A vast money
machine, interested in rallies and pastors' days and schemes to milk
more dollars from its communicants. In preparing people to die. He
wasn't interested in what was going to happen to him after death.
What he wanted was some guide and comfort in his present problems.
No, religion and the Church as it was now constituted wasn't the
answer. What was? He could not give it.
"Here I am," he soliloquized, "with the best education money can
buy. And yet Roy Ewing, who hasn't been any further than high
school, tells me I'd better submit to all this without protest. Yet
he stands for the best there is here in Central City, and I suppose
he represents the most liberal thought of the South. How's it all
going to end? Even a rat will fight when he's cornered, and these
coloured people aren't going to stand for these things all the time.
What can I do? God, there isn't anything—anything I can do? Bob is
right! Something must be done, but what is it? I reckon these white
folks must be blind—or else they figure on leaving whatever solution
there may be to their children, hoping the storm doesn't break while
they are liv. ing. No! That isn't it. They think because they've
been able to get away with it thus far, they'll always be able to
get away with it. Oh, God, I'm helpless! I'm helpless!"
Kenneth had begun to comprehend the delicate position a Negro always
occupies in places like Central City—in fact, throughout the South.
So little had he come into contact with the perplexities of the race
question before he went away to school, he had seen little of the
windings and turnings, the tortuous paths the Negro must follow to
avoid giving offence to the dominant white sentiment. As he saw each
day more and more of the evasions, the repressions, the choking back
of natural impulses the Negro practised to avoid trouble, Kenneth
often thought of the coloured man as a chip of wood floating on the
surface of a choppy sea, tossed this way and that by every wind that
blew upon the waters. He must of necessity be constantly on his
guard when talking with his white neighbours, or with any white men
in the South, to keep from uttering some word, some phrase which,
like a seed dropped and forgotten, lies fallow for a time in the
brain of the one to whom he talks, but later blossoms forth into
that noxious death-dealing plant which is the mob. Innocent enough
of guile or malice that word may be, yet he must be careful lest it
be distorted and magnified until it can be the cause of violence to
himself and his people. Often—very often—it is true that no evil
follows. Yet the possibility that it may come must always be
considered. But one factor is fixed and immutable the more
intelligent and prosperous the Negro and the more ignorant and poor
the white man, the graver the danger, for in the mind of the latter
are jealousy and ignorance and stupidity and abject fear of the
educated and successful Negro.
His talk with Ewing had crystallized the thoughts, half developed,
which his observations since his return had planted in his mind.
Kenneth began to see how involved the whole question really was, he
was seeing dim paths of expediency and opportunism he would be
forced to tread if he expected to reach the goal he had set for
himself. Already he found one of his pet ideas to be of doubtful
value the theory he had had that success would give a Negro immunity
from persecution. Like a scroll slowly unwinding before his eyes,
Kenneth saw, as yet only partially, that instead of freeing him from
danger of the mob, too great prosperity would make him and every
other Negro outstanding targets of the wrath and envy of the poorer
whites—that jealousy which "is cruel as the grave." Oh, well, he
reflected, others had avoided trouble and so could he. He would have
to be exceedingly careful to avoid too great display, and at the
same time cultivate the goodwill of those men like Roy Ewing and
Judge Stevenson who would stand by him if there was need.