THE next day Kenneth received a letter from Jane Phillips. In it she
announced that she would arrive in Central City on Monday morning.
Kenneth's face took on a satisfied smile and deep down in his heart
there was happiness and contentment. Jane had occupied an
increasingly large portion of his thoughts ever since those
wonderful ten days they had spent together last December. Kenneth's
life had been singularly free from feminine influence, other than
that of his mother. It was not that he was averse to such influence,
but his life had been so busy that he had had no time to spend in
wandering through the Elysian fields of love-making. There had been
one girl in New York. He had met her at a dance in Harlem. Together
they had spent their Sundays and the evenings when he was free from
his duties at the hospital in wandering through Central and Bronx
Parks. Occasionally they had attended the theatre. One night their
hands had touched as they sat in the semi-darkness and watched the
tender love scene on the stage. She had not withdrawn her hand. He
sat there thrilled at the touch and had lived the character of the
make-believe hero as he made ardent love on the stage. Naturally,
the heroine was none other than the girl who sat beside him.
Afterwards, they had ridden home atop a Fifth Avenue bus, and the
whole city seemed filled with romance. He had imagined himself at
the time deeply in love. But that tender episode had soon ended when
he told her he was planning to return to Georgia. "Kenneth!" she had
exclaimed. "How can you think of living down South again? It's silly
of you even to think of it! I could never think of living down there
where they are likely to lynch you at a moment's notice! It's too
barbaric, too horrible an existence to consider even for a minute!"
Kenneth had tried to show her that it wasn't as bad as it had been
painted, that coloured people who minded their own business never
had any trouble. But she had been obdurate. Kenneth left the house
in a huff, and had never gone back again. What silly notions women
have, he had thought to himself. The reason they talked about the
South that way was because of sheer ignorance. As if he couldn't
manage his own affairs and keep away from trouble! Humph! Well rid
of the silly creature, and he felt glad he had found out before
going in too deep.
But now this was different. Jane had no such absurd notions as those
girls up North had. She wasn't the sort that couldn't leave
promenading down Seventh Avenue in New York or State Street in
Chicago or U Street in Washington. It wasn't that she didn't know
what it meant to live in the North. Hadn't she been to Atlantic City
and New York and Washington with her mother? No, Jane was just the
sort of girl who would make the right sort of companion for him in a
place like Central City. Intelligent, with a good education,
talented musically—she would make an ideal wife. Kenneth found
himself musing along in this fashion until aroused by his mother as
she called him to supper.
It was darned silly of him, he thought as he arose to comply, to go
along thinking like this. He and Jane had spoken no word of love
when she had been at home at Christmas. Nor had their letters been
other than those of good friends. But hadn't she written him almost
every week since she left? She must think something of him to have
done that. He determined that as soon as he could he would skilfully
direct the conversation to the point where he could find out just
where he stood. It was time that he was thinking about settling
down, anyhow. He would be twenty-nine his next birthday—he was
making money—if he acted wisely his future was assured. Yes, he
would find out how Jane felt. Both his mother and Mamie liked
Jane—and Mr. Phillips had called him "my boy" several times lately
and had repeated to him snatches of the letters that Jane had
written home. The only doubtful quantity was the attitude of Jane
herself.
On Monday morning Kenneth reached the railroad station long before
the train arrived. He tried to sit in the filthy little waiting-room
with the sign over the door, "FOR COLOURED," but the air was so
oppressive that he chose rather to walk up and down the road outside
the station. At last the train came. He walked down towards the
engine where the Jim Crow car was. It was half baggage car and half
coach. A motley crowd of laughing, shouting Negroes descended,
calling out to friends and relatives in the group of Negroes on the
ground. Standing on tiptoe, Kenneth strained his eyes to get glimpse
of Jane. The windows of the coach were too dirty to see inside. At
last she appeared on the platform, dainty, neat, and looking as
though she had just emerged from her own room, in spite of the filth
and cindery foulness of the coach. Kenneth thought of the simile of
a rose springing up from a bed of noisome and unlovely weeds as he
hurried forward to help Jane with her bags through the crowd of
coloured people that flocked around the steps.
Jane greeted him cordially enough, her eyes shining with pleasure at
seeing him again. Kenneth, however, felt a vague disappointment. He
had let his thoughts run riot while she had been away. So far as he
was concerned, the only things necessary were the actual asking of
the all-important question and the choosing of a wedding-day. As he
followed her to his car, he turned over in his mind just what it was
that disappointed him so in her greeting. He couldn't put his finger
on it exactly, but she would have greeted Bob or any other man just
as warmly and he would not have felt jealous at all. Maybe she's
tired from the ride in that dirty and noisy car? She'll be quite
different when I go over to see her to-night, he thought.
He inquired regarding her trip—was it pleasant? "Ugh, it was
horrible!" she replied, shuddering at the memory of it. "I had a
Pullman as far as Atlanta, but there I had to change to that dirty
old Jim Crow car. There was a crowd of Negroes who had three or four
quarts of cheap liquor. They were horrible. Why, they even had the
nerve to offer me a drink! And the conductor must have told
everybody on the train that I was up front, because all night long
there was a constant procession of white men passing up and down the
coach looking at me in a way that made my blood boil. I didn't dare
go to sleep, because I didn't know what might happen. It was awful!"
She sat silent as she lived over again the horror of the ride. Then,
shaking off her mood, she turned to him with a cheerful smile.
"Thank Goodness, it's over now, and I don't want to think of it any
more than I can help. Tell me all about yourself and what you've
been doing and everything," she finished all in a breath.
He told her briefly what had been going on, of his plans for the
hospital, of the meeting at Reverend Wilson's, and other items of
interest about life in Central City, until they had arrived at her
home. He waited for an invitation to come in, but in the excitement
of seeing her mother and father again, she forgot all about Kenneth.
Placing her bags on the porch, he turned and left after promising to
run over for a while that evening.
The time seemed to go by on dragging feet that day. It seemed as
though evening never would come. It did at last, however, and as
soon as he finished with the last patient, he went over to Jane's
home. Refreshed by a long rest, she greeted him clad in a dress of
some filmy blue material. They seated themselves on the porch,
shaded by vines from the eyes of passers-by. Over Kenneth there came
a feeling of contentment—life had not been easy for him and he had
been denied a confidante with whom he could discuss the perplexities
he had experienced in Central City. The talk for a time drifted from
one topic to another. Before he knew it, Kenneth was telling Jane of
his ambitions, of the plans he had made before coming back to
Central City, of the successes and failures he had met with, of his
hopes for the future. Jane listened without speaking for some time.
Life among coloured people is so intense, so earnest, so serious a
problem in the South, that never do two intelligent Negroes talk
very long before the race problem in some form is under discussion.
Jane interrupted Kenneth in the midst of his recital.
"Kenneth, did you really believe that you could come back here to
Central City and keep entirely away from the race problem?"
"I don't know that I thought it out as carefully as that, but I
hoped to do something like that," was his uneasy reply. He had the
feeling that she didn't altogether approve of him. Her next words
proved that she didn't.
"Well, you can't do it. Just because your father got along all right
is no reason why you should do the same things he did. You are
living in a time that is as different from his as his was from his
great-grandfather's."
"But⸺" he attempted to defend himself.
"Wait a minute until I've had my say," she checked him. "Only a few
years ago they said that as soon as Negroes got property and made
themselves good citizens the race problem would be solved. They said
that only bad Negroes were ever lynched and they alone caused all
the trouble. But you just think back over the list of coloured
people right here in Central City who've had the most trouble during
the past two years. What do you find? That it is the Negro who has
acquired more property than the average white man, they are always
picking on. Poor whites resent seeing a Negro more prosperous than
they, and they satisfy their resentment by making it hard on that
Negro. Am I right—or am I wrong?"
"I suppose there is something in what you say—but what's the answer?
You're damned if you do—and you're damned if you don't!"
"I don't know what the answer is—if I did, I'd certainly try to put
it into use, instead of sitting around and trying to dodge trouble.
If one of your patients had a cancer, you wouldn't advise him to use
Christian Science in treating it, would you?"
Without pausing for a reply, she went on, her words pouring out in a
flood that made Kenneth feel as he did as a boy when spanked by his
mother. "No, you wouldn't! You'd operate! And that's just what the
coloured people and the white people of the South have got to do.
That is, those who've got any sense and backbone. If they don't,
then this thing they call the race problem is going to grow so big
it's going to consume the South and America. It's almost that big
now."
She paused for breath. Kenneth started to speak but she checked him
with her hand.
"I'm not through yet! I've been thinking over this thing for a long
time, just as every other Negro has done who's got brains enough to
do any thinking at all. I am sick and tired of hearing all this
prating about the ‘superior race.' Superior—humph! Kenneth, what you
and all the rest of Negroes need is to learn that you belong to a
race that was centuries old when the first white man came into the
world. You've got to learn that a large part of this thing they call
‘white civilization' was made by black hands, as well as by yellow
and brown and red hands, too, besides what white hands have created.
You've got to learn that the Negro to-day is contributing as much of
the work that makes this civilization possible as the white race, if
not more. Be proud of your race and quit whining and cringing!
You'll never get anywhere until you do! There, I've wanted to get
that out of my system for a long time ever since we talked together
last Christmas. Now it's out and I'm through!"
Kenneth sat quiet. While she had been pouring forth her tirade, he
had thought of several logical arguments he could have advanced. But
she had given him no chance to utter them. Now they seemed weak and
useless. He was resentful—what did women know about the practical
problems and difficulties of life, anyway? His anger was not abated
by the realization that Jane felt that he had been trying to avoid
his responsibility to himself and to his people—that he had been a
coward. And yet she was right in a general way in what she had said.
Masking as well as he could the chagrin he felt at her words, he
told her of the trouble Tucker and Tracy and Swann and the other
share-croppers were having, and gave her further details of the
meeting at Reverend Wilson's.
She sensed the wound to his pride that she had inflicted. She did
not regret doing what she had done—on the long ride home she had
determined that she would tell him those very things as soon as she
could find opportunity—but, with a woman's natural tenderness, she
regretted the necessity of hurting him. She put her hand over his
for an instant, touched at his dejected manner.
"I'm sorry, Ken, if I hurt you, but I did it because you are too
fine a man, and you've got too good an education, to try to dodge an
issue as plain as yours. Why, Kenneth, you've had it mighty
soft—just think of the thousands of coloured boys all over the South
who are too poor to get even a high-school training. You've never
had to get down and dig for what you've got—perhaps it would have
been better if you had. It's men with your brains and education that
have got to take the leadership. You've got to make good! That's
just the reason they try to make it hard for men like you—they know
that if you ever get going, their treating the Negro as they have
has got to stop! They're darned scared of educated Negroes with
brains—that's why they make it hard for you!"
Kenneth threw out his hands, palms upward, and shrugged his
shoulders.
"I suppose I agree with you in theory, Jane, but what are the
practical ways of doing the things you say I ought to do? How, for
example, can I help Tracy and Tucker and all the rest of the farmers
who're being robbed of all they earn every year?"
"Don't get angry now just because I touched your masculine vanity. I
know about the share-cropping system in a general way. Tell me the
facts that were brought out at the meeting."
Kenneth told her in detail the things Hiram Tucker and the others
had said. She sat in thought for a minute, her chin cupped in the
palm of her hand, her elbow resting on the arm of the chair, as she
rocked back and forth. Kenneth sat watching her in what was almost
sardonic amusement. He had been wrestling with this same problem
ever since Thursday night and was no nearer a solution than he had
been then. It would be amusing in a few minutes, after all her
high-flown thoughts and elaborate generalities about bucking the
race question, when she would be forced to admit that when it came
to solving one of the practical problems of the whole question her
generalizing would be of no avail. He was aroused by a question
thrown at him suddenly by Jane.
"Do these folks have to buy their supplies from the landlord?"
"Not that I know of," he replied. "They buy from the landlord, or
the merchant designated by the landlord, because they haven't the
money or the credit to trade anywhere else."
There followed another pause while the rocking began again.
"Do you remember any of the economics you learned at school?" was
the next query. He replied that he supposed he did.
"Have you got any books on co-operative societies?" He doubted
whether he had.
"Well, never mind." She swung her chair around, facing Kenneth, and
leaned forward intently, the light from the arc-lamp in the corner
illumining her face and revealing the eager, enthusiastic look upon
it.
"Kenneth, why can't those coloured people pool their money and buy
their goods wholesale and then distribute them at cost?"
Kenneth laughed, it must be confessed a little cheerfully, that she
had gone from one problem into the mazes of another that was just as
difficult.
"For the very same reason that they are in the predicament they are
in to-day. They haven't got the money. Perhaps you can tell me where
the money to start this co-operative scheme is coming from?"
"That's an easy one to answer. It's going to come from you and papa
and three or four more of these folks here in town who can afford
it! Oh, Ken, can't you see what a big thing you can do? There are
lots of people, white people I mean, right here in Central City,
who'd be glad to help these poor Negroes get out of debt. Papa was
telling us today about a talk he had with Judge Stevenson the other
day. The Judge said he wished there was some way to help without it
making him unpopular with the other folks here in town. Of course,
the folks who are making money off this system, the landlords and
the store-keepers, won't like it, but you can go and talk with folks
like Judge Stevenson and Mr. Baird down at the Bank of Central City.
If this first trial succeeds—and I know it will be a success—it'll
spread all over Smith County, and then all over Georgia, and then
all over the South, and the coloured folks will have millions of
dollars that they've been cheated out of before. That, Kenneth
Harper, is one way you can lead, and it won't get you in bad with
the white people at least the decent ones—either."
Kenneth began to be infected by her enthusiasm. He saw that her idea
had possibilities. But, manlike, he didn't want to give in too soon
or too readily.
"There is something in what you say, Jane, but the details will have
to be worked out first before we can tell if it is a practicable
idea. I'll think it⸺"
Jane interrupted him, showing that she hadn't even been listening to
him.
"When are you to meet again at Reverend Wilson's?" she asked.
He told her.
"Well, I tell you what we'll do. You go home and think over all the
ways we can put this idea into practice. I'll do the same thing. And
then we'll talk it over again to-morrow night. On Wednesday you go
down to see Judge Stevenson and see if he will draw up the papers so
it'll be legal and binding and everything else. Then on Thursday
night you can present this as your own idea, and I'll bet you
anything you say, they'll take it up and you'll be the one chosen to
lead the whole movement."
After some discussion of details, Kenneth left. The more he thought
of Jane's idea, the more it appealed to him. At any rate, she had
suggested more in half an hour than he had been able to think of in
four days. Hadn't the co-operative societies been the backbone of
the movement to get rid of the Czar in Russia? If the Russian
peasants, who certainly weren't as educated as the Negro in America,
had made a success of the idea, the Negro in the South ought to do
it. By Jove, they could do it! Idea after idea sprang to his mind,
after the seed had been sown by Jane, until he had visions of a vast
cooperative society not only buying but selling the millions of
dollars' worth of products raised by the nine million Negroes of the
South. And that wasn't all! These societies would be formed with
each member paying monthly dues, like the fraternal organizations.
When enough money was in the treasury, they would employ the very
best lawyers money could get to take one of those cases where a
Negro had not been able to get a fair settlement with his landlord,
and make a test case of it. What if they did lose in the local
court? They'd take it to the State Supreme Court! What if they did
lose even there? They'd take it clear up to the United States
Supreme Court! They were sure to win there. Kenneth walked home with
his head whirling with the project's possibilities. He saw a new day
coming when a man in the South would no longer be exploited and
robbed just because he was black. And when that came, lynching and
everything else like it would go too. He felt already like Matthew
and Andrew and Peter and John and the other disciples when they
started out to bring the good news to the whole world. For wasn't he
a latter-day disciple bringing a new solution and a new hope to his
people?
It was not until Kenneth had gone to bed that he realized that
though he had been with Jane all the evening, he had had not one
minute when he could have spoken of love to her. Musing thus, he
fell asleep.