EARLY the next morning Kenneth rose and rummaged through his books
until he found his old and battered text-books on economics.
Into these he dipped during the intervals between patients, making
notes of ideas which seemed useful in the organization of the
co-operative society. The more he read, the more feasible the plan
seemed. Properly guided and carefully managed, there was no reason,
so far as he could see, why the society should not be a success.
Eighty per cent of the farmers of the South, white and coloured, he
estimated, suffered directly or indirectly from the present economic
system. Though his interest was in the Negro tillers of the soil,
success in their case would inevitably react favourably on the white
just as oppression and exploitation of the Negro had done more harm
to white people in the South than to Negroes. Kenneth felt the warm
glow of the crusader in a righteous cause. Already he saw a new day
in the South with white and coloured people free from oppression and
hatred and prejudice—prosperous and contented because of that
prosperity. He could see a lifting of the clouds of ignorance which
hung over all the South, an awakening of the best in all the people
of the South. Thus has youth dreamed since the beginning of time.
Thus will youth ever dream. And in those dreams rests the hope of
the world, for without them this world with all its defects would
sink into the black abyss of despair, never to rise again.
His work finished for the day, he went as soon as he decently could
to talk with Jane. She, too, had been at work. Eagerly they planned
between them the infinite details of so ambitious a scheme.
Confidently they discounted possible difficulties they might expect
to encounter—the opposition of the whites who were profiting from
the present system, the petty jealousies and suspicions of those who
would gain most from the success of their scheme. They realized that
the Negro had been robbed so much, both by his own people and by the
whites, that he was chary of new plans and projects. They knew he
was contentious and quarrelsome. These things seemed trivial,
however, for with the natural expansiveness of the young they felt
that difficulties like these were but trifles to be airily brushed
aside.
Jane was not too much engrossed in their plans to notice the change
in Kenneth's manner. She had watched him closely during the times
she had seen him since his return. He had been almost morose, his
mind divided between his work and the effort to keep to a
"middle-of-the-road" course in his relations with the whites. The
inevitable conflict within himself, the lack of decisiveness in his
daily life that he consciously developed and which was so
diametrically opposite to that he used in his profession, had begun
to create a complex personality that was far from pleasing. In a
freer atmosphere Kenneth would have been a direct, straightforward
character, swift to decision and quick of action. One cannot,
however, compromise principle constantly and consciously without
bearing the marks of such conflicts.
His compromises were not all conscious ones, though. He believed
honestly it was wisest that he observe some sort of half-way ground
between rank cowardice and uncompromising opposition to the
conditions which existed. In doing so, he had no sense of physical
or moral timidity. He knew no Negro could yet safely advocate
complete freedom for the Negro in the South. He felt there had been
improvement during the past half-century in those conditions. He
believed that in time all of the Negro's present problems would be
solved satisfactorily. If, by not trying to rush things, he could
help in that solution, he was content. In believing thus, Kenneth
was different in no way from the majority of intelligent Negroes in
the South: temporizing with the truth, it may be, yet of such
temporizations and compromises is the life of the Negro all over the
South.
With the evolving of a plan which enabled him to be of help and, at
the same time, involved him in no danger of trouble with his white
neighbours, Kenneth took on an eagerness which was at marked
variance with his former manner. His eyes shone with the desire to
make their plan a success. Of a tender and sympathetic nature,
almost with the gentleness of a woman, he realized now that the
burdens of his race had lain heavy upon him. He had suffered in
their suffering, had felt almost as though he had been the victim
when he read or heard of a lynching, had chafed under the bonds
which bound the hands and feet and heart and soul of his people. But
launched as he now was on a plan to furnish relief from one of the
worst of those bonds, he had changed overnight into a determined and
purposeful and ardent worker towards the goal he and Jane had set
for themselves. Jane rejoiced at the changed air of Kenneth—he
seemed to have emerged from the shell in which he had encased
himself and, womanlike, she rejoiced that he had done so through her
own work.
So absorbed had they been in discussion of their plans that the time
had flown by as though on wings. Ten o'clock was announced by
Mr. Phillips in the room above by the dropping of his shoes, one
after the other, on the floor. Kenneth needed no second signal, he
rose to go. Jane went to the door with him.
"Kenneth, you're entirely different from the way you were yesterday.
I'm so glad. …"
The next morning he called on Judge Stevenson. The Judge's office
was above the Bon Ton Store in a two-story brick building on Lee
Street. Kenneth climbed the flight of dingy, dusty stairs which bore
alternately on the vertical portions tin signs inscribed:
Richad P. Stevenson, Attorney-at-Law
and
Dr. J. C. Carpenter, Dentist.
The judge's office was at the head of the stairs and in it Kenneth
found the old lawyer seated near the window, his coat off, and in
his mouth the long, thin, villainous-looking cigar without which few
persons in Central City ever remembered seeing him, though none had
ever seen one of them lighted. He chewed on it ruminatively when in
repose. When engaged in an argument, either in or out of a
courtroom, and especially when opposition caused his choleric temper
to be aroused, he chewed furiously as though he would have enjoyed
treating his enemy of the moment in similar fashion. He was tall and
thickset, his snow-white hair brushed straight back from his
forehead like the mane of a lion. Skin reddened by exposure to sun
and wind, bushy eyebrows from under which gleamed fiery eyes that
could shift in an instant from twinkling good humour to flashing
indignation or anger, thin nose and ample mouth, his face was one
that would command respect or at least attention in almost any
gathering. He wore loosely fitting, baggy clothes that draped his
ample figure with a gracefulness that added to his distinguished
appearance. Many thought he resembled at first glance that famous
Kentuckian, Henry Watterson, and indeed he did bear an unmistakable
likeness to "Marse Henry."
The judge's life had been a curious combination of contradictions.
He had fought valiantly in the Confederate army as a major, serving
under "Stonewall" Jackson, whose memory he worshipped second only to
that of his wife, who had died some ten years before. He bore a long
scar, reminder of the wound that had laid him low during the battle
of Atlanta. His mode of brushing his hair back was adopted to cover
the mark, but when he talked, as he loved to do, of his martial
experiences, he would always, at the same time in the narrative,
brush, with one sweep of his hand, the hair down over his forehead
and reveal the jagged scar of which he was inordinately proud.
With the end of the Civil War, he had reconciled himself to the
result though it had meant the loss of most of his wealth. He
harboured little bitterness towards the North, unlike most of his
comrades in arms who never were willing to forgo any opportunity to
vent their venomous hatred of their conquerors. Judge Stevenson had
counselled against such a spirit. So vigorously had he done it, he
had alienated most of those who had been his closest friends.
Following a speech he had delivered at one of the reunions of
Confederate veterans in which he urged his comrades at least to meet
half-way the overtures of friendliness from the North, he had been
denounced from the floor of the convention as a "Yankee-lover," and
threatened with violence. Judge Stevenson with flashing eye and
belligerent manner had jumped to his feet, offered to fight any man,
or any ten men, who thought him guilty of treachery to the cause of
the Confederacy, and when none accepted the challenge, denounced
them as cowards and quit the convention.
He had hoped that, with the passing on, one by one, of the
unreconstructed veterans of the Confederacy, a newer and less
embittered generation, with no personal memories of the gall of
defeat, would right things. Instead had come the rise of the poor
whites with none of the culture and refinement of the old Southern
aristocracy, a nation of petty minds and morals, vindictive,
vicious, dishonest, and stupid. Lacking in nearly all the things
that made the old South, at least the upper crust of it, the most
civilized section of America at that time, he saw his friends and
all they stood for inundated by this flood of crudeness and
viciousness, until only a few remained left high and dry like bits
of wreckage from a foundered ship cast up on the shore to rot away,
while all around them raged this new regime, no longer poor in purse
but eternally impoverished in culture and civilizing influences. On
these the judge spat his contempt and he poured upon their
unconcerned heads the vials of his venom and wrath.
The second devastating blow he suffered was the succumbing, one by
one, of his children to the new order. Nancy, his eldest daughter,
had run away from home and married a merchant whose wealth had been
gained through the petty thievery of padding accounts and other
sharp practices on poorer whites and Negroes. Mary Ann, his other
daughter, whom he loved above all others of his children, had fallen
victim to an unfortunate love affair with a dashing but worthless
son of their next-door neighbour. She had died in giving birth to
her child, which, fortunately, the judge thought, had been born
dead. His son had "gone in for politics." He had been successful, as
success was measured by the present-day South, but in his father's
eyes, judged by the uncompromising standards of that member of an
older and nobler generation, he had sunk to levels of infamy from
which he could never recover.
The crowning misfortune dealt the judge by an unkind fate was the
loss of his gentle, kindly wife. She had uncomplainingly borne their
misfortunes one after another, had calmed and soothed her husband's
irascible tantrums, had been a haven to which he could come and find
repose when buffeted by a world which he did not and could not
understand. As long as she lived, he had been able to bear up
despite the bitter disappointments life had dealt him. He had gone
away to try a case in a near-by county, had returned after a two
days' absence and found her with a severe cold and fever.
For three weeks he did not leave her bedside, drove away in anger
the trained nurse Dr. Bennett brought to the house, ministered
gently to his wife's every need, and held her in his arms as she
breathed her last breath. Frantic at this last and most crushing
blow, he cursed the doctor, though Dr. Bennett had done all he could
in his bungling way, cursed God, cursed everything and everybody he
could think of in his grief. He never recovered from this loss. His
hair rapidly became white, he neglected his profession and sat by
the hour, his eyes half closed, dreaming of his dead wife. …
Had he chosen to adapt himself to the new order, he could have made
money. This, however, he refused to do. He boasted proudly that
never had he cheated any man or been a party to any transaction from
which he emerged with any stain on his honour. Friend he was to all
in his gentle, kindly manner—a relic of a day that had passed. …
He started, roused from one of his usual reveries, when Kenneth
knocked on the open door. The gentle breezes of late spring stirred
the mane of white hair as he brought his chair to the floor with a
thump.
"Come in, Ken, come right in." He welcomed Kenneth heartily, though
in accordance with the Southern custom he did not offer to shake
hands with his visitor. "How's your maw? Heard you're doing right
well since you been back. Mighty glad to hear it, because yo' daddy
set a heap by you."
Kenneth assured him he was progressing fairly well, told him his
mother was well, and answered the innumerable questions the judge
asked him. He knew that these were inevitable and must be answered
before the judge would talk on any matter of business. After a few
minutes of the desultory and perfunctory questions and answers,
Kenneth told, when asked, the purpose of his visit. Chair tilted
back again, elbows resting on the arms of the chair, fingers placed
end to end, and his chin resting on the natural bridge thus formed,
the judge listened to Kenneth's recital of his plan without comment
other than an occasional non-committal grunt.
"… And what I would like from you, Judge Stevenson, is, first, do
you think the plan will work, and, second, will you draw up the
articles of incorporation and whatever other legal papers we need?"
Kenneth ended. As an afterthought he added:
"You see, we want to do the job legally and above board, so there
won't be any misunderstanding of our motives."
For a long time Judge Stevenson said nothing, nor did he give any
indication that he was aware Kenneth had stopped speaking. In fact
he seemed oblivious even of Kenneth's presence. Knowing better than
to interrupt him, Kenneth awaited somewhat anxiously the judge's
opinion. When the silence had lasted nearly five minutes, a vague
alarm began to creep over Kenneth. Suppose the judge wasn't as
friendly towards coloured people as he had supposed? A word from him
could start serious trouble before they got started. He wondered if
he had acted wisely in revealing so much of their plans. He felt
sure he had done wrong when he saw a look of what appeared to be
anger pass over the judge's face.
At last the old lawyer cleared his throat, his usual preliminary to
speech. But when he did talk he began on another subject.
"What're the folks out your way saying about these Kluxers? Any of
you getting worried about these fools parading 'round like a bunch
of damn fools?"
"To tell you the truth, Judge, I don't really know yet what the
coloured people are thinking." He felt that on this subject he could
speak frankly to the judge, as he was too sensible a man to take
much stock in the antics of the Klan. Yet, he was not too
sure—coloured people must always keep a careful watch on their
tongues when talking to white people in the South.
"You ain't getting scared out there, are you?" the judge pressed the
point.
"No, I wouldn't call it scared. Most of those with whom I've talked
don't want any trouble with anybody—they want to attend to their own
business and be let alone. But if they are attacked, I'm afraid
there will be considerable trouble and somebody will get hurt." He
paused, then went on: "And that somebody won't be entirely composed
of Negroes, either."
"I reckon you're right, Ken. These fools don't know they're playing
with dynamite." His voice took on a querulous tone. "We've been
getting along all right here, ‘cept when some of these po' whites
out of the mill or from the tu'pentine camps or some bad nigras tank
up on bad liquor or moonshine." He did not say "Negro" nor yet the
opprobrious "nigger," but struck somewhere between the two—"nigra."
"And now these fools are just stirring up trouble Lord knows where
it'll end."
He ran his hand through his hair—a favourite trick of his when
excited, and paced up and down the room.
"I've been telling some of the boys they'd better stay away from
that fool business of gallivanting around with a pillow-slip over
their heads. They talk about being against bootleggers and men
runing around with loose women—humph!—every blamed bootlegger and
blind tiger and whoremaster in town rushed into the Klan 'cause they
know'd that was the only way they could keep from getting called up
on the carpet! A fine bunch they are!"
The judge spat disgustedly.
"Now about this plan you got—have you thought about the chances of
your being misunderstood? Suppose some of these ornery whites get it
into their heads you're trying to start trouble between the races.
What're you going to do then?" he asked.
"That's just why we want to do the job right," answered Kenneth. "We
want to do everything legally so there can't be any wrong ideas
about the society. I know every time coloured people start forming
any kind of an organization besides a church or a burial society,
there are white people who begin to get suspicious and think that
Negroes are organizing to start some mischief. That's why we want
you and the other good white people to know all about our plans from
the start."
"I ain't trying to discourage you none," replied Judge Stevenson
doubtfully, "but do you think you are wise in starting coloured
folks to thinking about organizing when this Klan's raising hell all
over the South?"
"How else are we going to do anything?" asked Kenneth. "Farmers have
been robbed so long they are getting tired of it. If something isn't
done, there's going to be lots more trouble than a society like ours
can possibly cause. This share-cropping business causes more trouble
than any other thing that's done to Negroes. Lynching is mighty bad,
but after all only a few Negroes are lynched a year, while thousands
are robbed every year of their lives."
"That's so. That's so," agreed the judge, but the doubt had not been
dispelled from his voice nor removed from his face. He removed his
cigar from his mouth, viewed its mangled appearance through much
chewing upon it, threw it with an expression of disgust out of the
window, narrowly missing a man passing in the street below. He
chuckled as he placed a fresh cigar in his mouth.
"'Taint no harm in trying, though," he said, half to himself.
"Besides, our plan is to enlist the support of every white man in
the county who stands for something," went on Kenneth, eager to gain
the old man as a staunch ally. "We know there'll be opposition from
some of the landlords and merchants and bankers who are making money
off this system, but we figure there are enough decent white people
here to help us through. …"
"Mebbe so. Mebbe so," replied the judge, though there was a distinct
note of doubt in his voice now. "I wouldn't be too sure, though. I
wouldn't be too sure."
"But, Judge⸺" interrupted Kenneth. The judge silenced him with a
movement of his hand.
"Ken, have you ever thought out what a decent white man goes through
with in a town like Central City? Have you thought what he has to
put up with all over the South? There ain't a whole lot of them, but
just figure what'd happen to a white man to-day who tried to do
anything about cleaning up this rotten state of affairs we got here.
Why, he'd be run out of town, if he wasn't lynched!"
"But, Judge," began Kenneth again, "take lynching, for example. You
know, and I know, and everybody in the South knows that if a Negro
is arrested charged with criminal assault on a white woman, if he's
guilty, there isn't one chance in a million of his going free. Why
don't they bring them to trial and execute them legally instead of
hanging and burning them?"
"Why? Why?" The judge repeated the interrogative as though it were a
word he had never heard before. "You know, and so do I and all the
rest of us here in the South, that nine out of ten cases where these
trifling women holler and claim they been raped, they ain't been no
rape. They just got caught and they yelled rape to save their
reputations. And they lynch the nigra to hush the matter up."
Kenneth was amazed at the old man. Not amazed at what he said, for
that is common knowledge in the South. He was astounded that even so
liberal a man as the judge should frankly admit that which is denied
in public but known to be true. He hesitated to press the inquiry
further, and thought it expedient to shift the conversation away
from such dangerous ground.
"Why don't men like yourself speak out against the things you know
are wrong, Judge?".
"What would happen to us if we did? Count me out ‘cause I'm so old I
couldn't do much. But take right here in Central City the men I've
talked with just like I'm talking to you. How many of them could say
what they really want to? I don't mean on the race question. I mean
on any question—religion, politics—oh—anything at all. Suppose Roy
Ewing or any other white man here said he was tired of voting the
Democratic ticket and was going to vote Republican or Socialist.
Suppose he decided he didn't believe in the Virgin Birth or that all
bad folks were burned eternally in a lake of fire and brimstone
after they died. If they didn't think he was crazy, they'd stop
trading with him and all the womenfolks would run from Roy's wife
and daughter like they had the smallpox. That's the hell of it, Ken.
These po' white trash stopped everybody from talking against
lynching nigras, and they've stopped us from talking about anything.
And far's I can see, things're getting worse every day."
"Couldn't you organize those white people who think like you do?"
asked Kenneth.
"No, that ain't much use either. It all goes back to the same
root—self-interest—how much is it going to cost me? I tell you, Ken,
the most tragic figure I know is the white man in the South who
wants to be decent. This here system of lynching and covering up
their lynching with lying has grown so big that any man who tries to
tackle it is beat befo' he starts. Specially in the little towns.
Now in Atlanta there's some folks can speak out and say most
anything they please, but here⸺" The old lawyer threw out his hands
in a gesture of hopelessness.
"Why can't the South see where their course is leading them?" asked
Kenneth. "Suppose there wasn't a white man in the South who was
interested in the Negro. Suppose every white man hated every Negro
who lived. Why couldn't they see even then that they are doing more
harm to themselves than they could ever do to the Negro? With all
its rich natural resources, with its fertile soil and its wonderful
climate, the South is farther behind in civilization than any other
part of the United States—or the world, for that matter. Aren't they
ever going to see how they're hurting themselves by trying to keep
the Negro down?"
"That's just it," replied the judge. "A man starts out practising
cheating in a petty way, and before he knows it he's crooked all the
way through. He starts being mean part of the time, and soon he's
mean all over. Or he tries being kind and decent, and he turns out
to be pretty decent. It's just like a man drinking liquor—first
thing he knows, he's liable to be drunk all the time."
The judge shifted his cigar to a corner of his mouth and let fly a
stream of tobacco juice from the other corner, every drop landing
squarely in the box of sawdust some ten feet away. He went on:
"That's just what's the matter with the South. She's been brutal and
tricky and deceitful so long in trying to keep the nigras down, she
couldn't be decent if she tried. If acting like this was going to
get them anywhere, there might be some reason in it all, but they've
shut their eyes, they refuse to see that nigras like you ain't going
to be handled like yo' daddy and folks like him were."
"What are we going to do—what can we do?" asked Kenneth. Never had
he suspected that even so fine a man as Judge Stevenson had thought
things through as their conversation had indicated. He felt the
situation was not entirely hopeless when men like the judge felt and
talked as he did. Perhaps they were the leaven that would affect the
lump of ignorance and viciousness that was the South.
"What are we going to do?" echoed the elder man. "God knows—I don't!
Mebbe the lid will blow off some day—then there would be hell to
pay! One thing's going to help, and that's nigras pulling up stakes
and going North. When some of these white folks begin to see their
fields going to seed, they'll begin to realize how much they need
the nigra—just like some of 'em are seeing already."
"But are they seeing it in the right way?" asked Kenneth. "Instead
of trying to make things better so Negroes are willing to stay in
the South, they're trying more oppressive methods than ever before.
They're beating up labour agents, charging them a thousand dollars
for licences, lynching more Negroes, and robbing them more than
ever."
"Oh, they'll be fools enough until the real pinch comes. Far's I can
see, instead of stopping nigras from going North, them things are
hurrying them up. Wait till it hits their pocket-books hard. Then
the white people'll get some sense."
"Let's hope so," was Kenneth's rejoinder as he rose to go. "It's
been mighty comforting to talk like this with you, Judge. Things
don't seem so hopeless when we've got friends like you."
"'Tain't nothing. Nothing at all," replied the judge. "Just like to
talk with somebody's got some sense. It's a pity you're coloured,
Ken, you got too much sense to be a nigra."
Kenneth laughed.
"From all we've been saying, a coloured man's got to have some sense
or else he's in a mighty poor fix nowadays."
He did not resent the old man's remark, for he knew the judge could
not understand that he was much more contented as a member of a race
that was struggling upward than he would have been as one of that
race that expended most of its time and thought and energy in
exploiting and oppressing others. The judge followed him to the door
promising to draw up the necessary legal documents for the
co-operative society. When Kenneth broached the subject of payment,
the old man waved his hand again in protest.
"Ain't got long to live, so's I got to do what little I can to help.
'Tain't much I can do, but I'll help all I can."
Thanking him, Kenneth started to leave, but the judge recalled him
after he had reached the hallway. "Ken, just consider all I said as
between us. Can't tell what folks'd say if they knew I been running
on like this."
There was almost a note of pleading in his voice. Kenneth assured
the judge their conversation would be treated as confidential. As he
walked home, he reflected on the anomalous position the judge and
men like him occupied, hemmed in, oppressed, afraid to call their
souls their own, creatures of the Frankenstein monster their own
people had created which seemed about to rise up and destroy its
creators. No, he said to himself, he would much rather be a Negro
with all his problems than be made a moral coward as the race
problem had made the white people of the South.
The judge stood at the window, dim with the dust of many months, and
gazed at Kenneth's broad back as he swung down Lee Street. Long
after he had disappeared, the old man stood there, chewing on the
cigar which by now was a mangled mass of wet tobacco. At last he
turned away and resumed his seat in the comfortable old chair where
Kenneth had found him. He shook his head slowly, doubtfully, and
murmured, half to himself, half to the dusty, empty room:
"Hope this thing turns out all right. Hope he don't get in no
trouble. But even if he does, there'll be more like him coming
on—and they got too much sense to stand for what nigras been made to
suffer. Lord, if we only had a few white folks who had some sense …"
It was almost a prayer.