Dr. Junius Crookman, looking tired and worn, poured himself another
cup of coffee from the percolator near by and turning to Hank Johnson,
asked "What about that new electrical apparatus?"
"On th' way, Doc. On th' way," replied the former Numbers baron. "Just
talkin' to th' man this mornin'. He says we'll get it tomorrow, maybe."
"Well, we certainly need it," said Chuck Foster, who sat beside him on
the large leather divan. "We can't handle all of the business as it is."
"How about those new places you're buying?" asked the physician.
"Well, I've bought the big private house on Edgecombe Avenue for
fifteen thousand and the workmen are getting it in shape now. It ought
to be ready in about a week if nothing happens," Foster informed him.
"If nuthin' happens?" echoed Johnson. "Whut's gonna happen? We're
settin' on th' world, ain't we? Our racket's within th' law, ain't it?
We're makin' money faster'n we can take it in, ain't we? Whut could
happen? This here is the best and safest graft I've ever been in."
"Oh, you never can tell," cautioned the quondom realtor. "These white
newspapers, especially in the South, are beginning to write some pretty
strong editorials against us and we've only been running two weeks. You
know how easy it is to stir up the fanatical element. Before we know it
they're liable to get a law passed against us."
"Not if I c'n git to th' legislature first," interrupted Johnson. "Yuh
know, Ah knows how tuh handle these white folks. If yuh 'Say it with
Bucks' you c'n git anything yuh want."
"There is something in what Foster says, though," Dr. Crookman said.
"Just look at this bunch of clippings we got in this morning. Listen
to these: 'The Viper in Our Midst,' from the Richmond _Blade_; 'The
Menace of Science' from the Memphis _Bugle_; 'A Challenge to Every
White Man' from the Dallas _Sun_; 'Police Battle Black Mob Seeking
White Skins,' from the Atlanta _Topic_; 'Negro Doctor Admits Being
Taught by Germans,' from the St. Louis _North American_. Here's a
line or two from an editorial in the Oklahoma City _Hatchet_: 'There
are times when the welfare of our race must take precedence over law.
Opposed as we always have been to mob violence as the worst enemy of
democratic government, we cannot help but feel that the intelligent
white men and women of New York City who are interested in the purity
and preservation of their race should not permit the challenge of
Crookmanism to go unanswered, even though these black scoundrels may be
within the law. There are too many criminals in this country already
hiding behind the skirts of the law.'
"And lastly, one from the Tallahassee _Announcer_ says: 'While it is
the right of every citizen to do what he wants to do with his money,
the white people of the United States cannot remain indifferent to
this discovery and its horrible potentialities. Hundreds of Negroes
with newly-acquired white skins have already entered white society and
thousands will follow them. The black race from one end of the country
to the other has in two short weeks gone completely crazy over the
prospect of getting white. Day by day we see the color line which we
have so laboriously established being rapidly destroyed. There would
not be so much cause for alarm in this, were it not for the fact that
this vitiligo is not hereditary. In other words, THE OFFSPRING OF THESE
WHITENED NEGROES WILL BE NEGROES! This means that your daughter, having
married a supposed white man, may find herself with a black baby! Will
the proud white men of the Southland so far forget their traditions as
to remain idle while this devilish work is going on?'"
"No use singin' th' blues," counseled Johnson. "We ain' gonna be
both'ed heah, even if them crackahs down South do raise a little hell.
Jus' lissen to th' sweet music of that mob out theah! Eve'y scream
means fifty bucks. On'y reason we ain't makin' mo' money is 'cause we
ain't got no mo' room."
"That's right," Dr. Crookman agreed. "We've turned out one hundred a
day for fourteen days." He leaned back and lit a cigarette.
"At fifty bucks a th'ow," interrupted Johnson, "that means we've took
in seventy thousand dollahs. Great Day in th' mornin'! Didn't know tha
was so much jack in Harlem."
"Yes," continued Crookman, "we're taking in thirty-five thousand
dollars a week. As soon as you and Foster get that other place fixed up
we'll be making twice that much."
From the hallway came the voice of the switchboard operator
monotonously droning out her instructions: "No, Dr. Crookman cannot
see anyone.... Dr. Crookman has nothing to say.... Dr. Crookman will
issue a statement shortly.... Fifty Dollars.... No, Dr. Crookman isn't
a mulatto.... I'm very sorry but I cannot answer that question."
The three friends sat in silence amid the hum of activity around them.
Hank Johnson smiled down at the end of his cigar as he thought back
over his rather colorful and hectic career. To think that today he was
one of the leading Negroes of the world, one who was taking an active
and important part in solving the most vexatious problem in American
life, and yet only ten years before he had been working on a Carolina
chain gang. Two years he had toiled on the roads under the hard eye and
ready rifle of a cruel white guard; two years of being beaten, kicked
and cursed, of poor food and vermin-infested habitations; two years for
participating in a little crap game. Then he had drifted to Charleston,
got a job in a pool room, had a stroke of luck with the dice, come
to New York and landed right in the midst of the Numbers racket.
Becoming a collector or "runner," he had managed his affairs well
enough to be able to start out soon as a "banker." Money had poured
in from Negroes eager to chance one cent in the hope of winning six
dollars. Some won but most lost and he had prospered. He had purchased
an apartment house, paid off the police, dabbled in the bail bond
game, given a couple of thousand dollars to advance Negro Art and been
elected Grand Permanent Shogun of the Ancient and Honorable Order of
Crocodiles, Harlem's largest and most prosperous secret society. Then
young Crookman had come to him with his proposition. At first he had
hesitated about helping him but later was persuaded to do so when the
young man bitterly complained that the dicty Negroes would not help to
pay for the studies abroad. What a stroke of luck, getting in on the
ground floor like this! They'd all be richer than Rockefeller inside
of a year. Twelve million Negroes at fifty dollars apiece! Great Day
in the morning! Hank spat regally into the brass cuspidor across the
office and reared back contentedly on the soft cushion of the divan.
Chuck Foster was also seeing his career in retrospect. His life had
not been as colorful as that of Hank Johnson. The son of a Birmingham
barber, he had enjoyed such educational advantages as that community
afforded the darker brethren; had become a schoolteacher, an insurance
agent and a social worker in turn. Then, along with the tide of
migration, he had drifted first to Cincinnati, then to Pittsburgh
and finally to New York. There the real estate field, unusually
lucrative because of the paucity of apartments for the increasing Negro
population, had claimed him. Cautious, careful, thrifty and devoid of
sentimentality, he had prospered, but not without some ugly rumors
being broadcast about his sharp business methods. As he slowly worked
his way up to the top of Harlem society, he had sought to live down
this reputation for double-dealing and shifty practices, all too true
of the bulk of his fellow realtors in the district, by giving large
sums to the Young Men's and Young Women's Christian Associations, by
offering scholarships to young Negroes, by staging elaborate parties
to which the dicty Negroes of the community were invited. He had been
glad of the opportunity to help subsidize young Crookman's studies
abroad when Hank Johnson pointed out the possibilities of the venture.
Now, although the results so far exceeded his wildest dreams, his
natural conservatism and timidity made him somewhat pessimistic about
the future. He supposed a hundred dire results of their activities and
only the day before he had increased the amount of his life insurance.
His mind was filled with doubts. He didn't like so much publicity. He
wanted a sort of genteel popularity but no notoriety.
* * * * *
Despite the coffee and cigarettes, Dr. Junius Crookman was sleepy.
The responsibility, the necessity of overseeing the work of his
physicians and nurses, the insistence of the newspapers and the medical
profession that he reveal the secrets of his treatment and a thousand
other vexatious details had kept him from getting proper rest. He had,
indeed, spent most of his time in the sanitarium.
This hectic activity was new to him. Up until a month ago his
thirty-five years had been peaceful and, in the main, studious ones.
The son of an Episcopal clergyman, he had been born and raised in a
city in central New York, his associates carefully selected in order
to protect him as much as possible from the defeatist psychology so
prevalent among American Negroes and given every opportunity and
inducement to learn his profession and become a thoroughly cultivated
and civilized man. His parents, though poor, were proud and boasted
that they belonged to the Negro aristocracy. He had had to work his
way through college because of the failure of his father's health
but he had come very little in contact with the crudity, coarseness
and cruelty of life. He had been monotonously successful but he was
sensible enough to believe that a large part of it was due, like most
success, to chance. He saw in his great discovery the solution to
the most annoying problem in American life. Obviously, he reasoned,
if there were no Negroes, there could be no Negro problem. Without a
Negro problem, Americans could concentrate their attention on something
constructive. Through his efforts and the activities of Black-No-More,
Incorporated, it would be possible to do what agitation, education
and legislation had failed to do. He was naïvely surprised that there
should be opposition to his work. Like most men with a vision, a plan,
a program or a remedy, he fondly imagined people to be intelligent
enough to accept a good thing when it was offered to them, which was
conclusive evidence that he knew little about the human race.
Dr. Crookman prided himself above all on being a great lover of
his race. He had studied its history, read of its struggles and
kept up with its achievements. He subscribed to six or seven Negro
weekly newspapers and two of the magazines. He was so interested in
the continued progress of the American Negroes that he wanted to
remove all obstacles in their path by depriving them of their racial
characteristics. His home and office were filled with African masks
and paintings of Negroes by Negroes. He was what was known in Negro
society as a Race Man. He was wedded to everything black except the
black woman--his wife was a white girl with remote Negro ancestry,
of the type that Negroes were wont to describe as being "able to
pass for white." While abroad he had spent his spare time ransacking
the libraries for facts about the achievements of Negroes and having
liaisons with comely and available fraus and frauleins.
"Well, Doc," said Hank Johnson, suddenly, "you'd bettah go on home 'n
git some sleep. Ain' no use killin' you'sef. Eve'thing's gonna be all
right heah. You ain' gotta thing tuh worry 'bout."
"How's he gonna get out of here with that mob in front?" Chuck
inquired. "A man almost needs a tank to get through that crowd of
darkies."
"Oh, Ah've got all that fixed, Calamity Jane," Johnson remarked
casually. "All he's gotta do is tuh go on down staihs tuh the basem'nt,
go out th' back way an' step into th' alley. My car'll be theah waitin'
fo' 'im."
"That's awfully nice of you, Johnson," said the physician. "I am dead
tired. I think I'll be a new man if I can get a few hours of sleep."
A black man in white uniform opened the door and announced:
"Mrs. Crookman!" He held the door open for the Doctor's petite,
stylishly-dressed wife to enter. The three men sprang to their feet.
Johnson and Foster eyed the beautiful little octoroon appreciatively as
they bowed, thinking how easily she could "pass for white," which would
have been something akin to a piece of anthracite coal passing for
black.
"Darling!" she exclaimed, turning to her husband. "Why don't you come
home and get some rest? You'll be ill if you keep on in this way."
"Jus' whut Ah bin tellin' him, Mrs. Crookman," Johnson hastened to say.
"We got eve'ything fixed tuh send 'im off."
"Well, then, Junius, we'd better be going," she said decisively.
Putting on a long overcoat over his white uniform, Dr. Crookman,
wearily and meekly followed his spouse out of the door.
"Mighty nice looking girl, Mrs. Crookman," Foster observed.
"Nice lookin'!" echoed Johnson, with mock amazement. "Why, nigguh, that
ooman would make uh rabbit hug uh houn'. Doc sez she's cullud, an' she
sez so, but she looks mighty white tuh me."
"Everything that looks white ain't white in this man's country," Foster
replied.
* * * * *
Meantime there was feverish activity in Harlem's financial
institutions. At the Douglass Bank the tellers were busier than
bootleggers on Christmas Eve. Moreover, they were short-handed because
of the mysterious absence of Bunny Brown. A long queue of Negroes
extended down one side of the bank, out of the front door and around
the corner, while bank attendants struggled to keep them in line.
Everybody was drawing out money; no one was depositing. In vain the
bank officials pleaded with them not to withdraw their funds. The
Negroes were adamant: they wanted their money and wanted it quick. Day
after day this had gone on ever since Black-No-More, Incorporated, had
started turning Negroes white. At first, efforts were made to bulldoze
and intimidate the depositors but that didn't succeed. These people
were in no mood to be trifled with. A lifetime of being Negroes in the
United States had convinced them that there was great advantage in
being white.
"Mon, whutcha tahlk ab't?" scoffed a big, black British West Indian
woman with whom an official was remonstrating not to draw out her
money. "Dis heah's mah mahney, ain't it? Yuh use mah mahney alla time,
aintcha? Whutcha mean, Ah shouldn't draw't out?... You gimme mah
mahney or Ah broke up dis place!"
"Are you closing your account, Mr. Robinson?" a soft-voiced mulatto
teller inquired of a big, rusty stevedore.
"Ah ain't openin' it," was the rejoinder. "Ah wants th' whole thing,
an' Ah don't mean maybe."
Similar scenes were being enacted at the Wheatley Trust Company and at
the local Post Office station.
An observer passing up and down the streets would have noted a general
exodus from the locality. Moving vans were backed up to apartment
houses on nearly every block.
The "For Rent" signs were appearing in larger number in Harlem than
at any time in twenty-five years. Landlords looked on helplessly as
apartment after apartment emptied and was not filled. Even the refusal
to return deposits did not prevent the tenants from moving out. What,
indeed, was fifty, sixty or seventy dollars when one was leaving
behind insult, ostracism, segregation and discrimination? Moreover,
the whitened Negroes were saving a great deal of money by being able
to change localities. The mechanics of race prejudice had forced them
into the congested Harlem area where, at the mercy of white and black
real estate sharks, they had been compelled to pay exorbitant rentals
because the demand for housing far exceeded the supply. As a general
rule the Negroes were paying one hundred per cent more than white
tenants in other parts of the city for a smaller number of rooms and
worse service.
The installment furniture and clothing houses in the area were also
beginning to feel the results of the activities of Black-No-More,
Incorporated. Collectors were reporting their inability to locate
certain families or the articles they had purchased on time. Many of
the colored folk, it was said, had sold their furniture to second-hand
stores and vanished with the proceeds into the great mass of white
citizenry.
At the same time there seemed to be more white people on the streets of
Harlem than at any time in the past twenty years. Many of them appeared
to be on the most intimate terms with the Negroes, laughing, talking,
dining and dancing in a most un-Caucasian way. This sort of association
had always gone on at night but seldom in the daylight.
Strange Negroes from the West and South who had heard the good news
were to be seen on the streets and in public places, patiently awaiting
their turn at the Crookman Institute.
* * * * *
Madame Sisseretta Blandish sat disconsolately in an armchair near the
front door of her ornate hair-straightening shop, looking blankly at
the pedestrians and traffic passing to and fro. These two weeks had
been hard ones for her. Everything was going out and nothing coming
in. She had been doing very well at her vocation for years and was
acclaimed in the community as one of its business leaders. Because of
her prominence as the proprietor of a successful enterprise engaged
in making Negroes appear as much like white folks as possible, she
had recently been elected for the fourth time a Vice-President of the
American Race Pride League. She was also head of the Woman's Committee
of the New York Branch of the Social Equality League and held an
important place in local Republican politics. But all of these honors
brought little or no money with them. They didn't help to pay her rent
or purchase the voluminous dresses she required to drape her Amazonian
form. Only that day her landlord had brought her the sad news that he
either wanted his money or the premises.
Where, she wondered, would she get the money. Like most New Yorkers
she put up a big front with very little cash behind it, always looking
hopefully forward to the morrow for a lucky break. She had two-thirds
of the rent money already, by dint of much borrowing, and if she
could "do" a few nappy heads she would be in the clear; but hardly a
customer had crossed her threshold in a fortnight, except two or three
Jewish girls from downtown who came up regularly to have their hair
straightened because it wouldn't stand inspection in the Nordic world.
The Negro women had seemingly deserted her. Day after day she saw her
old customers pass by hurriedly without even looking in her direction.
Verily a revolution was taking place in Negro society.
"Oh, Miss Simpson!" cried the hair-straightener after a passing young
lady. "Ain't you going to say hello?"
The young woman halted reluctantly and approached the doorway. Her
brown face looked strained. Two weeks before she would have been a rare
sight in the Black Belt because her kinky hair was not straightened; it
was merely combed, brushed and neatly pinned up. Miss Simpson had vowed
that she wasn't going to spend any dollar a week having her hair "done"
when she only lacked fifteen dollars of having money enough to quit the
Negro race forever.
"Sorry, Mrs. Blandish," she apologized, "but I swear I didn't see
you. I've been just that busy that I haven't had eyes for anything or
anybody except my job and back home again. You know I'm all alone now.
Yes, Charlie went over two weeks ago and I haven't heard a word from
him. Just think of that! After all I've done for that nigger. Oh well!
I'll soon be over there myself. Another week's work will fix me all
right."
"Humph!" snorted Mme. Blandish. "That's all you niggers are thinking
about nowadays. Why don't you come down here and give me some
business? If I don't hurry up and make some more money I'll have to
close up this place and go to work myself."
"Well, I'm sorry, Mrs. Blandish," the girl mumbled indifferently,
moving off toward the corner to catch the approaching street car, "but
I guess I can hold out with this here bad hair until Saturday night.
You know I've taken too much punishment being dark these twenty-two
years to miss this opportunity.... Well," she flung over her shoulder,
"Goodbye! See you later."
Madame Blandish settled her 250 pounds back into her armchair and
sighed heavily. Like all American Negroes she had desired to be white
when she was young and before she entered business for herself and
became a person of consequence in the community. Now she had lived
long enough to have no illusions about the magic of a white skin. She
liked her business and she liked her social position in Harlem. As a
white woman she would have to start all over again, and she wasn't so
sure of herself. Here at least she was somebody. In the great Caucasian
world she would be just another white woman, and they were becoming a
drug on the market, what with the simultaneous decline of chivalry,
the marriage rate and professional prostitution. She had seen too many
elderly, white-haired Caucasian females scrubbing floors and toiling
in sculleries not to know what being just another white woman meant.
Yet she admitted to herself that it would be nice to get over being the
butt for jokes and petty prejudice.
The Madame was in a quandary and so also were hundreds of others in the
upper stratum of Harlem life. With the Negro masses moving out from
under them, what other alternative did they have except to follow.
True, only a few hundred Negroes had so far vanished from their wonted
haunts, but it was known that thousands, tens of thousands, yes,
millions would follow them.