Matthew Fisher, alias Max Disher, joined the Easter Sunday crowds,
twirling his malacca stick and ogling the pretty flappers who passed
giggling in their Spring finery. For nearly three months he had idled
around the Georgia capital hoping to catch a glimpse of the beautiful
girl who on New Year's Eve had told him "I never dance with niggers."
He had searched diligently in almost every stratum of Atlanta society,
but he had failed to find her. There were hundreds of tall, beautiful,
blonde maidens in the city; to seek a particular one whose name one did
not know was somewhat akin to hunting for a Russian Jew in the Bronx or
a particular Italian gunman in Chicago.
For three months he had dreamed of this girl, carefully perused the
society columns of the local newspapers on the chance that her picture
might appear in them. He was like most men who have been repulsed by a
pretty girl, his desire for her grew stronger and stronger.
He was not finding life as a white man the rosy existence he had
anticipated. He was forced to conclude that it was pretty dull and that
he was bored. As a boy he had been taught to look up to white folks as
just a little less than gods; now he found them little different from
the Negroes, except that they were uniformly less courteous and less
interesting.
Often when the desire for the happy-go-lucky, jovial good-fellowship of
the Negroes came upon him strongly, he would go down to Auburn Avenue
and stroll around the vicinity, looking at the dark folk and listening
to their conversation and banter. But no one down there wanted him
around. He was a white man and thus suspect. Only the black women who
ran the "Call Houses" on the hill wanted his company. There was nothing
left for him except the hard, materialistic, grasping, ill-bred society
of the whites. Sometimes a slight feeling of regret that he had left
his people forever would cross his mind, but it fled before the painful
memories of past experiences in this, his home town.
The unreasoning and illogical color prejudice of most of the people
with whom he was forced to associate, infuriated him. He often laughed
cynically when some coarse, ignorant white man voiced his opinion
concerning the inferior mentality and morality of the Negroes. He was
moving in white society now and he could compare it with the society
he had known as a Negro in Atlanta and Harlem. What a let-down it was
from the good breeding, sophistication, refinement and gentle cynicism
to which he had become accustomed as a popular young man about town in
New York's Black Belt. He was not able to articulate this feeling but
he was conscious of the reaction nevertheless.
For a week, now, he had been thinking seriously of going to work. His
thousand dollars had dwindled to less than a hundred. He would have to
find some source of income and yet the young white men with whom he
talked about work all complained that it was very scarce. Being white,
he finally concluded, was no Open Sesame to employment for he sought
work in banks and insurance offices without success.
During his period of idleness and soft living, he had followed the news
and opinion in the local daily press and confessed himself surprised
at the antagonistic attitude of the newspapers toward Black-No-More,
Incorporated. From the vantage point of having formerly been a Negro,
he was able to see how the newspapers were fanning the color prejudice
of the white people. Business men, he found, were also bitterly opposed
to Dr. Crookman and his efforts to bring about chromatic democracy in
the nation.
The attitude of these people puzzled him. Was not Black-No-More
getting rid of the Negroes upon whom all of the blame was placed for
the backwardness of the South? Then he recalled what a Negro street
speaker had said one night on the corner of 138th Street and Seventh
Avenue in New York: that unorganized labor meant cheap labor; that
the guarantee of cheap labor was an effective means of luring new
industries into the South; that so long as the ignorant white masses
could be kept thinking of the menace of the Negro to Caucasian race
purity and political control, they would give little thought to
labor organization. It suddenly dawned upon Matthew Fisher that this
Black-No-More treatment was more of a menace to white business than to
white labor. And not long afterward he became aware of the money-making
possibilities involved in the present situation.
How could he work it? He was not known and he belonged to no
organization. Here was a veritable gold mine but how could he reach
the ore? He scratched his head over the problem but could think of no
solution. Who would be interested in it that he could trust?
He was pondering this question the Monday after Easter while
breakfasting in an armchair restaurant when he noticed an advertisement
in a newspaper lying in the next chair. He read it and then re-read it: