A huge silver monoplane glided gracefully to the surface of Mines Field
in Los Angeles and came to a pretty stop after a short run. A liveried
footman stepped out of the forward compartment armed with a stool which
he placed under the rear door. Simultaneously a high-powered foreign
car swept up close to the airplane and waited. The rear door of the
airplane opened, and to the apparent surprise of the nearby mechanics
a tall, black, distinguished-looking Negro stepped out and down to
the ground, assisted by the hand of the footman. Behind him came a
pale young man and woman, evidently secretaries. The three entered the
limousine which rapidly drove off.
"Who's that coon?" asked one of the mechanics, round-eyed and
respectful, like all Americans, in the presence of great wealth.
"Don't you know who that is?" inquired another, pityingly. "Why that's
that Dr. Crookman. You know, the fellow what's turnin' niggers white.
See that B N M on the side of his plane? That stands for Black-No-More.
Gee, but I wish I had just half the jack he's made in the last six
months!"
"Why I thought from readin' th' papers," protested the first speaker,
"that th' law had closed up his places and put 'im outta business."
"Oh, that's a lotta hockey," said the other fellow. "Why just yesterday
th' newspapers said that Black-No-More was openin' a place on Central
Avenue. They already got one in Oakland, so a coon told me yesterday."
"'Sfunny," ventured a third mechanic, as they wheeled the big plane
into a nearby hangar, "how he don't have nuthin' but white folks around
him. He must not like nigger help. His chauffeur's white, his footman's
white an' that young gal and feller what was with him are white."
"How do you know?" challenged the first speaker. "They may be darkies
that he's turned into white folks."
"That's right," the other replied. "It's gittin' so yuh can't tell
who's who. I think that there Knights of Nordica ought to do something
about it. I joined up with 'em two months ago but they ain't done
nuthin' but sell me an ole uniform an' hold a coupla meetin's."
They lapsed into silence. Sandol, the erstwhile Senegalese, stepped
from the cockpit grinning. "Ah, zese Americains," he muttered to
himself as he went over the engine, examining everything minutely.
"Where'd yuh come from, buddy?" asked one of the mechanics.
"Den-vair," Sandol replied.
"Whatcha doin', makin' a trip around th' country?" queried another.
"Yes, we air, what you callem, on ze tour inspectione," the aviator
continued. They could think of no more to say and soon strolled off.
* * * * *
Around an oval table on the seventh floor of a building on Central
Avenue, sat Dr. Junius Crookman, Hank Johnson, Chuck Foster, Ranford
the Doctor's secretary and four other men. At the lower end of the
table Miss Bennett, Ranford's stenographer, was taking notes. A
soft-treading waiter whose Negro nature was only revealed by his
mocking obsequiousness, served each with champagne.
"To our continued success!" cried the physician, lifting his glass high.
"To our continued success!" echoed the others.
They drained their glasses, and returned them to the polished surface
of the table.
"Dog bite it, Doc!" blurted Johnson. "Us sho is doin' fine. Ain't had a
bad break since we stahted, an' heah 'tis th' fust o' September."
"Don't holler too soon," cautioned Foster. "The opposition is growing
keener every day. I had to pay seventy-five thousand dollars more for
this building than it's worth."
"Well, yuh got it, didn't yuh?" asked Johnson. "Just like Ah allus
say: when yuh got money yuh kin git anything in this man's country.
Whenever things look tight jes pull out th' ole check book an'
eve'ything's all right."
"Optimist!" grunted Foster.
"I ain't no pess'mist," Johnson accused.
"Now gentlemen," Dr. Crookman interrupted, clearing his throat, "let's
get down to business. We have met here, as you know, not only for the
purpose of celebrating the opening of this, our fiftieth sanitarium,
but also to take stock of our situation. I have before me here a
detailed report of our business affairs for the entire period of seven
months and a half that we've been in operation.
"During that time we have put into service fifty sanitariums from
Coast to Coast, or an average of one every four and one-half days,
the average capacity of each sanitarium being one hundred and five
patients. Each place has a staff of six physicians and twenty-four
nurses, a janitor, four orderlies, two electricians, bookkeeper,
cashier, stenographer and record clerk, not counting four guards.
"For the past four months we have had an equipment factory in
Pittsburgh in full operation and a chemical plant in Philadelphia.
In addition to this we have purchased four airplanes and a radio
broadcasting station. Our expenditures for real estate, salaries
and chemicals have totaled six million, two hundred and fifty-five
thousand, eighty-five dollars and ten cents."
"He! He!" chuckled Johnson. "Dat ten cents mus' be fo' one o' them bad
ceegars that Fostah smokes."
"Our total income," continued Dr. Crookman, frowning slightly at the
interruption, "has been eighteen million, five hundred thousand, three
hundred dollars, or three hundred and seventy thousand and six patients
at fifty dollars apiece. I think that vindicates my contention at the
beginning that the fee should be but fifty dollars--within the reach of
the rank and file of Negroes." He laid aside his report and added:
"In the next four months we'll double our output and by the end of the
year we should cut the fee to twenty-five dollars," he lightly twirled
his waxed mustache between his long sensitive fingers and smiled with
satisfaction.
"Yes," said Foster, "the sooner we get this business over with the
better. We're going to run into a whole lot more opposition from now on
than we have so far encountered."
"Why man!" growled Johnson, "we ain't even stahted on dese darkies yet.
And when we git thu wi' dese heah, we kin work on them in th' West
Indies. Believe me, Ah doan _nevah_ want dis graft tuh end."
"Now," continued Dr. Crookman, "I want to say that Mr. Foster deserves
great praise for the industry and ingenuity he has shown in purchasing
our real estate and Mr. Johnson deserves equally great praise for
the efficient manner in which he has kept down the opposition of the
various city officials. As you know, he has spent nearly a million
dollars in such endeavors and almost as much again in molding
legislative sentiment in Washington and the various state capitals.
That accounts for the fact that every bill introduced in a legislature
or municipal council to put us out of business has died in committee.
Moreover, through his corps of secret operatives, who are mostly young
women, he has placed numbers of officials and legislators in a position
where they cannot openly oppose our efforts."
A smile of appreciation went around the circle.
"We'll have a whole lot to do from now on," commented Foster.
"Yeh, Big Boy," replied the ex-gambler, "an' whut it takes tuh do it Ah
ain't got nuthin' else but!"
"Certainly," said the physician, "our friend Hank has not been
overburdened with scruples."
"Ah doan know whut dat is, Chief," grinned Johnson, "but Ah knows whut
a check book'll do. Even these crackers tone down when Ah talks bucks."
"This afternoon," continued Crookman, "we also have with us our three
regional directors, Doctors Henry Dogan, Charles Hinckle and Fred
Selden, as well as our chief chemist, Wallace Butts. I thought it
would be a good idea to bring you all together for this occasion so we
could get better acquainted. We'll just have a word from each of them.
They're all good Race men, you know, even if they have, like the rest
of our staff, taken the treatment."
For the next three-quarters of an hour the three directors and the
chief chemist reported on the progress of their work. At intervals the
waiter brought in cold drinks, cigars and cigarettes. Overhead whirred
the electric fans. Out of the wide open windows could be seen the
panorama of bungalows, pavements, palm trees, trundling street cars and
scooting automobiles.
"Lawd! Lawd! Lawd!" Johnson exclaimed at the conclusion of the meeting,
going to the window and gazing out over the city. "Jes gimme a coupla
yeahs o' dis graft an' Ah'll make Henry Foahd look like a tramp."
* * * * *
Meanwhile, Negro society was in turmoil and chaos. The colored folk
in straining every nerve to get the Black-No-More treatment, had
forgotten all loyalties, affiliations and responsibilities. No longer
did they flock to the churches on Sundays or pay dues in their numerous
fraternal organizations. They had stopped giving anything to the
Anti-Lynching campaign. Santop Licorice, head of the once-flourishing
Back-To-Africa Society, was daily raising his stentorian voice in
denunciation of the race for deserting his organization.
Negro business was being no less hard hit. Few people were bothering
about getting their hair straightened or skin whitened temporarily when
for a couple of weeks' pay they could get both jobs done permanently.
The immediate result of this change of mind on the part of the Negro
public was to almost bankrupt the firms that made the whitening and
straightening chemicals. They were largely controlled by canny Hebrews,
but at least a half-dozen were owned by Negroes. The rapid decline
in this business greatly decreased the revenue of the Negro weekly
newspapers who depended upon such advertising for their sustenance. The
actual business of hair straightening that had furnished employment to
thousands of colored women who would otherwise have had to go back to
washing and ironing, declined to such an extent that "To Rent" signs
hung in front of nine-tenths of the shops.
The Negro politicians in the various Black Belts, grown fat and sleek
"protecting" vice with the aid of Negro votes which they were able to
control by virtue of housing segregation, lectured in vain about black
solidarity, race pride and political emancipation; but nothing stopped
the exodus to the white race. Gloomily the politicians sat in their
offices, wondering whether to throw up the sponge and hunt the nearest
Black-No-More sanitarium or hold on a little longer in the hope that
the whites might put a stop to the activities of Dr. Crookman and his
associates. The latter, indeed, was their only hope because the bulk
of Negroes, saving their dimes and dollars for chromatic emancipation,
had stopped gambling, patronizing houses of prostitution or staging
Saturday-night brawls. Thus the usual sources of graft vanished. The
black politicians appealed to their white masters for succor, of
course, but they found to their dismay that most of the latter had been
safely bribed by the astute Hank Johnson.
Gone was the almost European atmosphere of every Negro ghetto: the
music, laughter, gaiety, jesting and abandon. Instead, one noted the
same excited bustle, wild looks and strained faces to be seen in a war
time soldier camp, around a new oil district or before a gold rush.
The happy-go-lucky Negro of song and story was gone forever and in his
stead was a nervous, money-grubbing black, stuffing away coin in socks,
impatiently awaiting a sufficient sum to pay Dr. Crookman's fee.
Up from the South they came in increasing droves, besieging the
Black-No-More sanitariums for treatment. There were none of these
havens in the South because of the hostility of the bulk of white
people but there were many all along the border between the two
sections, at such places as Washington, D. C., Baltimore, Cincinnati,
Louisville, Evansville, Cairo, St. Louis and Denver. The various
Southern communities attempted to stem this, the greatest migration
of Negroes in the history of the country, but without avail. By
train, boat, wagon, bicycle, automobile and foot they trekked to the
promised land; a hopeful procession, filtering through the outposts of
police and Knights of Nordica volunteer bands. Where there was great
opposition to the Negroes' going, there would suddenly appear large
quantities of free bootleg liquor and crisp new currency which would
make the most vigilant white opponent of Black-No-More turn his head
the other way. Hank Johnson seemed to be able to cope with almost every
situation.
* * * * *
The national office of the militant Negro organization, the National
Social Equality League, was agog. Telephone bells were ringing, mulatto
clerks were hustling excitedly back and forth, messenger boys rushed in
and out. Located in the Times Square district of Manhattan, it had for
forty years carried on the fight for full social equality for the Negro
citizens and the immediate abolition of lynching as a national sport.
While this organization had to depend to a large extent upon the
charity of white folk for its existence, since the blacks had always
been more or less skeptical about the program for liberty and freedom,
the efforts of the society were not entirely unprofitable. Vistas of
immaculate offices spread in every direction from the elevator and
footfalls were muffled in thick imitation-Persian rugs. While the large
staff of officials was eager to end all oppression and persecution of
the Negro, they were never so happy and excited as when a Negro was
barred from a theater or fried to a crisp. Then they would leap for
telephones, grab telegraph pads and yell for stenographers; smiling
through their simulated indignation at the spectacle of another reason
for their continued existence and appeals for funds.
Ever since the first sanitarium of Black-No-More, Incorporated,
started turning Negroes into Caucasians, the National Social Equality
League's income had been decreasing. No dues had been collected in
months and subscriptions to the national mouthpiece, _The Dilemma_, had
dwindled to almost nothing. Officials, long since ensconced in palatial
apartments, began to grow panic-stricken as pay days got farther apart.
They began to envision the time when they would no longer be able for
the sake of the Negro race to suffer the hardships of lunching on
canvasback duck at the Urban Club surrounded by the white dilettante,
endure the perils of first-class Transatlantic passage to stage
Save-Dear-Africa Conferences or undergo the excruciating torture of
rolling back and forth across the United States in drawing-rooms to
hear each other lecture on the Negro problem. On meager salaries of
five thousand dollars a year they had fought strenuously and tirelessly
to obtain for the Negroes the constitutional rights which only a few
thousand rich white folk possessed. And now they saw the work of a
lifetime being rapidly destroyed.
Single-handed they felt incapable of organizing an effective opposition
to Black-No-More, Incorporated, so they had called a conference of
all of the outstanding Negro leaders of the country to assemble at
the League's headquarters on December 1, 1933. Getting the Negro
leaders together for any purpose except boasting of each other's
accomplishments had previously been impossible. As a usual thing they
fought each other with a vigor only surpassed by that of their pleas
for racial solidarity and unity of action. This situation, however, was
unprecedented, so almost all of the representative gentlemen of color
to whom invitations had been sent agreed with alacrity to come. To a
man they felt that it was time to bury the hatchet before they became
too hungry to do any digging.
In a very private inner office of the N. S. E. L. suite, Dr.
Shakespeare Agamemnon Beard, founder of the League and a graduate of
Harvard, Yale and Copenhagen (whose haughty bearing never failed to
impress both Caucasians and Negroes) sat before a glass-topped desk,
rubbing now his curly gray head, and now his full spade beard. For a
mere six thousand dollars a year, the learned doctor wrote scholarly
and biting editorials in _The Dilemma_ denouncing the Caucasians
whom he secretly admired and lauding the greatness of the Negroes
whom he alternately pitied and despised. In limpid prose he told of
the sufferings and privations of the downtrodden black workers with
whose lives he was totally and thankfully unfamiliar. Like most Negro
leaders, he deified the black woman but abstained from employing aught
save octoroons. He talked at white banquets about "we of the black
race" and admitted in books that he was part-French, part-Russian,
part-Indian and part-Negro. He bitterly denounced the Nordics for
debauching Negro women while taking care to hire comely yellow
stenographers with weak resistance. In a real way, he loved his people.
In time of peace he was a Pink Socialist but when the clouds of war
gathered he bivouacked at the feet of Mars.
Before the champion of the darker races lay a neatly typed resolution
drawn up by him and his staff the day before and addressed to the
Attorney General of the United States. The staff had taken this
precaution because no member of it believed that the other Negro
leaders possessed sufficient education to word the document effectively
and grammatically. Dr. Beard re-read the resolution and then placing it
in the drawer of the desk, pressed one of a row of buttons. "Tell them
to come in," he directed. The mulattress turned and switched out of the
room, followed by the appraising and approving eye of the aged scholar.
He heaved a regretful sigh as the door closed and his thoughts dwelt on
the vigor of his youth.
In three or four minutes the door opened again and several well-dressed
blacks, mulattoes and white men entered the large office and took
seats around the wall. They greeted each other and the President of
the League with usual cordiality but for the first time in their lives
they were sincere about it. If anyone could save the day it was Beard.
They all admitted that, as did the Doctor himself. They pulled out fat
cigars, long slender cigarettes and London briar pipes, lit them and
awaited the opening of the conference.
The venerable lover of his race tapped with his knuckle for order, laid
aside his six-inch cigarette and rising, said:
"It were quite unseemly for me who lives such a cloistered life and
am spared the bane or benefit of many intimate contacts with those
of our struggling race who by sheer courage, tenacity and merit have
lifted their heads above the mired mass, to deign to take from a more
capable individual the unpleasant task of reviewing the combination of
unfortunate circumstances that has brought us together, man to man,
within the four walls of the office." He shot a foxy glance around the
assembly and then went on suavely. "And so, my friends, I beg your
august permission to confer upon my able and cultured secretary and
confidant, Dr. Napoleon Wellington Jackson, the office of chairman of
this temporary body. I need not introduce Dr. Jackson to you. You know
of his scholarship, his high sense of duty and his deep love of the
suffering black race. You have doubtless had the pleasure of singing
some of the many sorrow songs he has written and popularized in the
past twenty years, and you must know of his fame as a translator of
Latin poets and his authoritative work on the Greek language.
"Before I gratefully yield the floor to Dr. Jackson, however, I want
to tell you that our destiny lies in the stars. Ethiopia's fate is in
the balance. The Goddess of the Nile weeps bitter tears at the feet of
the Great Sphinx. The lowering clouds gather over the Congo and the
lightning flashes o'er Togoland. To your tents, O Israel! The hour is
at hand."
The president of the N. S. E. L. sat down and the erudite Dr. Jackson,
his tall, lanky secretary got up. There was no fear of Dr. Jackson ever
winning a beauty contest. He was a sooty black, very broad shouldered,
with long, ape-like arms, a diminutive egg-shaped head that sat on his
collar like a hen's egg on a demitasse cup and eyes that protruded so
far from his head that they seemed about to fall out. He wore pince-nez
that were continually slipping from his very flat and oily nose. His
chief business in the organization was to write long and indignant
letters to public officials and legislators whenever a Negro was
mistreated, demanding justice, fair play and other legal guarantees
vouchsafed no whites except bloated plutocrats fallen miraculously
afoul of the law, and to speak to audiences of sex-starved matrons
who yearned to help the Negro stand erect. During his leisure time,
which was naturally considerable, he wrote long and learned articles,
bristling with references, for the more intellectual magazines, in
which he sought to prove conclusively that the plantation shouts of
Southern Negro peons were superior to any of Beethoven's symphonies and
that the city of Benin was the original site of the Garden of Eden.
"Hhmm! Hu-umn! Now er--ah, gentlemen," began Dr. Jackson, rocking back
on his heels, taking off his eye glasses and beginning to polish them
with a silk kerchief, "as you know, the Negro race is face to face
with a grave crisis. I--ah--presume it is er--ah unnecessary for me to
go into any details concerning the-ah activities of Black-No-More,
Incorporated. Suffice er--ah umph! ummmmh! to say-ah that it has thrown
our society into rather a-ah bally turmoil. Our people are forgetting
shamelessly their-ah duty to the-ah organizations that have fought
valiantly for them these-ah many years and are now busily engaged
chasing a bally-ah will-o-the wisp. Ahem!
"You-ah probably all fully realize that-ah a continuation of
the aforementioned activities will prove disastrous to our-ah
organizations. You-ah, like us, must feel-uh that something drastic
must be done to preserve the integrity of Negro society. Think,
gentlemen, what the future will mean to-uh all those who-uh have
toiled so hard for Negro society. What-ah, may I ask, will we do
when there are no longer any-ah groups to support us? Of course, Dr.
Crookman and-ah his associates have a-uh perfect right to-ah engage
in any legitimate business, but-ah their present activities cannot-ah
be classed under that head, considering the effect on our endeavors.
Before we go any further, however, I-ah would like to introduce our
research expert Mr. Walter Williams, who will-ah describe the situation
in the South."
Mr. Walter Williams, a tall, heavy-set white man with pale blue eyes,
wavy auburn hair and a militant, lantern jaw, rose and bowed to the
assemblage and proceeded to paint a heartrending picture of the loss of
pride and race solidarity among Negroes North and South. There was,
he said, not a single local of the N. S. E. L. functioning, dues had
dwindled to nothing, he had not been able to hold a meeting anywhere,
while many of the stanchest supporters had gone over into the white
race.
"Personally," he concluded, "I am very proud to be a Negro and always
have been (his great-grandfather, it seemed, had been a mulatto), and
I'm willing to sacrifice for the uplift of my race. I cannot understand
what has come over our people that they have so quickly forgotten the
ancient glories of Ethiopia, Songhay and Dahomey, and their marvelous
record of achievement since emancipation." Mr. Williams was known to be
a Negro among his friends and acquaintances, but no one else would have
suspected it.
Another white man of remote Negro ancestry, Rev. Herbert Gronne of
Dunbar University, followed the research expert with a long discourse
in which he expressed fear for the future of his institution whose
student body had been reduced to sixty-five persons and deplored the
catastrophe "that has befallen us black people."
They all listened with respect to Dr. Gronne. He had been in turn a
college professor, a social worker and a minister, had received the
approval of the white folks and was thus doubly acceptable to the
Negroes. Much of his popularity was due to the fact that he very
cleverly knew how to make statements that sounded radical to Negroes
but sufficiently conservative to satisfy the white trustees of his
school. In addition he possessed the asset of looking perpetually
earnest and sincere.
Following him came Colonel Mortimer Roberts, principal of the Dusky
River Agricultural Institute, Supreme General of the Knights and
Daughters of Kingdom Come and president of the Uncle Tom Memorial
Association. Colonel Roberts was the acknowledged leader of the
conservative Negroes (most of whom had nothing to conserve) who felt at
all times that the white folks were in the lead and that Negroes should
be careful to guide themselves accordingly.
He was a great mountain of blackness with a head shaped like an
upturned bucket, pierced by two pig-like eyes and a cavernous mouth
equipped with large tombstone teeth which he almost continually
displayed. His speech was a cross between the woofing of a bloodhound
and the explosion of an inner tube. It conveyed to most white people
an impression of rugged simplicity and sincerity, which was very
fortunate since Colonel Roberts maintained his school through their
contributions. He spoke as usual about the cordial relations existing
between the two races in his native Georgia, the effrontery of Negroes
who dared whiten themselves and thus disturb the minds of white people
and insinuated alliance with certain militant organizations in the
South to stop this whitening business before it went too far. Having
spoken his mind and received scant applause, the Colonel (some white
man had once called him Colonel and the title stuck) puffing and
blowing, sat down.
Mr. Claude Spelling, a scared-looking little brown man with big ears,
who held the exalted office of president of the Society of Negro
Merchants, added his volume of blues to the discussion. The refrain
was that Negro business--always anemic--was about to pass out entirely
through lack of patronage. Mr. Spelling had for many years been the
leading advocate of the strange doctrine that an underpaid Negro worker
should go out of his way to patronize a little dingy Negro store
instead of going to a cheaper and cleaner chain store, all for the
dubious satisfaction of helping Negro merchants grow wealthy.
The next speaker, Dr. Joseph Bonds, a little rat-faced Negro with
protruding teeth stained by countless plugs of chewing tobacco and
wearing horn-rimmed spectacles, who headed the Negro Data League,
almost cried (which would have been terrible to observe) when he told
of the difficulty his workers had encountered in their efforts to
persuade retired white capitalists, whose guilty consciences persuaded
them to indulge in philanthropy, to give their customary donations to
the work. The philanthropists seemed to think, said Dr. Bonds, that
since the Negroes were busily solving their difficulties, there was no
need for social work among them or any collection of data. He almost
sobbed aloud when he described how his collections had fallen from
$50,000 a month to less than $1000.
His feeling in the matter could easily be appreciated. He was engaged
in a most vital and necessary work: i.e., collecting bales of data to
prove satisfactorily to all that more money was needed to collect more
data. Most of the data were highly informative, revealing the amazing
fact that poor people went to jail oftener than rich ones; that most of
the people were not getting enough money for their work; that strangely
enough there was some connection between poverty, disease and crime. By
establishing these facts with mathematical certitude and illustrating
them with elaborate graphs, Dr. Bonds garnered many fat checks. For
his people, he said, he wanted work, not charity; but for himself he
was always glad to get the charity with as little work as possible.
For many years he had succeeded in doing so without any ascertainable
benefit accruing to the Negro group.
Dr. Bonds' show of emotion almost brought the others to tears and many
of them muttered "Yes, Brother" while he was talking. The conferees
were getting stirred up but it took the next speaker to really get them
excited.
When he rose an expectant hush fell over the assemblage. They all
knew and respected the Right Reverend Bishop Ezekiel Whooper of the
Ethiopian True Faith Wash Foot Methodist Church for three reasons:
viz., his church was rich (though the parishioners were poor), he had
a very loud voice and the white people praised him. He was sixty,
corpulent and an expert at the art of making cuckolds.
"Our loyal and devoted clergy," he boomed, "are being forced into
manual labor and the Negro church is rapidly dying." And then he
launched into a violent tirade against Black-No-More and favored any
means to put the corporation out of business. In his excitement he
blew saliva, waved his long arms, stamped his feet, pummeled the desk,
rolled his eyes, knocked down his chair, almost sat on the rug and
generally reverted to the antics of Negro bush preachers.
This exhibition proved contagious. Rev. Herbert Gronne, face flushed
and shouting amens, marched from one end of the room to the other;
Colonel Roberts, looking like an inebriated black-faced comedian,
rocked back and forth clapping his hands; the others began to groan and
moan. Dr. Napoleon Wellington Jackson, sensing his opportunity, began
to sing a spiritual in his rich soprano voice. The others immediately
joined him. The very air seemed charged with emotion.
Bishop Whooper was about to start up again, when Dr. Beard, who had
sat cold and disdainful through this outbreak of revivalism, toying
with his gold-rimmed fountain pen and gazing at the exhibition through
half-closed eyelids, interrupted in sharp metallic tones.
"Let's get down to earth now," he commanded. "We've had enough of this
nonsense. We have a resolution here addressed to the Attorney General
of the United States demanding that Dr. Crookman and his associates
be arrested and their activities stopped at once for the good of both
races. All those in favor of this resolution say aye. Contrary?... Very
well, the ayes have it.... Miss Hilton please send off this telegram at
once!"
They looked at Dr. Beard and each other in amazement. Several started
to meekly protest.
"You gentlemen are all twenty-one, aren't you?" sneered Beard. "Well,
then be men enough to stand by your decision."
"But Doctor Beard," objected Rev. Gronne, "isn't this a rather unusual
procedure?"
"Rev. Gronne," the great man replied, "it's not near as unusual as
Black-No-More. I have probably ruffled your dignity but that's nothing
to what Dr. Crookman will do."
"I guess you're right, Beard," the college president agreed.
"I know it," snapped the other.
The Honorable Walter Brybe, who had won his exalted position as
Attorney General of the United States because of his long and faithful
service helping large corporations to circumvent the federal laws, sat
at his desk in Washington, D. C. Before him lay the wired resolution
from the conference of Negro leaders. He pursed his lips and reached
for his private telephone.
"Gorman?" he inquired softly into the receiver. "Is that you?"
"Nossuh," came the reply, "this heah is Mistah Gay's valet."
"Well, call Mister Gay to the telephone at once."
"Yassuh."
"That you, Gorman," asked the chief legal officer of the nation
addressing the National Chairman of his party.
"Yeh, what's up?"
"You heard 'bout this resolution from them niggers in New York, aint
you? It's been in all of the papers."
"Yes I read it."
"Well, whaddya think we oughtta do about it?"
"Take it easy, Walter. Give 'em the old run around. You know. They
ain't got a thin dime; it's this other crowd that's holding the heavy
jack. And 'course you know we gotta clean up our deficit. Just lemme
work with that Black-No-More crowd. I can talk business with that
Johnson fellow."
"All right, Gorman, I think you're right, but you don't want to forget
that there's a whole lot of white sentiment against them coons."
"Needn't worry 'bout that," scoffed Gorman. "There's no money behind
it much and besides it's in states we can't carry anyhow. Go ahead;
stall them New York niggers off. You're a lawyer, you can always find a
reason."
"Thanks for the compliment, Gorman," said the Attorney General, hanging
up the receiver.
He pressed a button on his desk and a young girl, armed with pencil and
pad, came in.
"Take this letter," he ordered: "To Doctor Shakespeare Agamemnon
Beard (what a hell of a name!), Chairman of the Committee for the
Preservation of Negro Racial Integrity, 1400 Broadway, New York City.
"My dear Dr. Beard:
The Attorney General has received the resolution signed by yourself
and others and given it careful consideration.
Regardless of personal views in the matter (I don't give a damn
whether they turn white or not, myself) it is not possible for
the Department of Justice to interfere with a legitimate business
enterprise so long as its methods are within the law. The
corporation in question has violated no federal statute and hence
there is not the slightest ground for interfering with its
activities.
Very truly yours,
WALTER BRYBE.
"Get that off at once. Give out copies to the press. That's all."
* * * * *
Santop Licorice, founder and leader of the Back-to-Africa Society,
read the reply of the Attorney General to the Negro leaders with much
malicious satisfaction. He laid aside his morning paper, pulled a fat
cigar from a box near by, lit it and blew clouds of smoke above his
woolly head. He was always delighted when Dr. Beard met with any sort
of rebuff or embarrassment. He was doubly pleased in this instance
because he had been overlooked in the sending out of invitations to
Negro leaders to join the Committee for the Preservation of Negro
Racial Integrity. It was outrageous, after all the talking he had done
in favor of Negro racial integrity.
Mr. Licorice for some fifteen years had been very profitably advocating
the emigration of all the American Negroes to Africa. He had not, of
course, gone there himself and had not the slightest intention of
going so far from the fleshpots, but he told the other Negroes to
go. Naturally the first step in their going was to join his society
by paying five dollars a year for membership, ten dollars for a gold,
green and purple robe and silver-colored helmet that together cost two
dollars and a half, contributing five dollars to the Santop Licorice
Defense Fund (there was a perpetual defense fund because Licorice was
perpetually in the courts for fraud of some kind), and buying shares at
five dollars each in the Royal Black Steamship Company, for obviously
one could not get to Africa without a ship and Negroes ought to travel
on Negro-owned and operated ships. The ships were Santop's especial
pride. True, they had never been to Africa, had never had but one cargo
and that, being gin, was half consumed by the unpaid and thirsty crew
before the vessel was saved by the Coast Guard, but they had cost more
than anything else the Back-To-Africa Society had purchased even though
they were worthless except as scrap iron. Mr. Licorice, who was known
by his followers as Provisional President of Africa, Admiral of the
African Navy, Field Marshal of the African Army and Knight Commander of
the Nile, had a genius for being stuck with junk by crafty salesmen.
White men only needed to tell him that he was shrewder than white men
and he would immediately reach for a check book.
But there was little reaching for check books in his office nowadays.
He had been as hard hit as the other Negroes. Why should anybody in
the Negro race want to go back to Africa at a cost of five hundred
dollars for passage when they could stay in America and get white for
fifty dollars? Mr. Licorice saw the point but instead of scuttling back
to Demerara from whence he had come to save his race from oppression,
he had hung on in the hope that the activities of Black-No-More,
Incorporated, would be stopped. In the meantime, he had continued to
attempt to save the Negroes by vigorously attacking all of the other
Negro organizations and at the same time preaching racial solidarity
and coöperation in his weekly newspaper, "_The African Abroad_," which
was printed by white folks and had until a year ago been full of
skin-whitening and hair-straightening advertisements.
"How is our treasury?" he yelled back through the dingy suite of
offices to his bookkeeper, a pretty mulatto.
"What treasury?" she asked in mock surprise.
"Why, I thought we had seventy-five dollars," he blurted.
"We did, but the Sheriff got most of it yesterday or we wouldn't be in
here today."
"Huumn! Well, that's bad. And tomorrow's pay day, isn't it?"
"Why bring that up?" she sneered. "I'd forgotten all about it."
"Haven't we got enough for me to get to Atlanta?" Licorice inquired,
anxiously.
"There is if you're gonna hitch-hike."
"Well, of course, I couldn't do that," he smiled deprecatingly.
"I should say not," she retorted surveying his 250-pound,
five-feet-six-inches of black blubber.
"Call Western Union," he commanded.
"What with?"
"Over the telephone, of course, Miss Hall," he explained.
"If you can get anything over that telephone you're a better man than I
am, Gunga Din."
"Has the service been discontinued, young lady?"
"Try and get a number," she chirped. He gazed ruefully at the telephone.
"Is there anything we can sell?" asked the bewildered Licorice.
"Yeah, if you can get the Sheriff to take off his attachments."
"That's right, I had forgotten."
"You would."
"Please be more respectful, Miss Hall," he snapped. "Somebody might
overhear you and tell my wife."
"Which one?" she mocked.
"Shut up," he blurted, touched in a tender spot, "and try to figure out
some way for us to get hold of some money."
"You must think I'm Einstein," she said, coming up and perching herself
on the edge of his desk.
"Well, if we don't get some operating expenses I won't be able to
obtain money to pay your salary," he warned.
"The old songs are the best songs," she wisecracked.
"Oh, come now, Violet," he remonstrated, pawing her buttock, "let's be
serious."
"After all these years!" she declared, switching away.
In desperation, he eased his bulk out of the creaking swivel chair,
reached for his hat and overcoat and shuffled out of the office. He
walked to the curb to hail a taxicab but reconsidered when he recalled
that a worn half-dollar was the extent of his funds. Sighing heavily,
he trudged the two blocks to the telegraph office and sent a long
day letter to Henry Givens, Imperial Grand Wizard of the Knights of
Nordica--collect.
"Well, have you figured it out?" asked Violet when he barged into his
office again.
"Yes, I just sent a wire to Givens," he replied.
"But he's a nigger-hater, isn't he?" was her surprised comment.
"You want your salary, don't you?" he inquired archly.
"I have for the past month."
"Well, then, don't ask foolish questions," he snapped.