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 She had not withdrawn her hand.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