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