CHAPTER XIXMrs. Tuckerwas operated on at Atlanta on Thursday morning at the Auburn Infirmary, owned and conducted by a group of coloured physicians of that city, as none of them could operate in the white hospitals. Kenneth keenly enjoyed being in a hospital again, with all its conveniences. The operation finished and Mrs. Tucker resting easily, he purchased, after much picking and choosing, Jane’s engagement ring—a beautiful, blue-white diamond solitaire.That important task performed, he telephoned Dr. Scott, to whom Judge Stevenson had given him a letter of introduction. So engrossed had he been in the operation and the purchasing of the ring, he had almost forgotten the promise made to the judge to see and talk with Dr. Scott, known to be a liberal leader of Southern public opinion and one deeply concerned with the problem of race relations.“That’s a mighty intelligent plan you’ve worked out,” Dr. Scott boomed over the wire. “I’d like to have you talk that over with me and one or two others here. Can you do it before going home?”Kenneth told him he had to leave early next morning for Central City. As Dr. Scott had a meetingthat would keep him engaged all afternoon, it was decided that they should meet that evening at an office in a building downtown in the business section.It was with a deal of eagerness—and with some degree of anxiety, for he did not know how he would be received by Dr. Scott and the others—that Kenneth set forth that evening for the meeting. He found three men awaiting him in the office of John Anthony, who was one of the three. His footsteps echoed in ghostlike fashion as he walked down the hallway of the deserted building. From the open window there floated from the street below the subdued clatter of automobiles, the cries of newsboys, the restless shuffling of the leisurely crowd as it moved up and down Peachtree Street. Kenneth sought to weigh the three, who were, he felt, representatives of that “new South” of which so much was heard, but signs of whose activities he had so seldom seen. He was seeking to find out their motives, their plans of accomplishing that spirit of fair play toward the Negro, to determine how far they would go towards challenging the established order that was damning the South intellectually, morally, economically. Kenneth, with too-high ideals for his environment, was almost naïve in his eager search for the great champion he had dreamed of who would brave danger and contumely and even death itself for a newer and brighter day for his people in the South. That hope had been dulled somewhat by the things he had seen since his return to Central City, for he was not of an unreflective mind. Yet he had not seen farenough beneath the surface of that volcano of passion and hate and greed which is the South to realize that the South had never produced a martyr to any great moral cause one who had possessed sufficient courage to oppose, regardless of consequences, any one of the set, dogmatic beliefs of the South. True it was that there were some who had fought in the Civil War with firm belief that the South was right—even though it had been shown that their idealism was a perverted one. But even then these had moved with the tide of sectional sentiment and not against it.Educated in Southern schools where the text-books of history always exalted the leaders of the Confederacy, raising Lee and Jackson and Johnston and Gordon to heights but little lower than the heroes of Grecian mythology, and ever tending to disparage and revile the Union cause and its leaders, Kenneth, like many coloured youths, had accepted the readymade and fallacious estimates set before him. It was, therefore, but natural that he set his hopes for stalwart, unafraid leadership too high and, at the same time, failed to realize that the South had never begotten an Abraham Lincoln, a Garrison, a Sumner, or even a meteor-like John Brown, bursting into brilliance born of indignation against stupidity or ignorance or wrong and dying gloriously for that cause. Kenneth’s eyes had partially been opened by his memorable talk with Judge Stevenson. Etched upon his mind by the acid of bitter truths were the judge’s words that the boasted Anglo-Saxonism of the Southhad curdled into moral cowardice on all subjects by the repression incident to the race problem. Nevertheless Kenneth was too inexperienced as yet in the ways of life to comprehend the full import of the older man’s cynicism. He yet sought him who would fulfil his ideal of a great leader who, like a latter-day Crusader, would guide white and black together out of the impasse in which the South seemed to be. Kenneth thus anxiously examined the three before him to see if by chance any one of them bore the accolade which would stamp him the Moses that he sought.Naturally enough, his eyes first went to Dr. Scott, as it was of him that Judge Stevenson had spoken most favourably. Minister to one of the larger Atlanta churches, he had spoken frequently and with considerable vigour for Georgia in behalf of greater kindness and fairness toward the Negro. He was very tall. His more than ordinary height with his attenuated and lanky slenderness gave him an almost cadaverous appearance which the loose suit of black mohair he wore accentuated. From beneath the folds of a low collar there sprang a white starched-linen bow tie, the four ends standing stiffly, each in a separate direction, like the arms of a windmill. His rather large head was bald on top but around the edges ran a fringe of yellowish-white hair with curling ends that made his face appear rounder than it was. Bushy eyebrows shaded pale blue eyes that twinkled in unison with the ready smile which revealed large yellow teeth. Into his conversation Dr.Scott injected at frequent intervals ministerial phrases—“the spirit of Jesus”—“being Christians”—“our Lord and Saviour.” He always addressed his white companions as “Brother Anthony” and “Brother Gordon.” Kenneth he always called “Doctor.”Kenneth felt a certain doubt of Dr. Scott’s sincerity. He tried to penetrate what seemed to be a mask over the minister’s face that effectively hid all that revolved in the mind behind it. Something intangible but nevertheless real blocked his path—an unctuous affability that seemed too oily to be sincere. No, Kenneth reflected, Dr. Scott is not the man. All of this examination had taken but a few seconds, yet Kenneth’s mind was made up. In prejudging him so hastily, Kenneth did an injustice to Dr. Scott that was unconscious but real. In his heart of hearts Dr. Scott had realized that to accomplish anything at all in the South towards enlightenment he must necessarily become, at least as discretion seemed to dictate, a mental chameleon. He had suffered because of that decision, for had circumstances placed him in a more liberal and intelligent environment, he would have been far more advanced in his religious and other beliefs. The traces of gold in the ore that was his mind had been revealed in the suffering which had come to him through his speaking out against a system that seemed to him wrong.He had been reviled, misunderstood both deliberately and by those who were not so advanced as he. He had borne in silence whatever had come to him,even threats of tarring and of death from the Ku Klux Klan, seeking a course directed by wisdom if not by valour.While he was being introduced by Dr. Scott, Kenneth examined critically the other two men. Mr. Anthony, who had volunteered the use of his office for the conference, as no comment would be likely if the four of them were seen in the office building, was first presented.John Anthony might well have posed as model for a typical American business man or lawyer. Of rotund figure, well-fed appearance, hair close-cut, his face clean-shaven, clad in neatly tailored but undistinguished clothing, he sat leaning slightly forward, his fingers interlocked, his thumbs and forefingers holding his cravat while his elbows rested on the arms of his chair. He acknowledged the introduction to Kenneth with a brief “Pleased t’ meetcha.” He did not rise, nor extend his hand in greeting, but he at once shrewdly appraised and catalogued Kenneth. John Anthony’s interest in interracial affairs had been first aroused by the war-time migration of Negroes to the North. His personal fortunes had been touched directly by this loss of labour, and the resultant decrease in profits had caused him to inquire into the problem of the labourers who had been always so plentiful. Like most Americans, and particularly those in Southern States, he had had no idea of, or interest in, what Negroes were forced to endure. Though near to this problem, he had been a living example of those in the proverb who “live soclose to the trees, they cannot see the woods.” His inquiry, conducted with the clear-sightedness and energy he had acquired from long business training, had revealed brutalities and vicious exploitation that had amazed and sickened him. He was too shrewd to believe that Negroes would be restrained from leaving the South by attempts to picture Negroes freezing to death in the North, or to try to beguile them by transparent falsehoods to the effect that the Southern white man is the Negro’s best friend. Though he did not voice it save to his more intimate friends, he felt naught but contempt for the hypocrisy of those who too late were attempting to flatter the Negro to keep him in the South. His motives were therefore curiously mixed in his support of efforts toward interracial goodwill. Economic in part were they, because retention of Negro labour meant the continuation of his own successful business career. Equally, almost, did they proceed from a hitherto latent sense of moral indignation against the treatment which the South had accorded to Negroes in the past. Direct of speech, analytical of mind, he went straight to the heart of the problem with that same perspicacity that had won for him more than usual success in his business of conducting one of the South’s largest department stores.Here again did Kenneth figuratively shake his head and decide that John Anthony was not destined to be the Moses of the new South. He could not for the life of him dissociate Anthony’s interest in behalf of justice from his direct financial interest inkeeping Negroes in the South, where, with the inevitable working of the law of demand and supply, a surplusage of Negro labour would mean continued high profits for men like Anthony. Kenneth was too young to know that the more largely a man profits from a liberal cause, the more loyal will be his support of that cause and the lesser likelihood of his defection when difficulties arise.Of the three men, Kenneth felt greatest hope in the third—David Gordon—younger than Kenneth, alert, capable, and with an engaging frankness of face and of manner to which Kenneth warmed instinctively. Gordon was a graduate of Harvard, where he for the first time in his life had learned to know coloured fellow-students as men and human beings instead of as “niggers.” At first he had rebelled strenuously, his every instinct had revolted against dining in the same room, however large, with a “nigger.” So indignant had he been that he had taken it up with the president. Benign, kindly, clearheaded, and patriarchal, the older man calmly and dispassionately and without rancour had shown Gordon the injustice of his position—how unfair it was to deny an education to a man for the sole offence of having been born with a black skin. Before he quite knew how it had happened, Gordon found himself ashamed of what now was seen to be petty nastiness on his part. So interested had he become after his eyes were thus opened that he had made a special study of the Negro problem. After finishing both his college and law courses, he had returned toAtlanta to practise law with his father. His interest in the race question had increased since his return. He was now one of that liberal and intelligent few who are most free from prejudice an emancipated Southerner. Some inner voice told Kenneth instantly that greatest hope of the three lay in David Gordon—and men like him. …The introductions completed, Dr. Scott opened the conversation.“Doctor, we’ve heard of the society you’ve started in Central City. Tell us how you’re getting along.”“You have heard of it?” asked Kenneth in surprise. He did not know his fame had preceded him.“Oh, yes,” answered Dr. Scott. “You see, I know a man in the Klan headquarters here. They’ve got, so I understand, a pretty full account of your movements.”“They honour me,” laughed Kenneth, a note of irony in his voice. He was not a physical coward—threats bothered him little. He had paid little attention to the report of the Klan meeting at Central City, though it had worried his mother and Bob considerably. No more would he be perturbed by any reports of his activities the Klan might have in their files.“Then, too, Judge Stevenson’s been writing me about you,” continued Dr. Scott. “We are all interested in what you’re doing, Doctor, and we want you to talk frankly. You can to us,” he added.The three men were genuinely interested in theplan on which Kenneth was working. They were too intelligent to fail to see that something would have to be done towards adjustment of race relations in the South to avert an inevitable clash. What that something was they did not know. They felt the time was not ripe for a challenge to the existing order, and they would not, in all probability, have been willing to issue such a fiat had the time been propitious. Yet they were anxious to examine the plans of this coloured man, hoping against hope that therein might lie an easy solution of the problem.Frankly and clearly Kenneth told of the simple scheme. Occasionally one of his hearers would interrupt him with a question, but for the most part they heard him through in silence. The story ended, the three men sat in silence as each revolved in his mind the possibilities of the plan. John Anthony was the first to speak, and then he approached the whole race problem instead of Kenneth’s plan for attacking one phase of it.“Doctor,” asked Mr. Anthony, “do you believe there is any solution to the race problem? Just what is the immediate way out, as you see it?”“It would take a wiser man than I to answer that,” laughed Kenneth. “You see, we’re in the habit of thinking that we can find a simple A-B-C solution for any given problem, and the trouble is there are mighty few that are simple enough for that.”“Yes—yes—I know all that,” interjected Mr. Anthony, rather testily. “What I want to hear is what you, as an intelligent Negro, think. I want you totell us exactly what men like you are saying among yourselves.”“Well, we’re talking about lynching—poor schools—the way Negroes are denied the ballot in the South” began Kenneth.“Er—that’s a thing we can’t discuss,” hastily interrupted Dr. Scott. “Conditions in the South are too unsettled to talk about giving the Negro the vote as yet.”“As yet,” echoed Kenneth. “If we can’t discuss it now, when can we talk about it?”“It’ll be a long time,” answered Dr. Scott frankly. “There are a lot of white people in the South who know disfranchisement is wrong. We know that we can’t keep the ballot from the Negro always. But,” he ended with a shrug of his shoulders and a thrust-ing-out of his hands, palms upward, in a gesture of perplexity and despair Kenneth was learning to know so well that he was associating it instinctively with the Southern white man, “we’d stir up more trouble than we could cope with.”“And while you’re waiting for the opportune time, conditions are getting steadily worse, the problem is getting more complicated, and it’ll be harder to solve the longer you put off trying to solve it,” urged Kenneth. It was with an effort that he kept out of his voice the impatience he felt. “Why don’t men like you three band together with those who think as you do, so you can speak out?” he asked.“That’s just what we are trying to do, but we have to go very cautiously,” answered Dr. Scott. “Wemust use discretion. How much are Negroes thinking about voting?”“They think about it all the time,” replied Kenneth. “We know the mere casting of a ballot isn’t going to solve all our problems, but we also know we’ll never be able to do much until we do vote.”“You must be patient—wait until the time is ripe⸺” cautioned Dr. Scott.“Patience can be a vice as well as a virtue.” It was David Gordon who spoke.Kenneth looked at him gratefully.“Your race’s greatest asset,” continued Dr. Scott, addressing his remark to Kenneth, yet seeking to impart a gentle rebuke to Gordon, “has been its wonderful gentleness under oppression. You must continue to be sweet-tempered and patient⸺”“That’s all very well to advise, but how would you or any other white man act if you had to suffer the things the Negro has had to suffer?” demanded Kenneth. “Suppose you saw your women made the breeding-ground of every white man who desires them, saw your men lynched and burned at the stake, saw your race robbed and cheated, lied to and lied about, despised, persecuted, oppressed—how would you feel, Dr. Scott, if somebody came to you and said: ‘Be patient’?”Kenneth poured forth his words like a burning flood of lava—indicative of the raging fires of resentment smouldering beneath. He paused, completely out of breath. Dr. Scott flushed until his face became a dull brick-red in colour. He restrainedwith an effort the anger caused by the coloured man’s impetuous words.“I know—I know,” he said soothingly. “It’s hard, I know, but you must remember the words of Jesus to his disciples: ‘When men shall persecute and revile you⸺’ The spirit of Jesus is growing in the hearts of the South—it will come to your rescue in due season.”“We’re always hearing about this liberal white opinion,” rejoined Kenneth, nettled by the unctuous suavity of the words, “but we so seldom see any signs of it—almost never in places like Central City. Sometimes I think it’s like trying to put your finger on mercury—when your finger is about to touch it, it rolls away—it’s somewhere else. Meanwhile lynching goes on.”“You’re right, Doctor,” broke in John Anthony, who had been following the conversation with deep interest though he had taken little part in it. “We’ve got to do something, and that soon—the only problem is how to do it. Now about your society in Smith County—tell us how we can help you make it a success. Do you need any money to get it working properly?”Kenneth turned to the quiet man who had proposed the first tangible offer to help.“Thanks a lot for the offer,” replied Kenneth. “There are two things I can think of that’ll be immediately helpful. One is that you and Dr. Scott and Mr. Gordon do what you can to help mould public sentiment so this liberal white opinion will become a force in the South against the Ku Klux Klan and lynching and all the other forms of prejudice. That’s what seems to me to be most needed.”“Yes—yes—I agree with you, but tell us just exactly how we can help you.” Anthony, in his direct way, was impatient of theorizing. “Do you need any money—credit—legal advice—that is, any we can give quietly without it getting out that we gave it?”“Yes, there is something,” answered Kenneth. “Most of the men in our societies have been working on shares for so many years that instead of having any money, they owe their landlords large sums. The big problem is credit for the things they need until they sell their crops next fall.”Kenneth gave a detailed statement of their needs and their plans. John Anthony took notes as he talked and agreed to see what he could do towards securing credit when they needed it. David Gordon volunteered his aid as a lawyer. They rose to go. Anthony gazed intently at Kenneth as he asked gravely:“Doctor, have you thought of the possibility of—er—trouble if your motives are not understood? That is, suppose some of the poor whites are stirred up by the landlords and merchants you’re trying to take these coloured farmers away from—have you figured out what might be the result?”“Yes, I have,” responded Kenneth. “I realizethere might be some who’d break up our groups⸺”“No—No—I mean to you personally,” interjected Anthony.“I don’t think they’ll bother me,” was Kenneth’s confident reply. “But if something should happen—well, if I can feel I’ve perhaps pointed a way out for my people, I can die happy. … At any rate, killing or running me away wouldn’t kill the spirit of revolt these coloured people have it might stir it even higher. Not that I’ve any ambition for martyrdom,” he ended with a laugh.Kenneth spoke with no bravado, with none of the cant of the poseur. His words, rather, were uttered with the simplicity of the earnest seeker after truth—the unheroic but sincere worker in a cause that is just.“Let’s hope you’ll come through,” said Anthony. “I’m a Southerner with all the traditions and prejudices of the South, but I wish you luck.” He added after a pause: “You’ll need it.”After Kenneth had gone, the three men looked at each other questioningly.“What do you think of him and his plan?” asked Dr. Scott, half to himself.It was Gordon who answered.“It’s a good scheme—if it works. I’m mighty afraid, though, he’s going to run into deep water if his societies grow very large. And the pity of it is that we in Atlanta can’t help him if we dared.” Anthony grunted.“And yet the South is trying to solve the race problem and leave educated Negroes like Harper entirely out of the equation. It’s about time we woke up.”
Mrs. Tuckerwas operated on at Atlanta on Thursday morning at the Auburn Infirmary, owned and conducted by a group of coloured physicians of that city, as none of them could operate in the white hospitals. Kenneth keenly enjoyed being in a hospital again, with all its conveniences. The operation finished and Mrs. Tucker resting easily, he purchased, after much picking and choosing, Jane’s engagement ring—a beautiful, blue-white diamond solitaire.
That important task performed, he telephoned Dr. Scott, to whom Judge Stevenson had given him a letter of introduction. So engrossed had he been in the operation and the purchasing of the ring, he had almost forgotten the promise made to the judge to see and talk with Dr. Scott, known to be a liberal leader of Southern public opinion and one deeply concerned with the problem of race relations.
“That’s a mighty intelligent plan you’ve worked out,” Dr. Scott boomed over the wire. “I’d like to have you talk that over with me and one or two others here. Can you do it before going home?”
Kenneth told him he had to leave early next morning for Central City. As Dr. Scott had a meetingthat would keep him engaged all afternoon, it was decided that they should meet that evening at an office in a building downtown in the business section.
It was with a deal of eagerness—and with some degree of anxiety, for he did not know how he would be received by Dr. Scott and the others—that Kenneth set forth that evening for the meeting. He found three men awaiting him in the office of John Anthony, who was one of the three. His footsteps echoed in ghostlike fashion as he walked down the hallway of the deserted building. From the open window there floated from the street below the subdued clatter of automobiles, the cries of newsboys, the restless shuffling of the leisurely crowd as it moved up and down Peachtree Street. Kenneth sought to weigh the three, who were, he felt, representatives of that “new South” of which so much was heard, but signs of whose activities he had so seldom seen. He was seeking to find out their motives, their plans of accomplishing that spirit of fair play toward the Negro, to determine how far they would go towards challenging the established order that was damning the South intellectually, morally, economically. Kenneth, with too-high ideals for his environment, was almost naïve in his eager search for the great champion he had dreamed of who would brave danger and contumely and even death itself for a newer and brighter day for his people in the South. That hope had been dulled somewhat by the things he had seen since his return to Central City, for he was not of an unreflective mind. Yet he had not seen farenough beneath the surface of that volcano of passion and hate and greed which is the South to realize that the South had never produced a martyr to any great moral cause one who had possessed sufficient courage to oppose, regardless of consequences, any one of the set, dogmatic beliefs of the South. True it was that there were some who had fought in the Civil War with firm belief that the South was right—even though it had been shown that their idealism was a perverted one. But even then these had moved with the tide of sectional sentiment and not against it.
Educated in Southern schools where the text-books of history always exalted the leaders of the Confederacy, raising Lee and Jackson and Johnston and Gordon to heights but little lower than the heroes of Grecian mythology, and ever tending to disparage and revile the Union cause and its leaders, Kenneth, like many coloured youths, had accepted the readymade and fallacious estimates set before him. It was, therefore, but natural that he set his hopes for stalwart, unafraid leadership too high and, at the same time, failed to realize that the South had never begotten an Abraham Lincoln, a Garrison, a Sumner, or even a meteor-like John Brown, bursting into brilliance born of indignation against stupidity or ignorance or wrong and dying gloriously for that cause. Kenneth’s eyes had partially been opened by his memorable talk with Judge Stevenson. Etched upon his mind by the acid of bitter truths were the judge’s words that the boasted Anglo-Saxonism of the Southhad curdled into moral cowardice on all subjects by the repression incident to the race problem. Nevertheless Kenneth was too inexperienced as yet in the ways of life to comprehend the full import of the older man’s cynicism. He yet sought him who would fulfil his ideal of a great leader who, like a latter-day Crusader, would guide white and black together out of the impasse in which the South seemed to be. Kenneth thus anxiously examined the three before him to see if by chance any one of them bore the accolade which would stamp him the Moses that he sought.
Naturally enough, his eyes first went to Dr. Scott, as it was of him that Judge Stevenson had spoken most favourably. Minister to one of the larger Atlanta churches, he had spoken frequently and with considerable vigour for Georgia in behalf of greater kindness and fairness toward the Negro. He was very tall. His more than ordinary height with his attenuated and lanky slenderness gave him an almost cadaverous appearance which the loose suit of black mohair he wore accentuated. From beneath the folds of a low collar there sprang a white starched-linen bow tie, the four ends standing stiffly, each in a separate direction, like the arms of a windmill. His rather large head was bald on top but around the edges ran a fringe of yellowish-white hair with curling ends that made his face appear rounder than it was. Bushy eyebrows shaded pale blue eyes that twinkled in unison with the ready smile which revealed large yellow teeth. Into his conversation Dr.Scott injected at frequent intervals ministerial phrases—“the spirit of Jesus”—“being Christians”—“our Lord and Saviour.” He always addressed his white companions as “Brother Anthony” and “Brother Gordon.” Kenneth he always called “Doctor.”
Kenneth felt a certain doubt of Dr. Scott’s sincerity. He tried to penetrate what seemed to be a mask over the minister’s face that effectively hid all that revolved in the mind behind it. Something intangible but nevertheless real blocked his path—an unctuous affability that seemed too oily to be sincere. No, Kenneth reflected, Dr. Scott is not the man. All of this examination had taken but a few seconds, yet Kenneth’s mind was made up. In prejudging him so hastily, Kenneth did an injustice to Dr. Scott that was unconscious but real. In his heart of hearts Dr. Scott had realized that to accomplish anything at all in the South towards enlightenment he must necessarily become, at least as discretion seemed to dictate, a mental chameleon. He had suffered because of that decision, for had circumstances placed him in a more liberal and intelligent environment, he would have been far more advanced in his religious and other beliefs. The traces of gold in the ore that was his mind had been revealed in the suffering which had come to him through his speaking out against a system that seemed to him wrong.
He had been reviled, misunderstood both deliberately and by those who were not so advanced as he. He had borne in silence whatever had come to him,even threats of tarring and of death from the Ku Klux Klan, seeking a course directed by wisdom if not by valour.
While he was being introduced by Dr. Scott, Kenneth examined critically the other two men. Mr. Anthony, who had volunteered the use of his office for the conference, as no comment would be likely if the four of them were seen in the office building, was first presented.
John Anthony might well have posed as model for a typical American business man or lawyer. Of rotund figure, well-fed appearance, hair close-cut, his face clean-shaven, clad in neatly tailored but undistinguished clothing, he sat leaning slightly forward, his fingers interlocked, his thumbs and forefingers holding his cravat while his elbows rested on the arms of his chair. He acknowledged the introduction to Kenneth with a brief “Pleased t’ meetcha.” He did not rise, nor extend his hand in greeting, but he at once shrewdly appraised and catalogued Kenneth. John Anthony’s interest in interracial affairs had been first aroused by the war-time migration of Negroes to the North. His personal fortunes had been touched directly by this loss of labour, and the resultant decrease in profits had caused him to inquire into the problem of the labourers who had been always so plentiful. Like most Americans, and particularly those in Southern States, he had had no idea of, or interest in, what Negroes were forced to endure. Though near to this problem, he had been a living example of those in the proverb who “live soclose to the trees, they cannot see the woods.” His inquiry, conducted with the clear-sightedness and energy he had acquired from long business training, had revealed brutalities and vicious exploitation that had amazed and sickened him. He was too shrewd to believe that Negroes would be restrained from leaving the South by attempts to picture Negroes freezing to death in the North, or to try to beguile them by transparent falsehoods to the effect that the Southern white man is the Negro’s best friend. Though he did not voice it save to his more intimate friends, he felt naught but contempt for the hypocrisy of those who too late were attempting to flatter the Negro to keep him in the South. His motives were therefore curiously mixed in his support of efforts toward interracial goodwill. Economic in part were they, because retention of Negro labour meant the continuation of his own successful business career. Equally, almost, did they proceed from a hitherto latent sense of moral indignation against the treatment which the South had accorded to Negroes in the past. Direct of speech, analytical of mind, he went straight to the heart of the problem with that same perspicacity that had won for him more than usual success in his business of conducting one of the South’s largest department stores.
Here again did Kenneth figuratively shake his head and decide that John Anthony was not destined to be the Moses of the new South. He could not for the life of him dissociate Anthony’s interest in behalf of justice from his direct financial interest inkeeping Negroes in the South, where, with the inevitable working of the law of demand and supply, a surplusage of Negro labour would mean continued high profits for men like Anthony. Kenneth was too young to know that the more largely a man profits from a liberal cause, the more loyal will be his support of that cause and the lesser likelihood of his defection when difficulties arise.
Of the three men, Kenneth felt greatest hope in the third—David Gordon—younger than Kenneth, alert, capable, and with an engaging frankness of face and of manner to which Kenneth warmed instinctively. Gordon was a graduate of Harvard, where he for the first time in his life had learned to know coloured fellow-students as men and human beings instead of as “niggers.” At first he had rebelled strenuously, his every instinct had revolted against dining in the same room, however large, with a “nigger.” So indignant had he been that he had taken it up with the president. Benign, kindly, clearheaded, and patriarchal, the older man calmly and dispassionately and without rancour had shown Gordon the injustice of his position—how unfair it was to deny an education to a man for the sole offence of having been born with a black skin. Before he quite knew how it had happened, Gordon found himself ashamed of what now was seen to be petty nastiness on his part. So interested had he become after his eyes were thus opened that he had made a special study of the Negro problem. After finishing both his college and law courses, he had returned toAtlanta to practise law with his father. His interest in the race question had increased since his return. He was now one of that liberal and intelligent few who are most free from prejudice an emancipated Southerner. Some inner voice told Kenneth instantly that greatest hope of the three lay in David Gordon—and men like him. …
The introductions completed, Dr. Scott opened the conversation.
“Doctor, we’ve heard of the society you’ve started in Central City. Tell us how you’re getting along.”
“You have heard of it?” asked Kenneth in surprise. He did not know his fame had preceded him.
“Oh, yes,” answered Dr. Scott. “You see, I know a man in the Klan headquarters here. They’ve got, so I understand, a pretty full account of your movements.”
“They honour me,” laughed Kenneth, a note of irony in his voice. He was not a physical coward—threats bothered him little. He had paid little attention to the report of the Klan meeting at Central City, though it had worried his mother and Bob considerably. No more would he be perturbed by any reports of his activities the Klan might have in their files.
“Then, too, Judge Stevenson’s been writing me about you,” continued Dr. Scott. “We are all interested in what you’re doing, Doctor, and we want you to talk frankly. You can to us,” he added.
The three men were genuinely interested in theplan on which Kenneth was working. They were too intelligent to fail to see that something would have to be done towards adjustment of race relations in the South to avert an inevitable clash. What that something was they did not know. They felt the time was not ripe for a challenge to the existing order, and they would not, in all probability, have been willing to issue such a fiat had the time been propitious. Yet they were anxious to examine the plans of this coloured man, hoping against hope that therein might lie an easy solution of the problem.
Frankly and clearly Kenneth told of the simple scheme. Occasionally one of his hearers would interrupt him with a question, but for the most part they heard him through in silence. The story ended, the three men sat in silence as each revolved in his mind the possibilities of the plan. John Anthony was the first to speak, and then he approached the whole race problem instead of Kenneth’s plan for attacking one phase of it.
“Doctor,” asked Mr. Anthony, “do you believe there is any solution to the race problem? Just what is the immediate way out, as you see it?”
“It would take a wiser man than I to answer that,” laughed Kenneth. “You see, we’re in the habit of thinking that we can find a simple A-B-C solution for any given problem, and the trouble is there are mighty few that are simple enough for that.”
“Yes—yes—I know all that,” interjected Mr. Anthony, rather testily. “What I want to hear is what you, as an intelligent Negro, think. I want you totell us exactly what men like you are saying among yourselves.”
“Well, we’re talking about lynching—poor schools—the way Negroes are denied the ballot in the South” began Kenneth.
“Er—that’s a thing we can’t discuss,” hastily interrupted Dr. Scott. “Conditions in the South are too unsettled to talk about giving the Negro the vote as yet.”
“As yet,” echoed Kenneth. “If we can’t discuss it now, when can we talk about it?”
“It’ll be a long time,” answered Dr. Scott frankly. “There are a lot of white people in the South who know disfranchisement is wrong. We know that we can’t keep the ballot from the Negro always. But,” he ended with a shrug of his shoulders and a thrust-ing-out of his hands, palms upward, in a gesture of perplexity and despair Kenneth was learning to know so well that he was associating it instinctively with the Southern white man, “we’d stir up more trouble than we could cope with.”
“And while you’re waiting for the opportune time, conditions are getting steadily worse, the problem is getting more complicated, and it’ll be harder to solve the longer you put off trying to solve it,” urged Kenneth. It was with an effort that he kept out of his voice the impatience he felt. “Why don’t men like you three band together with those who think as you do, so you can speak out?” he asked.
“That’s just what we are trying to do, but we have to go very cautiously,” answered Dr. Scott. “Wemust use discretion. How much are Negroes thinking about voting?”
“They think about it all the time,” replied Kenneth. “We know the mere casting of a ballot isn’t going to solve all our problems, but we also know we’ll never be able to do much until we do vote.”
“You must be patient—wait until the time is ripe⸺” cautioned Dr. Scott.
“Patience can be a vice as well as a virtue.” It was David Gordon who spoke.
Kenneth looked at him gratefully.
“Your race’s greatest asset,” continued Dr. Scott, addressing his remark to Kenneth, yet seeking to impart a gentle rebuke to Gordon, “has been its wonderful gentleness under oppression. You must continue to be sweet-tempered and patient⸺”
“That’s all very well to advise, but how would you or any other white man act if you had to suffer the things the Negro has had to suffer?” demanded Kenneth. “Suppose you saw your women made the breeding-ground of every white man who desires them, saw your men lynched and burned at the stake, saw your race robbed and cheated, lied to and lied about, despised, persecuted, oppressed—how would you feel, Dr. Scott, if somebody came to you and said: ‘Be patient’?”
Kenneth poured forth his words like a burning flood of lava—indicative of the raging fires of resentment smouldering beneath. He paused, completely out of breath. Dr. Scott flushed until his face became a dull brick-red in colour. He restrainedwith an effort the anger caused by the coloured man’s impetuous words.
“I know—I know,” he said soothingly. “It’s hard, I know, but you must remember the words of Jesus to his disciples: ‘When men shall persecute and revile you⸺’ The spirit of Jesus is growing in the hearts of the South—it will come to your rescue in due season.”
“We’re always hearing about this liberal white opinion,” rejoined Kenneth, nettled by the unctuous suavity of the words, “but we so seldom see any signs of it—almost never in places like Central City. Sometimes I think it’s like trying to put your finger on mercury—when your finger is about to touch it, it rolls away—it’s somewhere else. Meanwhile lynching goes on.”
“You’re right, Doctor,” broke in John Anthony, who had been following the conversation with deep interest though he had taken little part in it. “We’ve got to do something, and that soon—the only problem is how to do it. Now about your society in Smith County—tell us how we can help you make it a success. Do you need any money to get it working properly?”
Kenneth turned to the quiet man who had proposed the first tangible offer to help.
“Thanks a lot for the offer,” replied Kenneth. “There are two things I can think of that’ll be immediately helpful. One is that you and Dr. Scott and Mr. Gordon do what you can to help mould public sentiment so this liberal white opinion will become a force in the South against the Ku Klux Klan and lynching and all the other forms of prejudice. That’s what seems to me to be most needed.”
“Yes—yes—I agree with you, but tell us just exactly how we can help you.” Anthony, in his direct way, was impatient of theorizing. “Do you need any money—credit—legal advice—that is, any we can give quietly without it getting out that we gave it?”
“Yes, there is something,” answered Kenneth. “Most of the men in our societies have been working on shares for so many years that instead of having any money, they owe their landlords large sums. The big problem is credit for the things they need until they sell their crops next fall.”
Kenneth gave a detailed statement of their needs and their plans. John Anthony took notes as he talked and agreed to see what he could do towards securing credit when they needed it. David Gordon volunteered his aid as a lawyer. They rose to go. Anthony gazed intently at Kenneth as he asked gravely:
“Doctor, have you thought of the possibility of—er—trouble if your motives are not understood? That is, suppose some of the poor whites are stirred up by the landlords and merchants you’re trying to take these coloured farmers away from—have you figured out what might be the result?”
“Yes, I have,” responded Kenneth. “I realizethere might be some who’d break up our groups⸺”
“No—No—I mean to you personally,” interjected Anthony.
“I don’t think they’ll bother me,” was Kenneth’s confident reply. “But if something should happen—well, if I can feel I’ve perhaps pointed a way out for my people, I can die happy. … At any rate, killing or running me away wouldn’t kill the spirit of revolt these coloured people have it might stir it even higher. Not that I’ve any ambition for martyrdom,” he ended with a laugh.
Kenneth spoke with no bravado, with none of the cant of the poseur. His words, rather, were uttered with the simplicity of the earnest seeker after truth—the unheroic but sincere worker in a cause that is just.
“Let’s hope you’ll come through,” said Anthony. “I’m a Southerner with all the traditions and prejudices of the South, but I wish you luck.” He added after a pause: “You’ll need it.”
After Kenneth had gone, the three men looked at each other questioningly.
“What do you think of him and his plan?” asked Dr. Scott, half to himself.
It was Gordon who answered.
“It’s a good scheme—if it works. I’m mighty afraid, though, he’s going to run into deep water if his societies grow very large. And the pity of it is that we in Atlanta can’t help him if we dared.” Anthony grunted.
“And yet the South is trying to solve the race problem and leave educated Negroes like Harper entirely out of the equation. It’s about time we woke up.”