Walter White

“ Like a scroll slowly unwinding before his eyes, Kenneth saw, as yet only partially, that instead of freeing him from danger of the mob, too great prosperity would make him and every other Negro outstanding targets of the wrath and envy of the poorer whites—that jealousy which “is cruel as the grave.” Oh, well, he reflected, others had avoided trouble and so could he. He would have to be exceedingly careful to avoid too great display, and at the same time cultivate the goodwill of those men like Roy Ewing and Judge Stevenson who would stand by him if there was need. ”

“ Lee Street was bathed alternately in moonlight and shadow as a vagrant moon wove its way in front of and behind small patches of clouds. The clattering car approached—came abreast the doorway—and passed rapidly by
“It’s that damn nigger himself!” he exclaimed to the men behind him. “What’n th’hell’s he doin’ out this time of night ‘round here? An’ headed towards Georgy Avenue, too! It’s damn funny!”
There was an outburst of excited whispering. Various speculative surmises were offered. None was able to offer a sensible reason for Kenneth’s nocturnal pilgrimage. ”

“ Kenneth, what you and all the rest of Negroes need is to learn that you belong to a race that was centuries old when the first white man came into the world. You’ve got to learn that a large part of this thing they call ‘white civilization’ was made by black hands, as well as by yellow and brown and red hands, too, besides what white hands have created. You’ve got to learn that the Negro to-day is contributing as much of the work that makes this civilization possible as the white race, if not more. ”

“ It was a rude shock to Kenneth when he began to see these things through an entirely different pair of eyes than those with which he had viewed them before he left Central City for the North. The sordidness, the blatant vulgarity, the viciousness of it all—especially the houses on Butler and Harris Streets—appalled and sickened him. Even more was he disgusted by the complacent acceptance of the whole miserable business by white and black alike. ”

“ Crowded were the streets with vehicles and the sidewalks with the jostling, laughing, loudly talking throng of humans. After the noonday whistle had blown signalling release to the hordes of whites working in the cotton mill over beyond the tracks, the crowd was augmented considerably, the new-comers made up of those who had deserted the country districts, discouraged by the hard life of farming, by rainy and unprofitable seasons, by the ravages of the boll weevil and of landlords, both working dire distress on poor white and black alike. ”

“ He must of necessity be constantly on his guard when talking with his white neighbours, or with any white men in the South, to keep from uttering some word, some phrase which, like a seed dropped and forgotten, lies fallow for a time in the brain of the one to whom he talks, but later blossoms forth into that noxious death-dealing plant which is the mob. ”

“ Why was every Negro who too audibly or visibly resented the brutalities and proscriptions of race prejudice instantly labelled as a radical—a dangerous character [92] —as one seeking “social equality”? What was this thing called “social equality” anyhow? That was an easy question to answer. It was about the only one he could answer with any completeness. White folks didn’t really believe that Negroes sought to force themselves in places where they weren’t wanted, any more than decent white people wanted to force themselves where they were not invited. ”

“ Good Lord, he reflected, let’s forget the race problem awhile! A Negro never gets away from it. He has it night and day. Like the sword of Damocles over his head. Like a cork in a whirling vortex, it tosses him this way and that, never ceasing. Have to think about something else or it’ll run him crazy. Guess Mary Ewing’s about out of danger now.
Glad when she’s all right again. Don’t like to be going over there to those white folks’ house. Neighbours might begin to talk. How much can I charge Roy Ewing? Two hundred dollars? Yes, he can stand it. ”

“ Why didn’t Kenneth say something now? She felt rather annoyed at him for being so considerate. With a woman’s prerogative of inconsistency, she resented his obeying so implicitly her demand that he wait until she had made up her mind. Men were so silly—you told them to do a thing and they went like fools and did it. Why didn’t he talk about something else besides his old co-operative societies [199] and the Ku Klux Klan and his old hospital and what that old Judge Stevenson had said to him that day? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He had had no way of knowing that his father, always so rugged, so buoyantly healthy, so uncomplaining, would die of appendicitis while he, Kenneth, was in France. If he had only been at home!
He’d have known it wasn’t a case of plain cramps, as that old fossil, Dr. Bennett, had called it. What was the exact way in which his father had put his philosophy of life in the South during that last talk they had had together? It had run like this: Any Negro can get along without trouble in the South if he only attends to his own business. ”

“ Despite all his efforts, Kenneth knew Mary was rapidly sinking. The loss of blood and strength, the severity of the shock, the enervating spasms of [216] pain she had suffered, had sapped her strength until all resistive power was gone. Kenneth knew that Dr. Bennett knew this too—even in the desperate struggle he wondered what the other would say and do—if the girl died. He tried to shake off the fear that seized him—fear of what would happen if it became known among the whites that Mary Ewing had died while a Negro was operating on her. No mortal could have done more. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Kenneth found his practice growing. His days were filled with his work. One man viewed his growing practice with bitterness. It was Dr. Williams, resentful of the small figure he had cut in the episode in Kenneth’s office, which had become known all over Central City. Of a petty and vindictive nature, he bided his time until he could force atonement from the upstart who had so presumptuously insulted and belittled him, the Beau Brummel, the leading physician, the prominent coloured citizen. But Kenneth, if he knew of the hatred in the man’s heart, was supremely oblivious of it. ”

“ Creatures of the fear they sought to inspire in others, their lives are lived in constant dread of the things of evil and terror they preached. It is a system based on stark, abject fear—fear that he whom they termed inferior might, with opportunity, prove himself not inferior. This unenlightened viewpoint rules men throughout the South like those who formed the Central City Klan—dominates their every action or thought—keeps the whites back while the Negro—in spite of what he suffers—always keeps his face towards the sun of achievement. ”

“ Why couldn’t the white people of the South see where their course was leading them? Ewing was right. No white man of the South had ever come out in complete defiance of the present regime which was so surely damning the South and America. Kenneth saw his people kept in the bondage of ignorance. Why? Because it was to the economic advantage of the white South to have it so. Why was a man like Reverend Wilson patted on the back and every Negro told that men of his kind were “safe and sane leaders”? ”

“ As he saw each day more and more of the evasions, the repressions, the choking back of natural impulses the Negro practised to avoid trouble, Kenneth often thought of the coloured man as a chip of wood floating on the surface of a choppy sea, tossed this way and that by every wind that blew upon the waters. ”

“ Her voice was almost a prayer.
“But you don’t know, Ken, you don’t know who was in the mob!” she cried. “That Jim Archer and Charley Allen—they’re the only ones Mamie recognized! And they’re dead—they’ve paid! My little Bob killed them! Who’re you going to get? How’re you going to find out to-night who the others were? You can’t, Ken, you can’t!”.
She realized this was her only hope. If she could only keep him in the house the rest of the night, when morning came she was sure he would be more calm. He would realize then how foolish and foolhardy his intentions of the night before had been. ”

“ Yet she too was inclined to spells of depression like Bob’s. She resembled him more nearly than Kenneth. As has every comely coloured girl in towns of the South like Central City, she had had many repulsive experiences when she had to fight with might and main to ward off unwelcome attentions—both of the men of her [31] own race and of white men. Especially had this been true since the death of her father. Often her face overclouded as she thought of them. She, like Bob, felt always as though they were living on top of a volcano—and never knew when it might erupt. ”

“ 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. ”

“ No race in all history has ever had its liberties and rights handed to it on a silver platter—such rights can come only when men are willing to struggle and sacrifice and work and die, if need be, to obtain them! I call on you here to-night to join in this movement which shall in time strike from our hands and feet the shackles which bind them, that we may move on as a race together to that greater freedom which we have so long desired and which so long has been denied us! ”

“ Before he knew it, Kenneth was telling Jane of his ambitions, of the plans he had made before coming back to Central City, of the successes and failures he had met with, of his hopes for the future. Jane listened without speaking for some time. Life among coloured people is so intense, so earnest, so serious a problem in the South, that never do two intelligent Negroes talk very long before the race problem in some form is under discussion. ”

“ Then followed a recital of the work to be done by the local Klan. The Kligrapp consulted a sheet of paper in his hand.
“The eye that never sleeps has been seeking out those in our city who have acted in a manner displeasing to the Invisible Empire. There is in Central City a nigger wench named Nancy Ware who has been saying evil things against our brother, George Parker. In the name of our sacred order, and in the furtherance of our supreme duty of preservation of white supremacy, she is being watched and will be treated so as to end her dangerous utterances.” ”

“ Why did they pick on Mamie?
Whyn’t they take one of those girls that live in those houses on Butler Street? That’s always running around after men? Why’d they bother a nice girl like Mamie?
Bang! Listen at ’im howl? That’s music for you! Listen to the damn “Peck” squalling!
What’s th’ matter? Looks like they’ve gone! Wonder if I can make a run for it? Th’ damn cowards! Fifty—one hundred—a thousand—five thousand—to one! That’s the way “Crackers” always fight coloured folks! Never heard yet of one “Cracker” fighting one Negro! Have to have thousan’ to kill one little fellow like Bob Harper! ”

“ During the early months of 1917, when through every available means propaganda was being used to whip into being America’s war spirit, one of the most powerful arguments heard was that of the beneficial effect army life would have on the men who entered the service. Newspapers and magazines were filled with it, orators in church and theatre and hall shouted it, every signboard thrust it into the faces of Americans. Alluring pictures were painted of the growth, physical and mental, that would certainly follow enlistment “to make the world safe for democracy.” ”

“ Why, Kenneth, you’ve had it mighty soft—just think of the thousands of coloured boys all over the South who are too poor to get even a high-school training. You’ve never had to get down and dig for what you’ve got—perhaps it would have been better if you had. It’s men with your brains and education that have got to take the leadership. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Wilson, as acting chairman, ended the discussion by calling on Tom Tracy. Tracy was a much younger man than Tucker and was about Kenneth’s age. Tall, well built, intelligent looking, his dark brown face had worn a scowl of discontent and resentment while Tucker had been talking. He began talking in a clear voice that but poorly masked the bitterness he felt but which he tried to keep out of his voice. Older men like Mr. Tucker were always quick to rebuke any sign of “uppishness” in the younger generation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In front of many of the houses, there sat on sunny days an old and bent man or ancient woman puffing the omnipresent corn-cob pipe. ...
A half-mile westward from “Darktown,” and separated from it by the Central of Georgia Railroad tracks, stood the Central City Cotton Spinning-Mill. Clustered around its ugly red-brick walls stood dwellings that differed but little from those of “Darktown.” Here were the same dingy, small, unsanitary, unbeautiful, and unpainted dwellings. Here were the same muddy or dusty unpaved streets. Here were the same squalor and poverty and filth and abject ignorance. ”