“ ‘Kinky, curly hair made straight in two applications. Dark skins lightened two shades; mulattoes turned perfectly white.’
“This stuff is rank poison, Jerry,” continued the general with a mock solemnity which did not impose upon Jerry, who nevertheless listened with an air of great alarm. He suspected that the general was making fun of him; but he also knew that the general would like to think that Jerry believed him in earnest; and to please the white folks was Jerry’s consistent aim in life. “I can see the signs of decay in your face, and your hair will all fall out in a week or two at the latest—mark my words!”
McBane had listened to this pleasantry with a sardonic sneer. It was a waste of valuable time. To Carteret it seemed in doubtful taste. These grotesque advertisements had their tragic side. They were proof that the negroes had read the handwriting on the wall. These pitiful attempts to change their physical characteristics were an acknowledgment, on their own part, that the negro was doomed, and that the white man was to inherit the earth and hold all other races under his heel. For, as the months had passed, Carteret’s thoughts, centring more and more upon the negro, had led him farther and farther, until now he was firmly convinced that there was no permanent place for the negro in the United States, if indeed anywhere in the world, except under the ground. More pathetic even than Jerry’s efforts to escape from the universal doom of his race was his ignorance that even if he could, by some strange alchemy, bleach his skin and straighten his hair, there would still remain, underneath it all, only the unbleached darky—the ass in the lion’s skin.
When the general had finished his facetious lecture, Jerry backed out of the room shamefacedly, though affecting a greater confusion than he really felt. Jerry had not reasoned so closely as Carteret, but he had realized that it was a distinct advantage to be white—an advantage which white people had utilized to secure all the best things in the world; and he had entertained the vague hope that by changing his complexion he might share this prerogative. While he suspected the general’s sincerity, he nevertheless felt a little apprehensive lest the general’s prediction about the effects of the face-bleach and other preparations might prove true—the general was a white gentleman and ought to know—and decided to abandon their use.
This purpose was strengthened by his next interview with the major. When Carteret summoned him, an hour later, after the other gentlemen had taken their leave, Jerry had washed his head thoroughly and there remained no trace of the pomade. An attempt to darken the lighter spots in his cuticle by the application of printer’s ink had not proved equally successful—the retouching left the spots as much too dark as they had formerly been too light.
“Jerry,” said Carteret sternly, “when I hired you to work for the Chronicle, you were black. The word ‘negro’ means ‘black.’ The best negro is a black negro, of the pure type, as it came from the hand of God. If you wish to get along well with the white people, the blacker you are the better—white people do not like negroes who want to be white. A man should be content to remain as God made him and where God placed him. So no more of this nonsense. Are you going to vote at the next election?”
“What would you ’vise me ter do, suh?” asked Jerry cautiously.
“I do not advise you. You ought to have sense enough to see where your own interests lie. I put it to you whether you cannot trust yourself more safely in the hands of white gentlemen, who are your true friends, than in the hands of ignorant and purchasable negroes and unscrupulous white scoundrels?”
“Dere’s no doubt about it, suh,” assented Jerry, with a vehemence proportioned to his desire to get back into favor. “I ain’ gwine ter have nothin’ ter do wid de ’lection, suh! Ef I don’ vote, I kin keep my job, can’t I, suh?”
The major eyed Jerry with an air of supreme disgust. What could be expected of a race so utterly devoid of tact? It seemed as though this negro thought a white gentleman might want to bribe him to remain away from the polls; and the negro’s willingness to accept the imaginary bribe demonstrated the venal nature of the colored race—its entire lack of moral principle!
“You will retain your place, Jerry,” he said severely, “so long as you perform your duties to my satisfaction and behave yourself properly.”
With this grandiloquent subterfuge Carteret turned to his next article on white supremacy. Jerry did not delude himself with any finespun sophistry. He knew perfectly well that he held his job upon the condition that he stayed away from the polls at the approaching election. Jerry was a fool—
“The world of fools hath such a store,
That he who would not see an ass,
Must stay at home and shut his door
And break his looking-glass.”
But while no one may be entirely wise, there are degrees of folly, and Jerry was not all kinds of a fool.
XXIX
Muttering of the Storm
Events moved rapidly during the next few days. The reproduction, in the Chronicle, of the article from the Afro-American Banner, with Carteret’s inflammatory comment, took immediate effect. It touched the Southern white man in his most sensitive spot. To him such an article was an insult to white womanhood, and must be resented by some active steps—mere words would be no answer at all. To meet words with words upon such a subject would be to acknowledge the equality of the negro and his right to discuss or criticise the conduct of the white people.
The colored people became alarmed at the murmurings of the whites, which seemed to presage a coming storm. A number of
