With such exceptions their lot was not a very difficult one. In the stores Mrs. Daquin was not allowed to try on hats or shoes or dresses before purchasing them and they frequently were forced to wait until whites who had entered after they had were served. But with time they became accustomed to these slights and particularly when they found that with but few exceptions these were accepted by their friends as the expected thing, unpleasant but inevitable. “You can get used to being hung if you’re only hung often enough,” seemed to be current philosophy, except in the cases of the younger ones. …
Beside their regular lives of work and play they found an additional outlet in various affairs at the colleges which were situated in Atlanta. There were occasional musical evenings, now and then some speaker of note came and lectured. There were baseball and football games between the teams of the local schools and a few with teams from institutions located in other cities. In the local papers they read of events going on in the outside world, some of them exciting lengthy comment and interest, others less. General rejoicing greeted the victory of Japan over Russia, the nation of smaller men being enthusiastically supported largely because they were a coloured nation. “Teddy” Roosevelt was acclaimed a great friend of the Negro despite the Brownsville affair, though to Jean it seemed much of his popularity among the coloured people in Atlanta was due to the fact that he was a Republican. The San Francisco earthquake elicited a certain degree of interest and sympathy, though, being far away, its maximum reaction usually was summed up in the remark, “Isn’t that too bad!”
Twice the world thrilled to stories that men had at last plunged through the frozen wastes of the North and come to the top of the world. And because one of them was discovered to be a liar many, many wiseacres shook their heads portentously and opined that the other one might be lying too. Among the younger men there were frequent discussions of the relative merits of a promising young Negro prizefighter named Johnson recently emerged from Texas who was achieving a considerable reputation with his fists.
One cloud that had appeared first as a tiny speck began to grow with distressing speed during the summer of 1906 and brought deep concern to the more thoughtful ones. By these, certain ominous signs had been seen all through the long hot months of the summer when nerves are frayed and tempers sharpened to razor-blade keenness by the sultry heat. A period of unemployment had caused a marked loafing of whites and Negroes followed by a long series of petty crimes. Saloons and dives and “social clubs” sprang up like mushrooms and throve. A bitter political campaign was waged, its central issue the question of disenfranchisement of Negroes and “Negro domination.” A play, The Clansmen, a distorted picture of Reconstruction filled with venom and hatred, came to Atlanta and stayed during this time of strain, and whipped into fury bitterness between white and black. Some crimes against women were reported, others were not chronicled. A man named Turnadge committed a crime terrible in detail but little was said of it. Turnadge was white. Other white men committed other crimes and the press said little of it. Twelve or more Negroes were charged with rape or attempted rape. Circulation-seeking newspapers brought out “extra” after “extra,” screaming in twelve-inch headlines, “Third Assault,” “Fourth Assault,” “Negro Attempts to Assault Mrs. Mary Chafin Near Sugar Creek Bridge,” “Angry Citizens Pursue Black Brute.” It meant little at the time that later it was to be discovered that all but two of these reports were without foundation in truth.
To most of the citizens he encountered, Jean found, the tenseness meant little. It was considered variously as a bit embarrassing, rather unfortunate, and mostly as the slightly aggravated condition of the usual state of affairs. But to him, unused to the ominous rumbling which terrified him, the situation seemed grave, very grave indeed. In the few contacts he had with white people, on his daily visits to the bank uptown, in his contacts with tradesmen and men and women on the streets, he saw with troubled eyes the glances of suspicion, of hostility, of hatred. Once on entering the bank he stood near the desk of the cashier, who had always had a smile and cheery word for Jean, whom he liked. Now he looked grimly at Jean and demanded, in what was almost a snarl: “What do you want, Daquin?”
“I came to see you about some notes, Mr. Stewart,” Jean answered, troubled, “but—I wonder why you’ve changed—you’re usually so pleasant and today you’re—why, you’re—”
“There’s reason enough, Daquin. You’ve read the papers. Why don’t you better-class Negroes do something to stop your criminals from attacking our women?”
“We’re as bitterly opposed to attacks on women, whether they’re white ones or coloured ones, as you are, Mr. Stewart. That is, we’re opposed when they really are attacks.”
“What do you mean—when they are attacks?” the cashier demanded.
“Just what I say—how many of these attacks reported in the papers are really attacks? They spread the story of an alleged or a reported attack all over the front page—but when they found the woman was mistaken or hysterical from reading all these other wild tales, they stick it in an insignificant item on the inside, if they mention it at all. There’s trouble ahead if these inflammatory stories aren’t stopped, Mr. Stewart. And it seems to me it’s up to men like you who’ve got sense to stop them—the crowd that makes up the mob isn’t going to do any thinking for itself—it never does.”
“That isn’t the point, Daquin,” Stewart asserted. “You Negroes have got to stop these real attacks!”
“There are more ways
