A tumultuous thunderous climax—a dramatic pause and then he swung into a fervent prayer in which the preacher talked as though his God were an intimate friend and confidant. The entire drama lasting more than an hour was thrilling and enervating and theatric. Yet beneath it lay a devout sincerity that removed the scene from the absurd to that which bordered on the magnificent. To these humble folk their religion was the most important thing in their lives, and, after all, what matters it what a man does? It is the spirit in which he performs an act that makes it dignified or pathetic or ludicrous—not the act itself.
In spite of his sophistication, Kenneth never was able entirely to ward off the chills of excitement that ran down his spine at these weird religious ceremonies. He saw through the whole theatric performance and yet way down beneath it all there was a sincerity and genuineness that never failed to impress him. This was not a mere animalism nor was it the joke that white people sometimes tried to make of it. Fundamentally, it was rooted and grounded in an immutable and unfailing belief in the supreme power of a tangible God—a God that personally directed the most minute of the affairs of the most lowly of creatures. It had been the guide and refuge of the fathers and mothers of these same people through the dark days of slavery. In the same manner it was almost the only refuge for these children and grandchildren of the slaves in withstanding the trials of a latter-day slavery in many respects more oppressive than the pre-Civil War variety.
Kenneth walked home from church running over these things in his mind. Was this religious fervour the best thing for his people? Why did not the Church attract more intelligent and able young men of his race instead of men like Reverend Wilson? Why didn’t some twentieth-century Moses arise to lead them out of the thraldom of this primitive religion? Would that Moses, when he came, be able to offer a solace as effective to enable these people of his to bear the burdens that lay so heavily upon them?
He thought again of his conversation with Roy Ewing. What was the elusive solution to this problem of race in America? 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”? 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—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. No, that was the smokescreen to hide something more sinister. Social equality would lead to intermarriage, they thought, and the legitimatizing of the countless half-coloured sons and daughters of these white people. Why, if every child in the South were a legitimate one, more than half of the land and property in the South would belong to coloured owners.
Did the white people who were always talking about “social equality” think they really were fooling anybody with their constant denunciation of it? Twenty-nine States of America had laws against intermarriage. All these laws were passed by white legislators. Were these laws passed to keep Negroes from seizing some white woman and forcing her to marry him against her will? Or were these laws unconscious admissions by these white men that they didn’t trust their women or their men to keep from marrying Negroes? Any fool knew that if two people didn’t want to marry each other, there was no law of God or man to make them marry. No, the laws were passed because white men wanted to have their own women and use coloured women too without any law interfering with their affairs or making them responsible for the consequences.
Kenneth usually ended these arguments with himself with a feeling of complete impotence, of travelling around like a squirrel in a circular cage. No matter where he started or how fast or how far he travelled, he always wound up at the same point and with the same sense of blind defeat. Oh, well, better men than he had tried to answer the same questions and failed. He’d stay to himself and attend to his own business and let such problems go hang. But in spite of himself he often found himself enmeshed in this endless maze of reasoning. Just as frequently he determined to put from himself again the perplexing and seemingly insoluble problems.
It was after one of these soliloquies on his way from church one bright Sunday in April that Kenneth reached home and found a call for him to come at once to a house down on Butler Street, in the heart of the Negro district in the bottoms. Telling his
