“That’s just what’s the matter with the South. She’s been brutal and tricky and deceitful so long in trying to keep the nigras down, she couldn’t be decent if she tried. If acting like this was going to get them anywhere, there might be some reason in it all, but they’ve shut their eyes, they refuse to see that nigras like you ain’t going to be handled like yo’ daddy and folks like him were.”
“What are we going to do—what can we do?” asked Kenneth. Never had he suspected that even so fine a man as Judge Stevenson had thought things through as their conversation had indicated. He felt the situation was not entirely hopeless when men like the judge felt and talked as he did. Perhaps they were the leaven that would affect the lump of ignorance and viciousness that was the South.
“What are we going to do?” echoed the elder man. “God knows—I don’t! Mebbe the lid will blow off some day—then there would be hell to pay! One thing’s going to help, and that’s nigras pulling up stakes and going North. When some of these white folks begin to see their fields going to seed, they’ll begin to realize how much they need the nigra—just like some of ’em are seeing already.”
“But are they seeing it in the right way?” asked Kenneth. “Instead of trying to make things better so Negroes are willing to stay in the South, they’re trying more oppressive methods than ever before. They’re beating up labour agents, charging them a thousand dollars for licences, lynching more Negroes, and robbing them more than ever.”
“Oh, they’ll be fools enough until the real pinch comes. Far’s I can see, instead of stopping nigras from going North, them things are hurrying them up. Wait till it hits their pocketbooks 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.”
Kenneth laughed.
“From all we’ve been saying, a coloured man’s got to have some sense or else he’s in a mighty poor fix nowadays.”
He did not resent the old man’s remark, for he knew the judge could not understand that he was much more contented as a member of a race that was struggling upward than he would have been as one of that race that expended most of its time and thought and energy in exploiting and oppressing others. The judge followed him to the door promising to draw up the necessary legal documents for the cooperative society. When Kenneth broached the subject of payment, the old man waved his hand again in protest.
“Ain’t got long to live, so’s I got to do what little I can to help. ’Tain’t much I can do, but I’ll help all I can.”
Thanking him, Kenneth started to leave, but the judge recalled him after he had reached the hallway. “Ken, just consider all I said as between us. Can’t tell what folks’d say if they knew I been running on like this.”
There was almost a note of pleading in his voice. Kenneth assured the judge their conversation would be treated as confidential. As he walked home, he reflected on the anomalous position the judge and men like him occupied, hemmed in, oppressed, afraid to call their souls their own, creatures of the Frankenstein monster their own people had created which seemed about to rise up and destroy its creators. No, he said to himself, he would much rather be a Negro with all his problems than be made a moral coward as the race problem had made the white people of the South.
The judge stood at the window, dim with the dust of many months, and gazed at Kenneth’s broad back as he swung down Lee Street. Long after he had disappeared, the old man stood there, chewing on the cigar which by now was a mangled mass of wet tobacco. At last he turned away and resumed his seat in the comfortable old chair where Kenneth had found him. He shook his head slowly, doubtfully, and murmured, half to himself, half to the dusty, empty room:
“Hope this thing turns out all right. Hope he don’t get in no trouble. But even if he does, there’ll be more like him coming on—and they got too much sense to stand for what nigras been made to suffer. Lord, if we only had a few white folks who had some sense …”
It was almost a prayer.
XII
From Judge Stevenson’s office Kenneth went directly to tell Jane of the interview. So absorbed was he in contemplation of the wider vision of the problem he was attacking which the judge’s words had given him, he forgot to telephone her to ask if it was agreeable for him to call at so unconventional an hour. He found her clad in a bungalow apron busily cleaning house and singing as she worked.
They sat on the steps of the back porch while he told her all that had been said. Taken out of his preoccupation with his own affairs, Kenneth had shaken off his negative air and now he talked convincingly of their plans. Jane said nothing until he had finished.
“That’s fine!” she exclaimed when he had ended. “Even if Judge Stevenson is doubtful of how much we can accomplish, we can do something. Now all that remains is for you to present your plan—”
“Not mine, yours,” he corrected.
“No, it will have to be yours,” she answered. “You know how folks are in the South—they think all that women can do is cook and keep house and bear children. If you want the thing to go, it’ll be best
