Rachel (Tremulously): Oh! Ma dear, don’t! (Tom and Rachel watch their mother anxiously and uncomfortably. Mrs. Loving is very evidently nerving herself for something).
Mrs. Loving (Very slowly, with restrained emotion): Tom—and Rachel!
Tom: Ma!
Rachel: Ma dear! (A tense, breathless pause).
Mrs. Loving (Bracing herself): They—they—were lynched!!
Tom and Rachel (In a whisper): Lynched!
Mrs. Loving (Slowly, laboring under strong but restrained emotion): Yes—by Christian people—in a Christian land. We found out afterwards they were all church members in good standing—the best people. (A silence). Your father was a man among men. He was a fanatic. He was a Saint!
Tom (Breathing with difficulty): Ma—can you—will you—tell us—about it?
Mrs. Loving: I believe it to be my duty. (A silence). When I married your father I was a widow. My little George was seven years old. From the very beginning he worshiped your father. He followed him around—just like a little dog. All children were like that with him. I myself have never seen anybody like him. “Big” seems to fit him better than any other word. He was big-bodied—big-souled. His loves were big and his hates. You can imagine, then, how the wrongs of the Negro—ate into his soul. (Pauses). He was utterly fearless. (A silence). He edited and owned, for several years, a small negro paper. In it he said a great many daring things. I used to plead with him to be more careful. I was always afraid for him. For a long time, nothing happened—he was too important to the community. And then—one night—ten years ago—a mob made up of the respectable people in the town lynched an innocent black man—and what was worse—they knew him to be innocent. A white man was guilty. I never saw your father so wrought up over anything: he couldn’t eat; he couldn’t sleep; he brooded night and day over it. And then—realizing fully the great risk he was running, although I begged him not to—and all his friends also—he deliberately and calmly went to work and published a most terrific denunciation of that mob. The old prophets in the Bible were not more terrible than he. A day or two later, he received an anonymous letter, very evidently from an educated man, calling upon him to retract his words in the next issue. If he refused his life was threatened. The next week’s issue contained an arraignment as frightful, if not more so, than the previous one. Each word was white-hot, searing. That night, some dozen masked men came to our house.
Rachel (Moaning): Oh, Ma dear! Ma dear!