The worthy doctor took us out and drove us all over the city, heartily apologizing that he could not ask me to have any meal with his wife and himself. “For, although you may have no prejudice, it would not be safe for either of us if it were known.” Which was indeed so. Throughout the whole of the South it is impossible to eat or drink with a colored man or woman.
My chief way of finding people to whom I had introductions was by reference to the city directory. Here I found that all colored people were marked with a star—as much as to say, “Watch out; this party’s colored.” White women were indicated as “Mrs.” or “Miss,” but colored women always as plain “Sarah Jones” or “Betty Thompson,” or whatever the name might be, without any prefix. This I discovered to be one of many small grievances of the Negro population, akin to that of not having their roads mended though they pay taxes, and being obliged to take back seats behind a straw screen in the trolley cars.
It was a novel impression in the Negro church on Sunday morning. I came rather early, and found an adult Bible class discussing theology in groups. One man near me exclaimed, “It says ‘He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved,’ doesn’t it, brother? Well, then, I believe, so why argufy? I an’t a-goin’ to take no chances. No, sir, I an’t a-goin’ to do it”—a serene black child of forty years or so.
In the full congregation were all types of Negroes. The men were undistinguished, but the women were very striking. One lady wore a gilded skirt and a broad-brimmed, black straw hat. Two Cleopatras sat in front of me—tall, elegant, graceful, expensively dressed as in Mayfair, one in chiffon, the other in soft gray satin, tiny gold chains about their necks, pearl earrings in their ears. They had smooth, fruit-like cheeks, curving outward to perfect bell mouths. When they sang they lifted their full, dusky throats like grand birds. They were evidently of the élite of Norfolk. On the other hand, there were numbers of baggy and voluminous ladies with enormous bosoms, almost visibly perspiring. They thronged and they thronged, and all the red-cushioned seats filled up. There were men of all types, from the perfect West African Negro to the polished American Arab, yellow men, brown men, lots with large tortoise-shell spectacles, all with close-cropped hair which showed the Runic lines of their hard heads. Fans were provided for every worshipper, and noisy religious and family talk filled the whole chapel.
We began with some fine singing—not deep and harmonious and complex as that of the Russians, but hard, resonant, and breezy, followed by conventional prayers and the reading of the Scriptures. The pastor then sent someone to ask me if I would come forward and give them Christian greeting in a few words. I was much astonished, as I did not know one ever broke into the midst of Divine Service in that way. However, I came forward and confronted the strange sea of dusky, eager faces and the thousand waving paper fans, and I said: “Dear brothers and sisters, I am an Englishman and a white man, but before these I am a Christian. In Christ, as you know, there is neither white nor black, neither inferiority nor superiority of race, unless it is that sometimes the first shall be last and the last first. We know little about the American Negro in England, but I have come to find out. I have not been sent by anybody, but was just prompted by the Spirit to come out here and make your acquaintance, and so bring tidings home to England. I hope you will take that as an assurance of loving interest in you, and a promise for the future. I am glad to see you have made such progress since slavery days and have in Norfolk fine houses and churches and banks and a theatre and restaurants and businesses, and that you have such a large measure of happiness and freedom. I believe you have great gifts to offer on the altar of American civilization, and so far from remaining a problem you will prove a treasure.” And I told some touching words of my friend Hugh Chapman, of the chapel of the Savoy, in London: “Mankind is saved, not by a white man, or by a black, but by one who combines both—the little brown Man of Nazareth.”
It was a strange sensation, that of facing the Negro congregation. I could find no touch, no point of contact, could indeed take nothing from them. The spiritual atmosphere was an entirely different one from that of a gathering of Whites. I should have been inclined to say that there was no spiritual atmosphere whatever. For me it was like speaking to an empty room and a vast collection of empty seats. But I know there was something there, though I could not realize it.
After the service there came up to me a purely delightful creature, full of an almost dangerous ardor for what I had said. She was the leading spirit at the Liberty Club for colored soldiers and jack tars. In the afternoon I listened to some wonderful singing at another church. The little black organist woman sang at the top of her voice while she bent over the keys, and waved the spirit into her choir by eager movements with the back of her hand.
“Take me, shake me, don’t let me sleep,” they sang, and it was infinitely worth while. I felt that in the great ultimate harmony we could not do without this voice, the voice of the praise of the dark children.
Next week I went over to Newport News. On a wall in Norfolk I read: “T. Adkins, Newport News,” and underneath someone had written, “You could not pay me to live there: Robert Johnson, Norfolk.”