“The reaction has set in,” remarked Levin. “And you’re an example.” He lit a cigar and puffed for a moment. “Now it’s the nigger. Next it will be—why where you come from, Corinth, you’ve got your Trick Track Tribe—an organization with the identical aims of the secret societies of savages and based on nothing but prejudices.”
“But you must admit that the nigger is different,” protested Robert. “He has always been the accursed of races. He has always been a slave. He has never had a civilization, never had a government, never created anything. Africa! What would it be if it weren’t for the whites? Hell, these coons who wait on the tables and shine shoes would still be savages in the jungles, without education and without religion, if it weren’t for the white man.”
“I’ll admit nothing,” Levin retorted. “You speak from prejudice. Take Williams for instance. He’s educated, cultured, refined. He does hold a high position in the literary world and among his own race. Don’t sneer! But you wouldn’t visit him simply because he’s black.”
“Well, I’ll admit that Williams is all that you say. He’s an exception. I’ll admit that there are a thousand such exceptions in the world. What of it? What has that to do with what I have said? I said that the nigger has always been a slave, that he has always—”
Levin interrupted.
“You have an idea that the Negro is somehow sub-human?”
“Well—yes, if you put it that way!”
“That’s a belief that is based neither on science nor on history. It is flatly contradicted by Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Arabian experience, and it is being contradicted in this country today. Whether Negroes are equal in capacity to white men—that is on the average—or even whether they have produced or will produce a single genius worthy to rank with the highest geniuses of the white race is an idle and unimportant question. They can at least gain their livelihood as laborers and artisans. They can operate their own farms. They can take their place in the mines and the forests. Let them have fair play and they will naturally find their right place, wherever that may be. The Tribe talks of Negro disloyalty, of seditious plots with the Bolsheviki. There is not a shred of evidence to back these extravagant charges against an entire race. But if the white men treated them with fairness and justice they would have no reason to fear even these mythical plots. Experience has shown that whenever aliens are treated as citizens, they become citizens, whatever may be their religion or race. Give the American Negro but half a chance and you will find that he loves and hates, not with an African, but with an American heart.
“You say that the Negro has never had a civilization. He has had one of the most ancient of civilizations, with centers of culture at Ghana, Melle and Timbuctoo. There were kingdoms and empires in Songhay and Zymbabwe. There were art and industry in Yuruba and Benien, Negroes worked in iron long before the European. They wove. They carved. They had their music. They had a well-organized tribal government, with town meetings and market places. Those are the elements of civilization—not our civilization—not the civilization of the cold North or East, of Europe or Asia—but a highly developed civilization adapted to Africa. Out of Africa came the ivory and gold of the remotest times. Africans—your niggers—welded iron, practiced agriculture and carried on trade when Europe was still a wilderness. Your niggers sat on the throne of the Pharaohs in Egypt.”
“Niggers the kings of Egypt! Why how—?”