On their side, the blacks fought against whiteness. They had begun by stoning, not the white man who had thrown the first stone, but all the whites upon whom they could lay their black hands. In gangs they had waylaid and assaulted any one they met, regardless of age and of sex, because he was white. The black child who had been so cruelly murdered had become a symbol to them of all the suffering of the colored at the hands of the white. All that they had undergone under the lash and the knife in the Congo—the fruitful colony of gallant Belgium—all that they had borne in slave marts, on cotton plantations, in dismal swamps, at the whipping-post, on the faggot pile—all the concentrated injustice of the ages, all the intolerance of bleeding centuries, lay in the sacrifice of this beloved pickaninny. Out of injustice and tolerance had sprung an answering injustice and intolerance. And now in answer to it the white mob screamed without.
Gangs of whites and blacks filled the streets, attacked with rocks, bricks, knives and bullets. Snipers picked off their foe from the top windows of brick tenements. Motor trucks, manned by armed bands, plunged through the crowded streets, showering bullets. Firebrands burned a hundred buildings and attempted to destroy the entire Negro district. Three thousand men, women and children were rendered homeless. By Monday night twenty-five blacks and whites had sobbed out their lives in the battle of color, their bodies lay on the marble slabs of the public morgue—a sacrifice to the God of Intolerance.
In Tuesday’s paper Robert read about the rioting and heard unconfirmed details, horrible exaggerations, from the lips of excited men who stood around the lobby. Robert felt glad that he no longer belonged to the Tribe. Though the riots were no part of the Tribe’s work, still they showed Robert the danger of organizing on the basis of hatred. In a way he had known this all the time, but now his talks with Father Callahan, with McCall and the Levins had indelibly impressed it upon him. He felt himself nearer to his mental state of mind immediately after the termination of the War—when the American ideal of forbearance, indulgence, charity, had electrified a world—than he had ever been since. Democracy. Yes, democracy, that was it.
Robert decided to wait until he received a reply to his telegram of resignation before notifying Freeman, grew impatient as the morning wore on and finally determined to rid himself of his impatience by walking. It was hot and choking and sooty—not at all the Chicago of which he had dreamed when he was in Georgia. It was impossible to get used to Chicago. It was hot, but not like Corinth. It was hard to breathe. On Michigan avenue, however, in spite of the smoke from the lines of trains that ran along the shore, one could at least see Lake Michigan, stretching calmly out to the horizon in the golden sunlight, bearing proud white steamers and occasional sails—and the only restful thing, it seemed, in the whole feverish metropolis. And so he walked, past the Art Institute, to the north where workingmen high above were placing blocks of dazzling white terra cotta on a tall tower that rose just beyond the bridge at a curve in the boulevard.
He wondered how it would feel to stand perched there high above the city—with its swarming traffic, its noise and soot, its passions and hatreds—God peering down on the world he had fashioned. He looked at his watch—it was almost eleven—and decided to return to his hotel.
McCall was waiting for him.
“I noticed a couple of telegrams in your box,” he said.
“A couple?” Robert wondered why there should be two. He opened the first. It was from Griffith, a mixture of threat and Tribal mystery. He could imagine Griffith grinning while he wrote it, wracking his brain to coin something staggering, and satisfied with his work. It read:
“We know what we are doing. Remember your oath. Death to the faithless is necessary to preserve faith in the deathless.”
The second telegram was briefer: