“What about the preachers? It doesn’t seem much of a religion they’re preaching if the commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ doesn’t form part of their creed.”
“Oh, you needn’t look for nothing much from them. Three years ago old Reverend Adams down to the First Methodist took it into his head he was going to tackle something easy—nothing like the race problem. He started in to wipe out the bootleggers ’round here, thinking he could get a lot of support. But he didn’t, because most of the folks he figgered on lining up with him were regular customers of the fellows he was after.” Ewing chuckled at the memory of the crusade that had died “aborning.” “When the next quarterly conference was held, they elected a new pastor for the First Methodist. No, Ken, it ain’t so easy as it looks. You’re asking me to do something that not a Southern white man has done since the Civil War⸺”
Rising, he walked towards the door and remarked:
“My advice to you is to stay away from any talk like this with anybody else. There probably ain’t another man in town who would’ve talked to you like this, and if the boys in the Ku Klux Klan knew I had been running along like this with a coloured man, I don’t know what’d happen to me. See you later. So long!”
Kenneth walked up and down the room with his hands stuffed deep into his pockets, his thoughts rushing through his head in helter-skelter fashion. He was suddenly conscious of a feeling that he had been thrust into a tiny boat and forced to embark on a limitless sea, with neither compass nor chart nor sun nor moon to guide him. Would he arrive? Or would he go down in some squall which arose from he knew not where or when? The whole situation seemed so vast, so sinister, so monstrous, that he shuddered involuntarily, as he had done as a child when left alone in a dark room at night. Religion, which had been the guide and stay of his father in like circumstances, offered him no solace. He thought with a faint smile of the institution known as the Church. What was it? A vast money machine, interested in rallies and pastors’ days and schemes to milk more dollars from its communicants. In preparing people to die. He wasn’t interested in what was going to happen to him after death. What he wanted was some guide and comfort in his present problems. No, religion and the Church as it was now constituted wasn’t the answer. What was? He could not give it.
“Here I am,” he soliloquized, “with the best education money can buy. And yet Roy Ewing, who hasn’t been any further than high school, tells me I’d better submit to all this without protest. Yet he stands for the best there is here in Central City, and I suppose he represents the most liberal thought of the South. How’s it all going to end? Even a rat will fight when he’s cornered, and these coloured people aren’t going to stand for these things all the time. What can I do? God, there isn’t anything—anything I can do? Bob is right! Something must be done, but what is it? I reckon these white folks must be blind—or else they figure on leaving whatever solution there may be to their children, hoping the storm doesn’t break while they are liv. ing. No! That isn’t it. They think because they’ve been able to get away with it thus far, they’ll always be able to get away with it. Oh, God, I’m helpless! I’m helpless!”
Kenneth had begun to comprehend the delicate position a Negro always occupies in places like Central City—in fact, throughout the South. So little had he come into contact with the perplexities of the race question before he went away to school, he had seen little of the windings and turnings, the tortuous paths the Negro must follow to avoid giving offence to the dominant white sentiment. As he saw each day more and more of the evasions, the repressions, the choking back of natural impulses the Negro practised to avoid trouble, Kenneth often thought of the coloured man as a chip of wood floating on the surface of a choppy sea, tossed this way and that by every wind that blew upon the waters. He must of necessity be constantly on his guard when talking with his white neighbours, or with any white men in the South, to keep from uttering some word, some phrase which, like a seed dropped and forgotten, lies fallow for a time in the brain of the one to whom he talks, but later blossoms forth into that noxious death-dealing plant which is the mob. Innocent enough of guile or malice that word may be, yet he must be careful lest it be distorted and magnified until it can be the cause of violence to himself and his people. Often—very often—it is true that no evil follows. Yet the possibility that it may come must always be considered. But one factor is fixed and immutable the more intelligent and prosperous the Negro and the more ignorant and poor the white man, the graver the danger, for in the mind of the latter are jealousy and ignorance and stupidity and abject fear of the educated and successful Negro.
His talk with Ewing had crystallized the thoughts, half developed, which his observations since his return had planted in his mind. Kenneth began to see how involved the whole question really was, he was seeing dim paths of expediency and opportunism he would be forced to tread if he expected to reach the goal he had set for himself. Already he found one of his pet ideas to be of doubtful value the theory he had had that success would give a Negro immunity from persecution. Like a scroll slowly unwinding before his eyes, Kenneth saw, as yet only partially, that instead of freeing him from danger of the mob, too great prosperity would make him and every other Negro outstanding targets of the wrath and envy of the poorer whites—that jealousy which “is cruel as the grave.” Oh, well, he reflected, others had avoided trouble and so could he. He would have to be exceedingly careful to avoid too great display, and at the same time cultivate the goodwill of those men like Roy Ewing and Judge Stevenson who would stand by him if there was need.
CHAPTER V
Kenneth was roused by a light tap upon the door. Opening it, Mamie stood on the threshold. Inquiring whether Kenneth had finished his work, and on being told he had, she entered. “Kenneth, why do you spend all your time here in the office? Don’t you think mamma and I want to talk with you occasionally?”