In spite of his sophistication, Kenneth never was able entirely to ward off the chills of excitement that ran down his spine at these weird religious ceremonies. He saw through the whole theatric performance and yet way down beneath it all there was a sincerity and genuineness that never failed to impress him. This was not a mere animalism nor was it the joke that white people sometimes tried to make of it. Fundamentally, it was rooted and grounded in an immutable and unfailing belief in the supreme power of a tangible God—a God that personally directed the most minute of the affairs of the most lowly of creatures. It had been the guide and refuge of the fathers and mothers of these same people through the dark days of slavery. In the same manner it was almost the only refuge for these children and grandchildren of the slaves in withstanding the trials of a latter-day slavery in many respects more oppressive than the pre-Civil War variety.
Kenneth walked home from church running over these things in his mind. Was this religious fervour the best thing for his people? Why did not the Church attract more intelligent and able young men of his race instead of men like Reverend Wilson? Why didn’t some twentieth-century Moses arise to lead them out of the thraldom of this primitive religion? Would that Moses, when he came, be able to offer a solace as effective to enable these people of his to bear the burdens that lay so heavily upon them?
He thought again of his conversation with Roy Ewing. What was the elusive solution to this problem of race in America? Why couldn’t the white people of the South see where their course was leading them? Ewing was right. No white man of the South had ever come out in complete defiance of the present regime which was so surely damning the South and America. Kenneth saw his people kept in the bondage of ignorance. Why? Because it was to the economic advantage of the white South to have it so. Why was a man like Reverend Wilson patted on the back and every Negro told that men of his kind were “safe and sane leaders”? Why was every Negro who too audibly or visibly resented the brutalities and proscriptions of race prejudice instantly labelled as a radical—a dangerous character—as one seeking “social equality”? What was this thing called “social equality” anyhow? That was an easy question to answer. It was about the only one he could answer with any completeness. White folks didn’t really believe that Negroes sought to force themselves in places where they weren’t wanted, any more than decent white people wanted to force themselves where they were not invited. No, that was the smoke-screen to hide something more sinister. Social equality would lead to intermarriage, they thought, and the legitimatizing of the countless half-coloured sons and daughters of these white people. Why, if every child in the South were a legitimate one, more than half of the land and property in the South would belong to coloured owners.
Did the white people who were always talking about “social equality” think they really were fooling anybody with their constant denunciation of it? Twenty-nine States of America had laws against intermarriage. All these laws were passed by white legislators. Were these laws passed to keep Negroes from seizing some white woman and forcing her to marry him against her will? Or were these laws unconscious admissions by these white men that they didn’t trust their women or their men to keep from marrying Negroes? Any fool knew that if two people didn’t want to marry each other, there was no law of God or man to make them marry. No, the laws were passed because white men wanted to have their own women and use coloured women too without any law interfering with their affairs or making them responsible for the consequences.
Kenneth usually ended these arguments with himself with a feeling of complete impotence, of travelling around like a squirrel in a circular cage. No matter where he started or how fast or how far he travelled, he always wound up at the same point and with the same sense of blind defeat. Oh, well, better men than he had tried to answer the same questions and failed. He’d stay to himself and attend to his own business and let such problems go hang. But in spite of himself he often found himself enmeshed in this endless maze of reasoning. Just as frequently he determined to put from himself again the perplexing and seemingly insoluble problems.
It was after one of these soliloquies on his way from church one bright Sunday in April that Kenneth reached home and found a call for him to come at once to a house down on Butler Street, in the heart of the Negro district in the bottoms. Telling his mother to keep dinner for him as he would be back shortly, he hurried down State Street. Turning suddenly into Harris Street, which crossed State, which in turn would lead him to the house he sought on Butler Street, he caught a fleeting glimpse of a white man who looked like George Parker, cashier of the Bank of Central City Parker, if it was he, turned hastily at Kenneth’s approach and went up a narrow alley which ran off Harris Street. Kenneth thought nothing of the incident other than a vague and quickly passing wonder at Parker’s presence in that part of town.
Kenneth hurried on, instinctively stepping over or around the numerous children whose complexions ranged in colour from a deep black to a yellow that was almost white, and mangy-looking dogs that seemed to infest the street. Approaching the house he sought, he found a group of excitedly talking Negroes gathered around the gate. The group separated to let him pass, and from it came one or two greetings to Kenneth in the form of “Hello, Doc.” He paid little attention to them, but proceeded up the path to the house.
Entering, he was surprised to find it furnished more ornately and comfortably than usual in that section. He knew the place of old, remembering that his father had always warned him against going into this section. Here it was reported that strange things went on, that a raid by the police was not uncommon. He had upon one occasion seen the patrol wagon, better known as the “Black Maria,” drive away loaded with bottles of whisky and with a nondescript lot of coloured men and women. Most of the property in this section was owned by white people, which they held on to jealously. They charged and received rentals two or three times as high as in other sections of “Darktown.”
Kenneth found in the front room another excited and chattering lot of men and women. The men seemed rather furtive and were dressed in “peg-top” trousers with wide cuffs, and gaudily coloured shirts. The women were clad in red and pink kimonos and boudoir caps. With an inclusive “Hello, folks,” Kenneth followed a woman who seemed to be in charge of the house into the next room. In the centre of the darkened room there stood the bed, dishevelled, the sheets stained with blood. On them lay a man fully clothed, his eyes closed as though in great pain, and breathing heavily, with sharp gasps every few seconds. By the bed, bathing the man’s brow, stood a woman in a rumpled night-dress and kimono. Kenneth recognized the man as Bud Ware, sometimes a Pullman porter, who used his occupation, it was rumoured, to bring liquor from Atlanta, which his wife sold. It was his wife Nancy who bathed his brow and who moved away from the bed when Kenneth approached. She informed him that he had come home unexpectedly from his run, and had been shot. Kenneth said nothing but went immediately to work. He found Bud with two bullet holes in his abdomen and one through his right leg. It was evident that he had but a few hours, at most, to live. Kenneth did what he could to relieve Bud’s suffering. Turning to Nancy, he told her what he had discovered. She stared at Kenneth wide-eyed for a minute and then burst forth in an agony of weeping.
“Oh, Lawdy, why didn’t I do what Bud tol’ me to do? Bud tol’ me to let dat man alone! Why didn’t I do it? Why didn’t I do it?”