The judge shifted his cigar to a corner of his mouth and let fly a stream of tobacco juice from the other corner, every drop landing squarely in the box of sawdust some ten feet away. He went on:
“That’s just what’s the matter with the South. She’s been brutal and tricky and deceitful so long in trying to keep the nigras down, she couldn’t be decent if she tried. If acting like this was going to get them anywhere, there might be some reason in it all, but they’ve shut their eyes, they refuse to see that nigras like you ain’t going to be handled like yo’ daddy and folks like him were.”
“What are we going to do—what can we do?” asked Kenneth. Never had he suspected that even so fine a man as Judge Stevenson had thought things through as their conversation had indicated. He felt the situation was not entirely hopeless when men like the judge felt and talked as he did. Perhaps they were the leaven that would affect the lump of ignorance and viciousness that was the South.
“What are we going to do?” echoed the elder man. “God knows—I don’t! Mebbe the lid will blow off some day—then there would be hell to pay! One thing’s going to help, and that’s nigras pulling up stakes and going North. When some of these white folks begin to see their fields going to seed, they’ll begin to realize how much they need the nigra—just like some of ’em are seeing already.”
“But are they seeing it in the right way?” asked Kenneth. “Instead of trying to make things better so Negroes are willing to stay in the South, they’re trying more oppressive methods than ever before. They’re beating up labour agents, charging them a thousand dollars for licences, lynching more Negroes, and robbing them more than ever.”
“Oh, they’ll be fools enough until the real pinch comes. Far’s I can see, instead of stopping nigras from going North, them things are hurrying them up. Wait till it hits their pocket-books hard. Then the white people’ll get some sense.”
“Let’s hope so,” was Kenneth’s rejoinder as he rose to go. “It’s been mighty comforting to talk like this with you, Judge. Things don’t seem so hopeless when we’ve got friends like you.”
“’Tain’t nothing. Nothing at all,” replied the judge. “Just like to talk with somebody’s got some sense. It’s a pity you’re coloured, Ken, you got too much sense to be a nigra.”
Kenneth laughed.
“From all we’ve been saying, a coloured man’s got to have some sense or else he’s in a mighty poor fix nowadays.”