She divined his intentions—she could almost feel the words that were on his lips. Quickly wishing him success in the meeting to be held that next evening, she bade him good-bye.
After Kenneth had gone, Jane sat for some time struggling with the problem she was facing. What was she to do? As a little girl she had loved Kenneth with a simple, childlike love though he, with the infinite difference of eight years of age, had paid no attention to her. She was not at all sure now of the nature of her feelings towards him. She liked him, it is true, but when it came to anything deeper than that, she was not so certain. She had been told, and had always believed, that love came as a blinding, searing, devastating passion which swept everything before it. She felt none of this passion and experienced no bit of that complete surrender which she had believed was a part of the thing called love. Jane was much in the position of the sinner on the mourner’s bench who had been told that when he became a Christian, angels and all sorts of heavenly apparitions would miraculously appear before him, and, seeing none, feels that he is being cheated.
Jane had seen in Kenneth’s eyes that soon he would make some sort of declaration of his love. What was she going to say? She did not know. …
So pleasant had it been sitting there in the warm sunlight talking with Jane, Kenneth had forgotten the time. Entering his office, he found half a dozen patients waiting somewhat impatiently for him. As he entered his private office, he heard old Mrs. Amos, in her chronic quarrelsomeness, mutter:
“Dat’s just what I allus say. Soon’s a nigger begin to get up in the world, he thinks hisself better’n us po’ folks. Thinks he can treat us any way he please.”
Kenneth laughed and, with a few bantering words, mollified the irascible old woman. The coloured doctor has to be a diplomat as well as a physician—he must never allow the humblest of his patients to gain the impression that he thinks himself better than they. Of all races that make up the heterogenous populace of America, none is more self-critical than the Negro—its often unjust and carping criticism of those who stand out from the mass serves as an excellent antidote for undue pride and conceit. …
The next evening the seven men met again at Mr. Wilson’s. Kenneth stopped by for Mr. Phillips, but he did not see Jane. The Reverend Stewart, Tucker, Tracy, Swann, and Mr. Wilson sat awaiting them. Tom Tracy was exhibiting, somewhat proudly it seemed, a note he had found tacked to his door that morning. It was crudely lettered in red ink on a cheap-quality paper. It read:
NIGGER! YOU’VE BEN TALKING TOO DAM MUCH! IF YOU DON’T SHUT YOUR MOUTH WE WILL SHUT IT FOR YOU AND FOR GOOD! LET THIS BE A WARNING TO YOU. NEXT TIME WE WILL ACT!
K. K. K.
Beneath the three initials was a crude skull and cross-bones. Though all seven of the men knew that the warning was not to be disregarded, that it might possibly portend a serious attempt on the life of Tracy, that any or all of them present might receive a similar grim reminder of the ill will of the hooded band, there was a complete absence of fear as they sat around the table and conjectured as to the possible result of the warning. The calmness with which they accepted the omen of trouble would probably have amazed the senders of the warning. Perhaps the clearest indication of how little the South realizes the changes that have taken place in the Negro is this recrudescence of the Klan. Where stark terror followed in the wake of the Klan rides of the seventies, the net result of similar rides to-day is a more determined union of Negroes against all that the Klan stands for, tinctured with a mild amusement at the Klan’s grotesque antics. It was fortunate for Kenneth, in a measure, that Tracy had received the threat on the day it came. With such a reminder before them, the seven felt there was greater need than ever before for organization for mutual protection.