“You have heard of it?” asked Kenneth in surprise. He did not know his fame had preceded him.
“Oh, yes,” answered Dr. Scott. “You see, I know a man in the Klan headquarters here. They’ve got, so I understand, a pretty full account of your movements.”
“They honour me,” laughed Kenneth, a note of irony in his voice. He was not a physical coward—threats bothered him little. He had paid little attention to the report of the Klan meeting at Central City, though it had worried his mother and Bob considerably. No more would he be perturbed by any reports of his activities the Klan might have in their files.
“Then, too, Judge Stevenson’s been writing me about you,” continued Dr. Scott. “We are all interested in what you’re doing, Doctor, and we want you to talk frankly. You can to us,” he added.
The three men were genuinely interested in the plan on which Kenneth was working. They were too intelligent to fail to see that something would have to be done towards adjustment of race relations in the South to avert an inevitable clash. What that something was they did not know. They felt the time was not ripe for a challenge to the existing order, and they would not, in all probability, have been willing to issue such a fiat had the time been propitious. Yet they were anxious to examine the plans of this coloured man, hoping against hope that therein might lie an easy solution of the problem.
Frankly and clearly Kenneth told of the simple scheme. Occasionally one of his hearers would interrupt him with a question, but for the most part they heard him through in silence. The story ended, the three men sat in silence as each revolved in his mind the possibilities of the plan. John Anthony was the first to speak, and then he approached the whole race problem instead of Kenneth’s plan for attacking one phase of it.
“Doctor,” asked Mr. Anthony, “do you believe there is any solution to the race problem? Just what is the immediate way out, as you see it?”
“It would take a wiser man than I to answer that,” laughed Kenneth. “You see, we’re in the habit of thinking that we can find a simple A-B-C solution for any given problem, and the trouble is there are mighty few that are simple enough for that.”
“Yes—yes—I know all that,” interjected Mr. Anthony, rather testily. “What I want to hear is what you, as an intelligent Negro, think. I want you to tell us exactly what men like you are saying among yourselves.”
“Well, we’re talking about lynching—poor schools—the way Negroes are denied the ballot in the South” began Kenneth.