She gazed incredulously into his face. “Is that you sure enough, Max? How in the devil did you get so white?”
He explained and showed her a copy of The Scimitar containing his story. She switched on the hall light and read it. Contrasting emotions played over her face, for Mrs. Blandish was known in the business world as Mme. Sisseretta Blandish, the beauty specialist, who owned the swellest hair-straightening parlor in Harlem. Business, she thought to herself, was bad enough, what with all of the competition, without this Dr. Crookman coming along and killing it altogether.
“Well,” she sighed, “I suppose you’re going downtown to live, now. I always said niggers didn’t really have any race pride.”
Uneasy, Max made no reply. The fat, brown woman turned with a disdainful sniff and disappeared into a room at the end of the hall. He ran lightly upstairs to pack his things.
An hour later, as the taxicab bearing him and his luggage bowled through Central Park, he was in high spirits. He would go down to the Pennsylvania Station and get a Pullman straight into Atlanta. He would stop there at the best hotel. He wouldn’t hunt up any of his folks. No, that would be too dangerous. He would just play around, enjoy life and laugh at the white folks up his sleeve. God! What an adventure! What a treat it would be to mingle with white people in places where as a youth he had never dared to enter. At last he felt like an American citizen. He flecked the ash of his panatela out of the open window of the cab and sank back in the seat feeling at peace with the world.
THREE
Dr. Junius Crookman, looking tired and worn, poured himself another cup of coffee from the percolator nearby and, turning to Hank Johnson, asked “What about that new electrical apparatus?”
“On th’ way, Doc. On th’ way,” replied the former Numbers baron. “Just talkin’ to th’ man this mornin’. He says we’ll get it tomorrow, maybe.”
“Well, we certainly need it,” said Chuck Foster, who sat beside him on the large leather divan. “We can’t handle all of the business as it is.”
“How about those new places you’re buying?” asked the physician.
“Well, I’ve bought the big private house on Edgecombe Avenue for fifteen thousand and the workmen are getting it in shape now. It ought to be ready in about a week if nothing happens,” Foster informed him.
“If nuthin’ happens?” echoed Johnson. “Whut’s gonna happen? We’re settin’ on th’ world, ain’t we? Our racket’s within th’ law, ain’t it? We’re makin’ money faster’n we can take it in, ain’t we? Whut could happen? This here is the best and safest graft I’ve ever been in.”
“Oh, you never can tell,” cautioned the quondam realtor. “These white newspapers, especially in the South, are beginning to write some pretty strong editorials against us and we’ve only been running two weeks. You know how easy it is to stir up the fanatical element. Before we know it they’re liable to get a law passed against us.”
“Not if I c’n git to th’ legislature first,” interrupted Johnson. “Yuh know, Ah knows how tuh handle these white folks. If yuh ‘Say it with Bucks’ you c’n git anything yuh want.”
“There is something in what Foster says, though,” Dr. Crookman said. “Just look at this bunch of clippings we got in this morning. Listen to these: ‘The Viper in Our Midst,’ from the Richmond Blade; ‘The Menace of Science’ from the Memphis Bugle; ‘A Challenge to Every White Man’ from the Dallas Sun; ‘Police Battle Black Mob Seeking White Skins,’ from the Atlanta Topic; ‘Negro Doctor Admits Being Taught by Germans,’ from the St. Louis North American. Here’s a line or two from an editorial in the Oklahoma City Hatchet: ‘There are times when the welfare of our race must take precedence over law. Opposed as we always have been to mob violence as the worst enemy of democratic government, we cannot help but feel that the intelligent white men and women of New York City who are interested in the purity and preservation of their race should not permit the challenge of Crookmanism to go unanswered, even though these black scoundrels may be within the law. There are too many criminals in this country already hiding behind the skirts of the law.’
“And lastly, one from the Tallahassee Announcer says: ‘While it is the right of every citizen to do what he wants to do with his money, the white people of the United States cannot remain indifferent to this discovery and its horrible potentialities. Hundreds of Negroes with newly-acquired white skins have already entered white society and thousands will follow them. The black race from one end of the country to the other has in two short weeks gone completely crazy over the prospect of getting white. Day by day we see the color line which we have so laboriously established being rapidly destroyed. There would not be so much cause for alarm in this, were it not for the fact that this vitiligo is not hereditary. In other words, THE OFFSPRING OF THESE WHITENED NEGROES WILL BE NEGROES! This means that your daughter, having married a supposed white man, may find herself with a black baby! Will the proud white men of the Southland so far forget their traditions as to remain idle while this devilish work is going on?’”
“No use singin’ th’ blues,” counseled Johnson. “We ain’ gonna be both’ed heah, even if them crackahs down South do raise a little hell. Jus’ listen to th’ sweet music of that mob out theah! Eve’y scream means fifty bucks. On’y reason we ain’t makin’ mo’ money is’ cause we ain’t got no mo’ room.”
“That’s right,” Dr. Crookman agreed. “We’ve turned out one hundred a day for fourteen days.” He leaned back and lit a cigarette.
“At fifty bucks a th’ow,” interrupted Johnson, “that means we’ve took in seventy thousand dollahs. Great Day in th’ mornin’! Didn’t know tha was so much jack in Harlem.”
“Yes,” continued Crookman, “we’re taking in thirty-five thousand dollars a week. As soon as you and Foster get that other place fixed up we’ll be making twice that much.”
From the hallway came the voice of the switchboard operator monotonously droning out her instructions: “No, Dr. Crookman cannot see anyone. . . . Dr. Crookman has nothing to say. . . . Dr. Crookman will issue a statement shortly. . . . Fifty dollars. . . . No, Dr. Crookman isn’t a mulatto. . . . I’m very sorry but I cannot answer that question.”
The three friends sat in silence amid the hum of activity around them. Hank Johnson smiled down at the end of his cigar as he thought back over his rather colorful and hectic career. To think that today he was one of the leading Negroes of the world, one who was taking an active and important part in solving the most vexatious problem in American life, and yet only ten years before he had been working on a Carolina chain gang. Two years he had toiled on the roads under the hard eye and ready rifle of a cruel white guard; two years of being beaten, kicked and cursed, of poor food and vermin-infested habitations; two years for participating in a little crap game. Then he had drifted to Charleston, got a job in a pool room, had a stroke of luck with the dice, come to New York and landed right in the midst of the Numbers racket. Becoming a collector or “runner,” he had managed his affairs well enough to be able to start out soon as a “banker.” Money had poured in from Negroes eager to chance one cent in the hope of winning six dollars. Some won but most lost and he had prospered. He had purchased an apartment house, paid off the police, dabbled in the bail bond game, given a couple of thousand dollars to advance Negro Art and been elected Grand Permanent Shogun of the Ancient and Honorable Order of Crocodiles, Harlem’s largest and most prosperous secret society. Then young Crookman had come to him with his proposition. At first he had hesitated about helping him but later was persuaded to do so when the young man bitterly complained that the dirty Negroes would not help to pay for the studies abroad. What a stroke of luck, getting in on the ground floor like this! They’d all be richer than Rockefeller inside of a year. Twelve million Negroes at fifty dollars apiece! Great Day in the morning! Hank spat regally into the brass cuspidor across the office and reared back contentedly on the soft cushion of the divan.
Chuck Foster was also seeing his career in retrospect. His life had not been as colorful as that of Hank Johnson. The son of a Birmingham barber, he had enjoyed such educational advantages as that community afforded the darker brethren; had become a schoolteacher, an insurance agent and a social worker in turn. Then, along with the tide of migration, he had drifted first to Cincinnati, then to Pittsburgh and finally to New York. There the real estate field, unusually lucrative because of the paucity of apartments for the increasing Negro population, had claimed him. Cautious, careful, thrifty and devoid of sentimentality, he had prospered, but not without some ugly rumors being broadcast about his sharp business methods. As he slowly worked his way up to the top of Harlem society, he had sought to live down this reputation for double-dealing and shifty practices, all too true of the bulk of his fellow realtors in the district, by giving large sums to the Young Men’s and Young Women’s Christian Associations, by offering scholarships to young Negroes, by staging elaborate parties to which the dicty Negroes of the community were invited. He had been glad of the opportunity to help subsidize young Crookman’s studies abroad when Hank Johnson pointed out the possibilities of the venture. Now, although the results so far exceeded his wildest dreams, his natural conservatism and timidity made him somewhat pessimistic about the future. He supposed a hundred dire results of their activities and only the day before he had increased the amount of his life insurance. His mind was filled with doubts. He didn’t like so much publicity. He wanted a sort of genteel popularity but no notoriety.
Despite the coffee and cigarettes, Dr. Junius Crookman was sleepy. The responsibility, the necessity of overseeing the work of his physicians and nurses, the insistence of the newspapers and the medical profession that he reveal the secrets of his treatment and a thousand other vexatious details had kept him from getting proper rest. He had, indeed, spent most of his time in the sanitarium.
This hectic activity was new to him. Up until a month ago his thirty-five years had been peaceful and, in the main, studious ones. The son of an Episcopal clergyman, he had been born and raised in a city in central New York, his associates carefully selected in order to protect him as much as possible from the defeatist psychology so prevalent among American Negroes and given every opportunity and inducement to learn his profession and become a thoroughly cultivated and civilized man. His parents, though poor, were proud and boasted that they belonged to the Negro aristocracy. He had had to work his way through college because of the failure of his father’s health but he had come very little in contact with the crudity, coarseness and cruelty of life. He had been monotonously successful but he was sensible enough to believe that a large part of it was due, like most success, to chance. He saw in his great discovery the solution to the most annoying problem in American life. Obviously, he reasoned, if there were no Negroes, there could be no Negro problem. Without a Negro problem, Americans could concentrate their attention on something constructive. Through his efforts and the activities of Black-No-More, Incorporated, it would be possible to do what agitation, education and legislation had failed to do. He was naïvely surprised that there should be opposition to his work. Like most men with a vision, a plan, a program or a remedy, he fondly imagined people to be intelligent enough to accept a good thing when it was offered to them, which was conclusive evidence that he knew little about the human race.
Dr. Crookman prided himself above all on being a great lover of his race. He had studied its history, read of its struggles and kept up with its achievements. He subscribed to six or seven Negro weekly newspapers and two of the magazines. He was so interested in the continued progress of the American Negroes that he wanted to remove all obstacles in their path by depriving them of their racial characteristics. His home and office were filled with African masks and paintings of Negroes by Negroes. He was what was known in Negro society as a Race Man. He was wedded to everything black except the black woman—his wife was a white girl with remote Negro ancestry, of the type that Negroes were wont to describe as being “able to pass for white.” While abroad he had spent his spare time ransacking the libraries for facts about the achievements of Negroes and having liaisons with comely and available fraus and frauliens.
“Well, Doc,” said Hank Johnson, suddenly, “you’d bettah go on home ’n git some sleep. Ain’ no use killin’ you’sef. Eve’thing’s gonna be all right heah. You ain’ gotta thing tuh worry ’bout.”
“How’s he gonna get out of here with that mob in front?” Chuck inquired. “A man almost needs a tank to get through that crowd of darkies.”
“Oh, Ah’ve got all that fixed, Calamity Jane,” Johnson remarked casually. “All he’s gotta do is tuh go on down staihs tuh the basem’nt, go out th’ back way an’ step into th’ alley. My car’ll be theah waitin’ fo’ ’im.”
“That’s awfully nice of you, Johnson,” said the physician. “I am dead tired. I think I’ll be a new man if I can get a few hours of sleep.”
A black man in white uniform opened the door and announced: “Mrs. Crookman!” He held the door open for the Doctor’s petite, stylishly dressed wife to enter. The three men sprang to their feet. Johnson and Foster eyed the beautiful little octoroon appreciatively as they bowed, thinking how easily she could “pass for white,” which would have been something akin to a piece of anthracite coal passing for black.
“Darling!” she exclaimed, turning to her husband. “Why don’t you come home and get some rest? You’ll be ill if you keep on in this way.”
“Jus’ whut Ah bin tellin’ him, Mrs. Crookman,” Johnson hastened to say. “We got eve’ything fixed tuh send ’im off.”
“Well, then, Junius, we’d better be going,” she said decisively.
Putting on a long overcoat over his white uniform, Dr. Crookman wearily and meekly followed his spouse out of the door.
“Mighty nice-looking girl, Mrs. Crookman,” Foster observed.
“Nice-lookin’!” echoed Johnson, with mock amazement. “Why, nigguh, that ooman would make uh rabbit hug uh houn’. Doc sez she’s culled, an’ she sez so, but she looks mighty white tuh me.”
“Everything that looks white ain’t white in this man’s country,” Foster replied.
Meantime there was feverish activity in Harlem’s financial institutions. At the Douglass Bank the tellers were busier than bootleggers on Christmas Eve. Moreover, they were short-handed because of the mysterious absence of Bunny Brown. A long queue of Negroes extended down one side of the bank, out of the front door and around the corner, while bank attendants struggled to keep them in line. Everybody was drawing out money; no one was depositing. In vain the bank officials pleaded with them not to withdraw their funds. The Negroes were adamant: they wanted their money and wanted it quick. Day after day this had gone on ever since Black-No-More, Incorporated, had started turning Negroes white. At first, efforts were made to bulldoze and intimidate the depositors but that didn’t succeed. These people were in no mood to be trifled with. A lifetime of being Negroes in the United States had convinced them that there was great advantage in being white.
“Mon, whutcha tahlk ab’t?” scoffed a big, black British West Indian woman with whom an official was remonstrating not to draw out her money. “Dis heah’s mah mahney, ain’t it? Yuh use mah mahney all time, aintcha? Whutcha mean, Ah shouldn’t draw’t out? . . . You gimme mah mahney or Ah broke up dis place!”
“Are you closing your account, Mr. Robinson?” a soft-voiced mulatto teller inquired of a big, rusty stevedore.
“Ah ain’t openin’ it,” was the rejoinder. “Ah wants th’ whole thing, an’ Ah don’t mean maybe.”
Similar scenes were being enacted at the Wheatley Trust Company and at the local Post Office station.
An observer passing up and down the streets would have noted a general exodus from the locality. Moving vans were backed up to apartment houses on nearly every block.
The “For Rent” signs
were appearing in larger number in Harlem than at any time in twenty-five years. Landlords looked on helplessly as apartment after apartment emptied and was not filled. Even the refusal to return deposits did not prevent the tenants from moving out. What, indeed, was fifty, sixty or seventy dollars when one was leaving behind insult, ostracism, segregation and discrimination? Moreover, the whitened Negroes were saving a great deal of money by being able to change localities. The mechanics of race prejudice had forced them into the congested Harlem area where, at the mercy of white and black real estate sharks, they had been compelled to pay exorbitant rentals because the demand for housing far exceeded the supply. As a general rule the Negroes were paying one hundred per cent more than white tenants in other parts of the city for a smaller number of rooms and worse service.
The installment furniture and clothing houses in the area were also beginning to feel the results of the activities of Black-No-More, Incorporated. Collectors were reporting their inability to locate certain families or the articles they had purchased on time. Many of the colored folk, it was said, had sold their furniture to second-hand stores and vanished with the proceeds into the great mass of white citizenry.
At the same time there seemed to be more white people on the streets of Harlem than at any time in the past twenty years. Many of them appeared to be on the most intimate terms with the Negroes, laughing, talking, dining and dancing in a most un-Caucasian way. This sort of association had always gone on at night but seldom in the daylight.
Strange Negroes from the West and South who had heard the good news were to be seen on the streets and in public places, patiently awaiting their turn at the Crookman Institute.
—
Madame Sisseretta Blandish sat disconsolately in an armchair near the front door of her ornate hair-straightening shop, looking blankly at the pedestrians and traffic passing to and fro. These two weeks had been hard ones for her. Everything was going out and nothing coming in. She had been doing very well at her vocation for years and was acclaimed in the community as one of its business leaders. Because of her prominence as the proprietor of a successful enterprise engaged in making Negroes appear as much like white folks as possible, she had recently been elected for the fourth time a Vice-President of the American Race Pride League. She was also head of the Woman’s Committee of the New York Branch of the Social Equality League and held an important place in local Republican politics. But all of these honors brought little or no money with them. They didn’t help to pay her rent or purchase the voluminous dresses she required to drape her Amazonian form. Only that day her landlord had brought her the sad news that he either wanted his money or the premises.
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