The deep concern of the Southern Caucasians with chivalry, the protection of white womanhood, the exaggerated development of race pride and the studied arrogance of even the poorest half-starved white peon were all due to the presence of the black man. Booted and starved by their industrial and agricultural feudal lords, the white masses derived their only consolation and happiness from the fact that they were the same color as their oppressors and consequently better than the mudsill blacks.
The economic loss to the South by the ethnic migration was considerable. Hundreds of wooden railroad coaches, long since condemned as death traps in all other parts of the country, had to be scrapped by the railroads when there were no longer any Negroes to jim crow. Thousands of railroad waiting rooms remained unused because, having been set aside for the use of Negroes, they were generally too dingy and unattractive for white folk or were no longer necessary. Thousands of miles of streets located in the former Black Belts, and thus without sewers or pavement, were having to be improved at the insistent behest of the rapidly increased white population, real and imitation. Real estate owners who had never dreamed of making repairs on their tumble-down property when it was occupied by the docile Negroes were having to tear down, rebuild and alter to suit white tenants. Shacks and drygoods boxes that had once sufficed as schools for Negro children had now to be condemned and abandoned as unsuitable for occupation by white youth. Whereas thousands of school teachers had received thirty and forty dollars a month because of their Negro ancestry, the various cities and countries of the Southland were now forced to pay the standard salaries prevailing elsewhere.
Naturally taxes increased. Chambers of Commerce were now unable to send out attractive advertising to Northern business firms offering no or very low taxation as an inducement to them to move South nor were they able to offer as many cheap building sites. Only through the efforts of the Grand Exalted Giraw of the Knights of Nordica were they still able to point to their large reserves of docile, contented, Anglo-Saxon labor, and who knew how long that condition would last?
Consequently, the upper classes faced the future with some misgivings. As if being deprived of the pleasure of black mistresses were not enough, there was a feeling that there would shortly be widespread revolt against the existing medieval industrial conditions and resultant reduction of profits and dividends. The mill barons viewed with distaste the prospect of having to do away with child labor. Rearing back in their padded swivel chairs, they leaned fat jowls on well-manicured hands and mourned the passing of the halcyon days of yore.
If the South had lost its Negroes, however, it had certainly not lost its vote, and the political oligarchy that ruled the section was losing its old assurance and complacency. The Republicans had made inroads here and there in the 1934 Congressional elections. The situation politically was changing and if drastic steps were not immediately taken, the Republicans might carry the erstwhile Solid South, thus practically destroying the Democratic Party. Another Presidential election was less than two years off. There would have to be fast work to ward off disaster. Far-sighted people, North and South, even foresaw the laboring people soon forsaking both of the old parties and going Socialist. Politicians and business men shuddered at the thought of such a tragedy and saw horrible visions of old-age pensions, eight-hour laws, unemployment insurance, workingmen’s compensation, minimum-wage legislation, abolition of child labor, dissemination of birth-control information, monthly vacations for female workers, two-month vacations for prospective mothers, both with pay, and the probable killing of individual initiative and incentive by taking the ownership of national capital out of the hands of two million people and putting it into the hands of one hundred and twenty million.
Which explains why Senator Rufus Kretin of Georgia, one of the old Democratic war horses, an incomparable Negro-baiter, a faithful servitor of the dominant economic interests of his state and the lusty father of several black families since whitened, walked into the office of Imperial Grand Wizard Givens one day in March, 1935.
“Boys,” he began, as closeted with Rev. Givens, Matthew and Bunny in the new modernistic Knights of Nordica palace, they quaffed cool and illegal beverages, “we gotta do sumpin and do it quick. These heah damn Yankees ah makin’ inroads on ouah preserves, suh. Th’ Republican vote is a-growin’. No tellin’ what’s li’ble tuh happen in this heah nex’ ’lection.”
“What can we do, Senator?” asked the Imperial Grand Wizard. “How can we serve the cause?”
“That’s just it. That’s just it, suh; jus’ what Ah came heah fo’,” replied the Senator. “Naow sum o’ us was thinkin’ that maybe yo’all might be able to he’p us keep these damn hicks in line. Yo’all are intelligent gent’men; you know what Ah’m gettin’ at?”
“Well, that’s a pretty big order, Colonel,” said Givens.
“Yes,” Matthew added. “It’ll be a hard proposition. Conditions are no longer what they used to be.”
“An’,” said Givens, “we can’t do much with that nigger business, like we used to do when th’ old Klan was runnin’.”
“What about one o’ them theah Red scares?” asked the Senator, hopefully.
“Humph!” the clergyman snorted. “Better leave that there Red Business alone. Times ain’t like they was, you know. Anyhow, them damn Reds’ll be down here soon enough ’thout us encouragin’ ’em none.”
“Guess that’s right, Gen’ral,” mused the statesman. Then brightening: “Lookaheah, Givens. This fellah Fisher’s gotta good head. Why not let him work out sumpin?”
“Yeah, he sure has,” agreed the Wizard, glad to escape any work except minding the treasury of his order. “If he can’t do it, ain’t nobody can. Him and Bunny here is as shrewd as some o’ them old time darkies. He! He! He!” He beamed patronizingly upon his brilliant son-in-law and his plump secretary.
“Well, theah’s money in it. We got plenty o’ cash; what we want now is votes,” the Senator explained. “C’ose yuh caint preach that white supremacy stuff ve’y effectively when they haint no niggahs.”
“Leave it to me. I’ll work out something,” said Matthew. Here was a chance to get more power, more money. Busy as he was, it would not do to let the opportunity slip by.
“Yuh caint lose no time,” warned the Senator.
“We won’t,” crowed Givens.
A few minutes later they took a final drink together, shook hands and the Senator, bobbing his white head to the young ladies in the outer office, departed.
Matthew and Bunny retired to the private office of the Grand Exalted Giraw.
“What you thinkin’ about pullin’?” asked Bunny.
“Plenty. We’ll try the old sure fire Negro problem stuff.”
“But that’s ancient history, Brother,” protested Bunny. “These ducks won’t fall for that anymore.”
“Bunny, I’ve learned something on this job, and that is that hatred and prejudice always go over big. These people have been raised on the Negro problem, they’re used to it, they’re trained to react to it. Why should I rack my brain to hunt up something else when I can use a dodge that’s always delivered the goods?”
“It may go over at that.”
“I know it will. Just leave it to me,” said Matthew confidently. “That’s not worrying me at all. What’s got my goat is my wife being in the family way.” Matthew stopped bantering a moment, a sincere look of pain erasing his usual ironic expression.
“Congratulations!” burbled Bunny.
“Don’t rub it in,” Matthew replied. “You know how the kid will look.”
“That’s right,” agreed his pal. “You know, sometimes I forget who we are.”
“Well, I don’t. I know I’m a darky and I’m always on the alert.”
“What do you intend to do?”
“I don’t know, Big Boy, I don’t know. I would ordinarily send her to one of those lying-in hos
pitals but she’d be suspicious. Yet, if the kid is born it’ll sure be black.”
“It won’t be white,” Bunny agreed. “Why not tell her the whole thing and since she’s so crazy about you, I don’t think she’d hesitate to go.”
“Man, you must be losing your mind, or else you’ve lost it!” Matthew exploded. “She’s a worse nigger-hater than her father. She’d holler for a divorce before you could say Jack Robinson.”
“You’ve got too much money for that.”
“You’re assuming that she has plenty of intelligence.”
“Hasn’t she?”
“Let’s not discuss a painful subject,” pleaded Matthew. “Suggest a remedy.”
“She don’t have to know that she’s going to one of Crookman’s places, does she?”
“No, but I can’t get her to leave home to have the baby.”
“Why?”
“Oh, a lot of damn sentiment about having her baby in the old home, and her damned old mother supports her. So what can I do?”
“Then, the dear old homestead is the only thing that’s holding up the play?”
“You’re a smart boy, Bunny.”
“Don’t stress the obvious. Seriously, though, I think everything can be fixed okeh.”
“How?” cried Matthew, eagerly.
“Is it worth five grand?” countered Bunny.
“Money’s no object, you know, but explain your proposition.”
“I will not. You get me fifty century notes and I’ll explain later.”
“It’s a deal, old friend.”
Bunny Brown was a man of action. That evening he entered the popular Niggerhead Café, rendezvous of the questionable classes, and sat down at a table. The place was crowded with drinkers downing their “white mule” and contorting to the strains issuing from a radio loud speaker. A current popular dance piece, “The Black Man Blues,” was filling the room. The songwriters had been making a fortune recently writing sentimental songs about the passing of the Negro. The plaintive voice of a blues singer rushed out of the loud-speaker:
I wonder where my big, black man has gone;
Oh, I wonder where my big, black man has gone.
Has he done got faded an’ left me all alone?
When the music ceased and the dancers returned to their tables, Bunny began to look around. In a far corner he saw a waiter whose face seemed familiar. He waited until the fellow came close when he hailed him. As the waiter bent over to get his order, he studied him closely. He had seen this fellow somewhere before. Who could he be? Suddenly with a start he remembered. It was Dr. Joseph Bonds, former head of the Negro Data League in New York. What had brought him here and to this condition? The last time he had seen Bonds, the fellow was a power in the Negro world, with a country place in Westchester County and a swell apartment in town. It saddened Bunny to think that catastrophe had overtaken such a man. Even getting white, it seemed, hadn’t helped him much. He recalled that Bonds in his heyday had collected from the white philanthropists with the slogan: “Work, Not Charity,” and he smiled as he thought that Bonds would be mighty glad now to get a little charity and not so much work.
“Would a century note look good to you right now?” he asked the former Negro leader when he returned with his drink.
“Just show it to me, Mister,” said the waiter, licking his lips. “What you want me to do?”
“What will you do for a hundred berries?” pursued Bunny.
“I’d hate to tell you,” replied Bonds, grinning and revealing his familiar tobacco-stained teeth.
“Have you got a friend you can trust?”
“Sure, a fellow named Licorice that washes pots in back.”
“You don’t mean Santop Licorice, do you?”
“Ssh! They don’t know who he is here. He’s white now, you know.”
“Do they know who you are?”
“What do you mean?” gasped the surprised waiter.
“Oh, I won’t say anything but I know you’re Bonds of New York.”
“Who told you?”
“Oh, a little fairy.”
“How could that be? I never associate with them.”
“It wasn’t that kind of a fairy,” Bunny reassured him, laughing. “Well, you get Licorice and come to my hotel when this place closes up.”
“Where is that?” asked Bonds. Bunny wrote his name and room number down on a piece of paper and handed it to him.
Three hours later Bunny was awakened by a knocking at his door. He admitted Bonds and Licorice, the latter smelling strongly of steam and food.
“Here,” said Bunny, holding up a hundred-dollar bill, “is a century note. If you boys can lay aside your scruples for a few hours you can have five of them apiece.”
“Well,” said Bonds, “neither Santop nor I have been overburdened with them.”
“That’s what I thought,” Bunny murmured. He proceeded to outline the work he wanted them to do.
“But that would be a criminal offense,” objected Licorice.
“You too, Brutus?” sneered Bonds.
“Well, we can’t afford to take chances unless we’re protected,” the former President of Africa argued rather weakly. He was money-hungry and was longing for a stake to get back to Demerara where, since there was a large Negro population, a white man, by virtue of his complexion, amounted to something. Yet he had had enough experience behind the bars to make him wary.
“We run this town and this state, too,” Bunny assured him. “We could get a couple of our men to pull this stunt but it wouldn’t be good policy.”
“How about a thousand bucks apiece?” asked Bonds, his eyes glittering as he viewed the crisp banknotes in Bunny’s hand.
“Here,” said Bunny. “Take this century note between you, get your material and pull the job. When you’ve finished I’ll give you nineteen more like it between you.”
The two cronies looked at each other and nodded.
“It’s a go,” said Bonds.
They departed and Bunny went back to sleep.
The next night about eleven-thirty the bells began to toll and the mournful sirens of the fire engines awakened the entire neighborhood in the vicinity of Rev. Givens’s home. That stately edifice, built by Ku Klux Klan dollars, was in flames. Firemen played a score of streams onto the blaze but the house appeared to be doomed.
On a lawn across the street, in the midst of a consoling crowd, stood Rev. and Mrs. Givens, Helen and Matthew. The old couple were taking the catastrophe fatalistically, Matthew was puzzled and suspicious, but Helen was in hysterics. She presented a bedraggled and woebegone appearance with a blanket around her night dress. She wept afresh every time she looked across at the blazing building where she had spent her happy childhood.
“Matthew,” she sobbed, “will you build me another one just like it?”
“Why certainly, Honey,” he agreed, “but it will take quite a while.”
“Oh, I know; I know, but I want it.”
“Well, you’ll get it, darling,” he soothed, “but I think it would be a good idea for you to go away for a while to rest your nerves. We’ve got to think of the little one that’s coming, you know.”
“I don’t wanna go nowhere,” she screamed.
“But you’ve got to go somewhere,” he reasoned. “Don’t you think so, Mother?” Old Mrs. Givens agreed it would be a good idea but suggested that she go along. To this Rev. Givens would not listen at first but he finally yielded.
“Guess it’s a good idea after all,” he remarked. “Women folks is always in th’ way when buildin’s goin’ on.”
Matthew was tickled at the turn of affairs. On the way down to the hotel, he sat beside Helen, alternately comforting her and wondering as to the origin of the fire.
Next morning, bright and early, Bunny, grinning broadly, walke
d into the office, threw his hat on a hook and sat down before his desk after the customary salutation.
“Bunny,” called Matthew, looking at him hard. “Get me told!”
“What do you mean?” asked Bunny innocently.
“Just as I thought,” chuckled Matthew. “You’re a nervy guy.”
“Why, I don’t get you,” said Bunny, continuing the pose.
“Come clean, Big Boy. How much did that fire cost?”
“You gave me five grand, didn’t you?”
“Just like a nigger: a person can never get a direct answer from you.”
“Are you satisfied?”
“I’m not crying my eyes out.”
“Is Helen going North for her confinement?”
“Nothing different.”
“Well, then, why do you want to know the why and wherefore of that blaze?”
“Just curiosity, Nero, old chap,” grinned Matthew.
“Remember,” warned Bunny, mischievously, “curiosity killed the cat.”
The ringing of the telephone bell interrupted their conversation.
“What’s that?” yelled Matthew into the mouthpiece. “The hell you say! All right, I’ll be right up.” He hung up the receiver, jumped up excitedly and grabbed his hat.
“What’s the matter?” shouted Bunny. “Somebody dead?”
“No,” answered the agitated Matthew, “Helen’s had a miscarriage,” and he dashed out of the room.
“Somebody dead right on,” murmured Bunny, half aloud.
—
Joseph Bonds and Santop Licorice, clean-shaven and immaculate, followed the Irish red cap into their drawing room on the New York Express.
“It sure feels good to get out of the barrel once more,” sighed Bonds, dropping down on the soft cushion and pulling out a huge cigar.
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