Harlem Redux

by Persia Walker

  “I’ll never stop fighting for you, never,” he whispered, “but I have other responsibilities, too. What we did to Rachel—it wasn’t right. She deserved better. I wish we could change the past. But we can’t. And now there’s no turning back. You must understand. There is no turning back.”

  There was no answer, just a still and mournful silence.

  Rachel had the day off. David picked her up late that afternoon. They walked through the park path along Riverside Drive. Couples strolling along hugged one another against the cold. Others took turns pushing prams. A few children rode battered bicycles while their friends ran alongside. David thought of Isabella. She would have been three years old, able to run, climb, get into mischief, and keep up a constant chatter. Then he caught himself. He was yearning for a child he would never hold. Putting one hand on the small of Rachel’s back, he guided her to the edge of the path. It was a quiet spot, from which they could clearly see across the Hudson River.

  The water was a filthy blue-gray. And the skyline beyond it was less than significant. Yet the scene had its own melancholy beauty. David’s gaze dwelled on the water. The Hudson had always fascinated him. Its swift current had stirred his young man’s heart with thoughts of travel. It had beguiled him with hints of life beyond the horizon, of days filled with adventure, danger, and delight. There were fortunes to be made and worlds to be conquered if only one had the guts to step beyond the shore. The river, the river: It promised the freedom to wander, but never once mentioned the loneliness of exile.

  “Rachel, you’ve told me it’s time to look toward the future. You’re right.”

  He felt her tense.

  “You’re leaving?” she asked.

  “Yes... but—”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t try to keep you.”

  He took her hands in his and brought them to his lips. Her fingers were cold. Exhaling puffs of warm air on them, he massaged them gently.

  “I want to buy you some gloves. The warmest I can find.”

  “That’s very kind, but you don’t need to.”

  She withdrew her hands from his and put them into her pocket. Her sudden coolness dismayed him. He tried to remember all the sweet words he’d rehearsed, but could recall none of them. So he went straight to the heart of the matter. He reached into his coat pocket and brought out a small jeweler’s box covered in blue velvet. He opened it to reveal a ring, a tear-shaped diamond on a slender gold band. Her eyes widened at the sight of it.

  “I’m asking you to be my wife. I promise, here and now, to honor and respect you, as long as we both shall live.” He took a deep breath and his voice broke. “Marry me, Rachel. Believe in me. Trust me, again. And the loving won’t have to hurt for it to be real.”

  She swallowed hard. Tears welled in her eyes as she looked at the ring. “It’s beautiful... but I can’t accept it.”

  His heart thudded. “Why not?”

  “You’re only proposing out of guilt.”

  “I should’ve asked you long ago.”

  “You’re only asking now because of Isabella.”

  “Isabella was simply the kick I needed.”

  Silent and skeptical, she turned her face away. He cupped her chin and made her look at him.

  “Rachel, I know life’s been hard on you, but it’s been hard on me, too.”

  “Hard on you?’ You’re a McKay. You have a name, money.”

  “But I don’t have you. And that makes all the difference. Now how about it? You gonna make an honest man of me?”

  For a moment, she didn’t answer. Tears slid down her face. Pride and desire, those old foes, battled it out behind her eyes. Then she smiled and nodded jerkily.

  It was all he needed.

  She gasped as he slipped the ring onto the fourth finger of her left hand. He grabbed her up and kissed her face, her eyes, her lips, and the tip of her nose. He picked her up and swung her around. His heart had never felt lighter, his soul freer. He had finally done something right. He would be able to leave all the madness of Harlem and Philadelphia behind him.

  “We’ll go somewhere, start fresh.”

  “You mean not live on Strivers’ Row?”

  “No. Once Sweet’s out of the house, I’ll rent it. We’ll find a new place. Start over.”

  For the first time in years, he felt hope. He was so engaged with his vision of their future that it took him a while to notice that her smile had faltered.

  “What’s the matter?”

  Rachel hesitated. Her gaze went out over the Hudson, to the world beyond the river’s shore. “I was thinking about what leaving Harlem might mean. I don’t know if I can do that.”

  His smile died. “You can’t mean that.”

  “But I do.”

  “Don’t you ever want to experience life outside of this place?”

  She was quiet. “I did. Once. I never want to step foot outside Harlem again.”

  “It’ll be different this time. You’ll be with me.”

  “No, it’s not what you’re thinking. I don’t know if I can explain it. I need this place, somehow. Seeing the people in the neighborhood going about their daily lives. I don’t know—I feel strong here.”

  He had never expected her to refuse to leave Harlem. There were black communities elsewhere that had something to offer. Yes, he could understand that like thousands of Harlemites, she might be indifferent to white New York. She might admire items on display in its downtown shops, applaud shows at its theaters, browse through books in its libraries, and every now and then sip coffee at one of its restaurants. She might even peruse its newspapers and cluck her tongue over “the doings of white folks.” But then she would promptly use the newsprint to wrap potato cuttings in. Never once would she consider herself a part of the silver metropolis. Hundreds of wealthy whites might stream toward black Harlem to visit its cabarets, but essentially white New York had nothing to do with her, or she with it, and she liked it that way.

  David could understand all that. But it surprised him that she had absolutely no curiosity about life outside New York. Did she actually intend to live her life within the strict confines of Central Park to the south, Fifth Avenue to the east, St. Nicholas Park to the west, and 145th Street to the north?

  It was as though she’d heard his thoughts.

  “This is my portion, David, and I’m satisfied with it.” She faced him, her eyes darkly somber. “We have a home here, a place to build on. The house on Strivers’ Row might have bad memories now, but we can fill it with love. Think, David. We have friends here, a community. And we’re so lucky we do. We’re living in the heart of the world’s most exciting Negro community. So no, I’m not gonna leave it. And if you thought about it, really thought about it, you’d see that neither should you.”

  He gazed at the horizon with profound longing. He should have anticipated her desire to live on Strivers’ Row. She was a realist. The house was one reason why she was attracted to him; the house, the status and the stability it stood for. That didn’t bother him because he was sure she loved him. He had sensed her adoration since the first day she had seen him, when they were children, so many years ago, long before his family became rich. He wished intensely that she had been prepared to go away with him, but why should she? What could he offer her but vague promises and undefined dreams? His shoulders slumped but his smile was valiant.

  “All right, we’ll stay here, Rachel. I promise you the house and all that goes with it. If that’s what you want, that’s what you’ll have.”

  He felt like a prisoner who’d been given a glimpse of freedom, then yanked back into his cage. He then saw the delight and joy in her eyes and that comforted him.

  “One more thing,” she said. “I want you to accept that Lilian’s gone. You can’t bring her back. You’ll get Sweet out of the house—I don’t want him there either—but otherwise, you’ll leave him alone. No more trying to say that he killed Lilian. Agreed?”

  She squeezed his hand gently and looked up
at him. He was quiet, his head bent, his jaw clenched. There was a long silence. This was not what he had intended. She kissed him.

  “I don’t want you to spend our married life chasing down Sweet,” she said. “I don’t want you wasting our time.”

  He looked at her.

  “I have a right to ask that of you,” she said. “God knows, I’ve waited for you long enough.”

  He smiled dryly, but he thought to himself that she was right. He had kept her waiting, too long. And how much of a life could they have with him always looking back? On the other hand, how could he let Sweet get away with ...

  He sighed roughly. Rachel drew a fingertip across his chin. He gazed down at her. He did care for her. And he wanted to make her happy. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps it made no sense to continue to rake up the past. Perhaps ... it was indeed time to let Lilian rest in peace. With an effort, he pushed his misgivings aside and took Rachel in his arms.

  “All right. It’s agreed.”

  They headed back to her apartment. She invited him in, but he turned her down. Noting the concern on her face, he hugged her again. Then he was gone. He needed to do what he did best––be alone.

  26. In the Belly of the Whale

  If she only knew what that promise might cost us.

  Public shame and social ostracism: The McKay family name, which represented such genteel dignity and pride of race, would become muddied with cowardice and mired in moral disgrace. The doors to the elegant homes and elite salons she so desperately wanted to enter would be slammed in their faces. They would not be able to walk down the street without encountering stares of disdain.

  She might even leave him. What irony! He would stay in Harlem to give her pleasure, but it was this very decision that would cause her pain. Nevertheless, he would try. He owed her that much. He had abandoned her when he left Harlem those four years ago, not that he had planned to leave her, to leave anyone, when he went away that October day. It was the seventeenth of the month, 1922. He had expected to return after a couple of weeks’ work, but it hadn’t happened that way.

  His assignment had taken him to Charlottesville, in Boone County, Georgia. He could still hear the train wheels screeching as the locomotive ground to a halt, the confused babble of hurried, excited voices as people climbed off, met friends, and tried to find their way.

  Charlottesville was a rich little town in the southernmost part of the state, near the Florida border. David’s intent was to investigate the lynchings of five Negroes—four brothers and one of the men’s sons, an eleven-year-old boy—two weeks before.

  Passing himself off as a white reporter for the New York Sentinel, David found it easy to get the locals to talk. They didn’t try to hide their part in the lynchings, but talked volubly, sometimes with pride. They enthusiastically described the torture, mutilation, burning, and hanging of the five victims as though they were relating a day at the circus. Many took out their “souvenirs” from the lynchings: the burnt stump of a wooden stake, a bloodstained stretch of rope, charred bones, and pickled body parts removed while the victims were still alive. At the same time, however, none of the whites he spoke to would name names. If he pressed for the identities of the mob leaders, a funny look would flit across their faces, a sudden suspicion, and he’d find the conversation ended.

  Certain facts were not in dispute: Over the course of three days, October 8 through 10, 1922, mobs executed Hosea Johnson, his brothers Solomon, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and Ezekiel’s son Caleb. The men were accused of having murdered a white farmer, Ray Stokes, and of raping Stokes’ wife, Missy.

  There was no doubt that Stokes had been killed, but was it premeditated murder? Had his wife indeed been raped? And if so, what, if anything, did the Johnsons have to do with these events?

  The Johnson brothers were family men. Stable. Hardworking. Even the whites conceded that. After the men were killed, their homes were burned to the ground. Their widows and the remaining children, a total of twelve, were whipped, then driven out of town with only the clothes on their backs.

  Talks with the locals also quickly gave David a picture of Stokes. Big and burly, Stokes had owned a large plantation in Boone County. He was known for beating and cheating his Negro workers. After a while, no blacks would voluntarily agree to work for him, so Stokes found a way to force them to. He would visit the courthouse and check the docket to see what black man had been convicted and couldn’t pay his fine or was sentenced to work on the chain gang, Stokes would pay the fine, get the man released into his custody, and have him work off the debt on his plantation.

  Hosea Johnson fell under Stokes’ shadow in just this way. His thirty-dollar gaming fine had been beyond his means. Stokes put his money down and had himself a new man. Johnson labored on Stokes’ property until the thirty dollars had been worked off. Perhaps the situation would’ve turned out differently if matters had ended there. But they didn’t.

  Johnson’s wife was pregnant with their fifth child. Money was more than tight and work was hard to come by. So when Stokes offered to “let” Johnson work additional hours, Johnson agreed. Days went by and Johnson’s labor added up to a considerable amount of service. After a week, Johnson asked Stokes for his money; Stokes refused. Witnesses said the two men argued. That was on October 7. That evening, Stokes was found dead on his front porch, an ax embedded in his meaty chest.

  The call went out and men swarmed to the Stokes plantation. Suspicion immediately targeted Hosea Johnson. Somebody mentioned how close the Johnson brothers were and pointed out that they’d all had trouble with Ray Stokes. No doubt, the brothers had committed the crime together.

  Men were deputized and went looking for the brothers, but word of Stokes’ death and the ensuing manhunt had spread; the Johnson brothers and their families had disappeared into the woods.

  On October 8, Solomon and Jeremiah Johnson were captured about five miles outside Charlottesville. They were lynched on the spot. Hung upside down, they were literally ripped apart by a furious fuselage of more than five hundred bullets.

  Sheriff Parker Haynes caught Ezekiel that afternoon and placed him in the nearby Putnam city jail. That evening, Hayes and the county court clerk took Ezekiel out of jail, ostensibly to transport him to the county seat at Lovetree for safekeeping. Haynes told David that a mob had “ambushed” him near the fork of the Dicey and Lovetree roads, just two miles from their destination. Outarmed and outmanned, he said, “I had no choice but to stand by and watch.”

  Ezekiel was handcuffed and slowly strangled. First, the lynchers chopped off his fingers. They then strung him up and choked him till he was on the verge of death. Three times they strung him up and three times they let him down and revived him, to give him “a chance to save his immortal soul by confessing.” Finally, they just let him swing. He died maintaining his innocence.

  They left Ezekiel on display for two days, as a lesson to the colored and entertainment to all others. Crowds in autos, buggies, and on foot strolled by to point and snigger.

  Meanwhile, the hunt for Hosea continued in vain. After two days of searching, people assumed that he’d successfully fled the area. On the afternoon of October 10, a black man named Moses Whitney burst into Haynes’s office and told him that Hosea was hiding out at his house. Hungry and exhausted, Hosea had come to him for food, Whitney said. He’d given Hosea some grub, promised him supplies, then given him a place to sleep. As soon as Hosea had dropped off, Whitney had slipped out of the house.

  The sheriff’s men surrounded Whitney’s house. There was an exchange of gunfire but Hosea was taken alive. He was attached by rope to the back of a car, dragged down Crabtree Boulevard, the busiest street in Charlottesville, then taken out to a place called the Old Indian Cemetery, on the edge of town. There, they hung him upside down, doused him with kerosene, and set him on fire. David visited the place. It was beautiful and still, and it was hard to believe it had been the site of such recent evil. The only testimony was the scorched remains of an iso
lated tree.

  David tried to see Mrs. Stokes, but was told that she was still suffering from shock. He was able to gather information from servants, however. It was Mrs. Stokes who had found her husband’s body. As soon as she saw him lying there, she’d run screaming to her father-in-law’s house. The family physician, who happened to be a dining guest at the home of Stokes Sr., quickly sedated her.

  David noted at least two discrepancies. A hysterical Missy Stokes had run screaming that Hosea had axed her “Christian man,” but she’d said nothing about Hosea having attacked her. Then there was the fact that she lay unconscious for nearly two days. Nevertheless, City Superintendent Sharkey Summers claimed that he’d talked to her the morning after the murder. “She told me what the nigger done to her,” he said in one newspaper article. He became one of the leading advocates for the burning of Hosea Johnson.

  Local newspapers claimed that Hosea had confessed to the murder and the assault before he died. David read and reread the reports. The papers had fed the lynching mania. Not a single one had urged due legal process for the accused when captured. All had predicted with malevolent glee that Hosea Johnson would be hung and burned, virtually passing sentence and preordaining the mode of his torture and execution.

  Nor had any report attempted to explain the death of Ezekiel’s son, Caleb. One wrote that “the nigger child’s death was too insignificant to explore.”

  David talked not only to white locals, but also to black residents. At least, he tried to. Most had fled into the woods and were only slowly daring to return. They professed absolute ignorance of what had occurred while they were gone. Others admitted that they’d seen and heard enough to have something to say, but they refused to speak.