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THE FIRE IN
THE FLINT
WALTER F. WHITE
NEW YORK
ALFRED · A · KNOPF
MCMXXIV


COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. •
PUBLISHED, SEPTEMBER, 1924 · SET UP, ELEC-
TROTYPED, PRINTED AND BOUND BY THE VAIL-
BALLOU PRESS, INC., BINGHAMTON N. Y. •
PAPER FURNISHED BY W. F. ETHERINGTON &
CO., NEW YORK. •
829
152811
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERIOA


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“The fire in the flint never shows until it is struck."
-Old English Proverb.
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THE FIRE IN
THE FLINT





CHAPTER I
le, Kenneth warm glow who delays-all
ENNETH HARPER gazed slowly around his office.
A smile of satisfaction wreathed his face, re-
flecting his inward contentment. He felt like
a runner who sees ahead of him the coveted goal to-
wards which he has been straining through many
gruelling miles. Kenneth was tired but he gave no
thought to his weariness. Two weeks of hard work,
countless annoyances, seemingly infinite delays—all
were now forgotten in the warm glow which pervaded
his being. He, Kenneth B. Harper, M.D., was now
ready to receive the stream of patients he felt sure
was coming.
He walked around the room and fingered with
almost loving tenderness the newly installed ap-
paratus. He adjusted and readjusted the examining-
table of shining nickel and white enamel which had
arrived that morning from New York. He arranged
again the black leather pads and cushions. With his
handkerchief he wiped imaginary spots of dust from
the plate glass door and shelves of the instrument
case, though his sister Mamie had polished them but
half an hour before until they shone with crystal
clearness. Instrument after instrument he fondled
with the air of a connoisseur examining a rare bit
of porcelain. He fingered critically their various
[11]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
parts to see if all were in perfect condition. He tore
a stamp from an old letter and placed it under the
lens of the expensive microscope adjusting and re-
adjusting until every feature of the stamp stood out
clearly even to the most infinite detail. He raised
and lowered half a dozen times or more the lid of the
nickelled sterilizer. He set at various angles the
white screen which surrounded the examining-table,
viewed it each time from different corners of the
room, and rearranged it until it was set just right.
He ran his hand over the card index files in his small
desk. He looked at the clean white cards with the
tabs on them—the cards which, though innocent now
of writing, he hoped and expected would soon be
filled with the names of innumerable sick people he
was treating.
His eye caught what he thought was a pucker in the
grey-and-blue-chequered linoleum which covered the
floor. He went over and moved the sectional book-
case containing his volumes on obstetrics, on gynæcol-
ogy, on materia medica, on the diseases he knew he
would treat as a general practitioner of medicine in
so small a place as Central City. No, that wasn't a
pucker-it was only the light from the window strik-
ing it at that angle.
“Dr. Kenneth B. Harper, Physician and Surgeon.”
He spelled out the letters which were painted on the
upper panes of the two windows facing on State
Street. It thrilled him that eight years of hard work
had ended and he now was at the point in his life to-
| wards which he had longingly looked all those years.
[12]
?!!
thes
mashs


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
Casting his eyes again around the office, he went into
the adjoining reception room.
Kenneth threw himself in utter exhaustion into one
of the comfortable arm-chairs there. His hands,
long-fingered, tapering to slender points, the hands
of a pianist, an artist, whether of brush or chisel or
scalpel, hung over the sides in languid fashion. He
was without coat or vest. His shirt-sleeves were
rolled back above his elbows, revealing strongly
muscled dark brown arms. His face was of the same
richly coloured brown. His mouth was sensitively
shaped with evenly matched strong white teeth. The
eyes too were brown, usually sober and serious, but
flashing into a broad and friendly smile when there
was occasion for it. Brushed straight back from the
broad forehead was a mass of wavy hair, brown also
but of a deeper shade, almost black. [ The chin was
well shaped.
As he lounged in the chair and looked around the
reception room, he appeared to be of medium height,
rather well-proportioned, almost stocky. Three
years of baseball and football, and nearly two years
of army life with all its hardships, had thickened up
the once rather slender figure and had given to the
face a more mature appearance, different from the
youthful, almost callow look he had worn when his
diploma had been handed him at the end of his col-
lege course.
The reception room was as pleasing to him as he
sat there as had been the private office. There were
three or four more chairs like the one in which he
[ 13 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
vase
sat. There was a couch to match. The wall-paper
was a subdued tan, serving as an excellent back-
ground for four brightly coloured reproductions of
good pictures. Their brightness was matched by a
vase of deep blue that stood on the table. Beside
the vase were two rows of magazines placed there for
perusal by his patients as they waited admittance to
the more austere room beyond. It was comfortable.
It was in good taste—almost too good taste, Kenneth
thought, for a place like Central City in a section like
the southernmost part of Georgia. Some of the
country folks and even those in town would probably
say it was too plain-didn't have enough colour
about it. Oh, well, that wouldn't matter, Kenneth
thought. They wouldn't have to live there. Most
of them would hardly notice it, if they paid any at-
tention at all to relatively minor and unimportant
things like colour schemes.
- Kenneth felt that he had good reason to feel con-
tent with the present outlook. He lighted a cigarette
and settled himself more comfortably in the deep
chair and let his mind wander over the long trail he
had covered. He thought of the eight happy years
he had spent at Atlanta University-four of high
school and four of college. He remembered grate-
fully the hours of companionship with those men
and women who had left comfortable homes and
friends in the North to give their lives to the educa-
tion of coloured boys and girls in Georgia. They
were so human—so sincere-so genuinely anxious
to help. It wasn't easy for them to do it, either, for


[ 14 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
it meant ostracism and all its attendant unpleasant-
nesses to teach coloured children in Georgia anything
other than industrial courses. And they were so
different from the white folks he knew in Central
City. Here he had always been made to feel that be-
cause he was a "nigger” he was predestined to in-
feriority. But there at Atlanta they had treated him
like a human being. He was glad he had gone to
Atlanta University. It had made him realize that all
white folks weren't bad—that there were decent ones,
after all.
And then medical school in the North! How
eagerly he had looked forward to it! The bustle,
the air of alert and eager determination, the lovely
old ivied walls of the buildings where he attended
classes. He laughed softly to himself as he remem-
bered how terribly lonesome he had been that first
day when as an ignorant country boy he found him-
self really at a Northern school. That had been a
hard night to get through. Everybody had seemed
so intent on doing something that was interesting,
going so rapidly towards the places where those in-
teresting things were to take place, greeting old
friends and acquaintances affectionately and with
all the boisterous bonhomie that only youth, and col-
lege youth at that, seem to be able to master. It had
been a bitter pill for him to swallow that he alone of
all that seething, noisy, tremendous mass of students,
was alone—without friend or acquaintance—the one
lonely figure of the thousands around him.
That hadn't lasted long though. Good old Bill
-
-
[ 15 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
Van Vleet! That's what having family and money
and prestige behind you did for a fellow! It was
a mighty welcome thing when old Bill came to him
there as he sat dejectedly that second morning on
the campus and roused him out of his gloom. And
then the four years when Bill had been his closest
friend. He had been one wonderful free soul that
knew no line of caste or race.
His friendship with Van Vleet seemed to Kenneth
now almost like the memory of a pleasant dream on
awaking. Even then it had often seemed but a fleet-
ing, evanescent experience a wholly temporary ar-
rangement that was intended to last only through the
four years of medical school. Those times when
Bill had invited him to spend Christmas holidays at
his home they had been hard invitations to get out
of. Bill had been sincere enough, no doubt of that.
But Bill's father—his mother—their friends—would
they—old Pennsylvania Dutch family that they were
=would they be as glad to welcome a Negro into
their home? He had always been afraid to take the
chance of finding that they wouldn't. Decent enough
had they been when Bill introduced him to them on
one of their visits to Philadelphia. But—and this
was a big “but”—there was a real difference between
being nice to a coloured friend of Bill's at school and
treating that same fellow decently in their own home.
Kenneth was conscious of a vague feeling even now
that he had not treated them fairly i.. judging them
by the white people of Central City. Yet, white
folks were white folks—and that's that! Hadn't his
[16]
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caci ulem


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
father always told him that the best way to get along
with white people was to stay away from them and
let them alone as much as possible?
Through his mind passed memories of the many
conversations he had had with his father on that sub-
ject. Especially that talk together before he had
gone away to medical school. He didn't know then
it was the last time he would see his father alive.
He had had no way of knowing that his father, al-
ways so rugged, so buoyantly healthy, so uncom-
plaining, would die of appendicitis while he, Ken-
neth, was in France. If he had only been at home!
He'd have known it wasn't a case of plain cramps, as
that old fossil, Dr. Bennett, had called it. What was
the exact way in which his father had put his philos-
ophy of life in the South during that last talk they
had had together? It had run like this: Any -
Negro can get along without trouble in the South if
he only attends to his own business. It was unfortu-
nate, mighty unpleasant and uncomfortable at times,
that coloured people, no matter what their standing,
had to ride in Jim Crow cars, couldn't vote, couldn't
use the public libraries and all those other things.
Lynching, too, was bad. But only bad Negroes ever
got lynched. And, after all, those things weren't all
of life. Booker Washington was right. And the
others who were always howling about rights were
· wrong. Get a trade or a profession. Get a home.
Get some property. Get a bank account. Do some-
thing! Be somebody! And then, when enough Ne-
groes had reached that stage, the ballot and all the

[17]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT

other things now denied them would come. White
folks then would see that the Negro was deserving
of those rights and privileges and would freely,
gladly give them to him without his asking for them.
That was the way he felt. When Bill Van Vleet
had urged him to go with him to dinners or the theatre,
he had had always some excuse that Bill had to ac-
cept whether he had believed it or not. Good Old
Bill! They never knew during those more or less
happy days what was in store for them both.
Neither of them had known that the German Army
was going to sweep down through Belgium. Nor did
they know that Bill was fated to end his short but
brilliant career as an aviator in a blazing, spectacular
descent behind the German lines, the lucky shot of a
German anti-aircraft gun.
Graduation. The diploma which gave him the
right to call himself “Dr. Kenneth B. Harper.” And
then that stormy, yet advantageous year in New York
at Bellevue. Hadn't they raised sand at his, a
Negro's presumption in seeking that interneship at
Bellevue! He'd almost lost out. No Negro interne
had ever been there before. If it hadn't been for
Dr. Cox, to whom he had had a letter of introduction
from his old professor of pathology at school, he
never would have got the chance. But it had been
worth it.
Kenneth lighted another cigarette and draped his
legs over the arm of the chair. It wasn't bad at all
to think of the things he had gone through—now that
they were over. Especially the army. Out of Bel-
-
2
;
[ 18 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
levue one week when the chance came to go to the
Negro officers' training-camp at Des Moines. First
lieutenant's bars in the medical corps. Then the
long months of training and hard work at Camp Up-
ton, relieved by occasional pleasant trips to New
York. Lucky he'd been assigned to the 367th of the
92nd Division. Good to be near a real town like
New York.
That had been some exciting ride across. And
then the Meuse, the Argonne, then Metz. God, but
that was a terrible nightmare! Right back of the
lines had he been assigned. Men with arms and legs
shot off. Some torn to pieces by shrapnel. Some
burned horribly by mustard gas. The worse night
had been when the Germans made that sudden attack
at the Meuse. For five days they had been fighting
w and working. That night he had almost broken
down. How he had cursed war! And those who
made war. And the civilization that permitted war
—even made it necessary. Never again for him!
Seemed like a horrible dream—a nightmare worse
than any he had ever known as a boy when he'd eaten
green apples or too much mince pie.
That awful experience he had soon relegated to the
background of his mind. Especially when he was
spending those blessed six months at the Sorbonne.
That had been another hard job to put over. They
didn't want any Negroes staying in France. They'd
howled and they'd brought up miles of red tape.
But he had ignored the howls and unwound the red
tape.
[ 19 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
And now, Central City again. It was good to get
back. Four-eight—sixteen years had he spent in
preparation. Now he was all ready to get to work at
his profession. For a time he'd have to do general
practising. Had to make money. Then he'd spe-
cialize in surgery—major surgery. Soon's he got
enough money ahead, he'd build a sanitarium. Make
of it as modern a hospital as he could afford. He'd
draw on all of South Georgia for his patients. Near-
est one now is Atlanta. All South Georgia—most
of Florida—even from Alabama. Ten years from
now he'd have a place known and patronized by all
the coloured people in the South. Something like
the Mayo Brothers up in Rochester, Minnesota!
“Pretty nifty, eh, Ken?”
Kenneth, aroused suddenly from his retrospection
and day-dreams, jumped at the unexpected voice be-
hind him. It was his younger brother, Bob. He
laughed a little shamefacedly at his having been
startled. Without waiting for a reply, Bob entered
the room and sat on the edge of the table facing
Kenneth.
“Yep! Things are shaping up rather nicely.
Everything's here now but the patients. And those'll
be coming along pretty soon, I believe,” replied Ken-
neth confidently. He went on talking enthusiasti-
cally of the castles in the air he had been building
when Bob entered the room—of the hospital he was
going to erect-how he planned attending the State
Medical Convention every year to form contracts with
other coloured doctors of Georgia-how he was in-
[ 20 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
tending to visit during the coming year all the col.
oured physicians within a radius of a hundred miles
of Central City to enlist their support. He discussed
the question of a name for the hospital. How would
Harper's Sanitarium sound? Or would the Central
City Infirmary be better? Or the Hospital of South
Georgia?
On and on Kenneth rambled, talking half to Bob,
half in audible continuation of his reverie before
Bob had entered. But Bob wasn't listening to him.
On his face was the usual half-moody, half-
discontented expression which Kenneth knew so well.
Bob was looking down the dusty expanse of the road
which bore rather poorly the imposing title of State
Street. The house was located at the corner of Lee
and State Streets. It was set back about fifty feet
from the streets, and the yard outside showed the
work of one who loved flowers. There was an ex-
panse of smooth lawn, dotted here and there with
flowering beds of pansies, of nasturtiums. There
were several abundantly laden rose-bushes and two
of “cape jessamine” that filled the air with an intoxi-
cating, almost cloying sweetness.
Though it was a balmy October afternoon, the air
languorous and caressing, Bob shared none of the
atmosphere's lazy contentment. All this riot of col.
ours and odours served in no manner to remove from
his face the dissatisfied look that covered it. He lis-
tened to Kenneth's rhapsodies of what he intended
accomplishing with what was almost a grimace of
distaste. He was taller than Kenneth, of slighter
[ 21 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
build, but of the same rich colouring of skin and with
the same hair and features.
In spite of these physical resemblances between the
two brothers, there was a more intangible difference
which clearly distinguished the two. Kenneth was
more phlegmatic, more of a philosophic turn of
mind, more content with his lot, able to forget himself
in his work, and when that was finished, in his books.
Bob, on the other hand, was of a highly sensitized
nature, more analytical of mind, more easily roused
to passion and anger. This tendency had been de-
veloped since the death of his father just before he
completed his freshman year at Atlanta. The death
had necessitated his leaving school and returning to
Central City to act as administrator of his father's
estate. His experiences in accomplishing this task
had not been pleasant ones. He had been forced to
deal with the tricksters that infested the town. He
had come in contact with all the chicanery, the petty
thievery, the padded accounts, that only petty minds
can devise. The utter impotence he had felt in hav-
ing no legal redress as a Negro had embittered him.
Joe Harper, their father, had been exceedingly care-
ful in keeping account of all bills owed and due him.
Yet Bob had been forced to pay a number of bills of
which he could find no record in his father's neatly
kept papers. These had aggregated somewhere be-
tween three and four thousand dollars. Various
white merchants of the town claimed that Joe Harper,
his father, owed them. Bob knew they were lying.
Yet he could do nothing. No court in South Georgia


[ 22 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
would have listened to his side of the story or paid
more than perfunctory attention to him. It was a
case of a white man's word against a Negro's, and a
verdict against the Negro was sure even before the
case was opened.
Kenneth, on the other hand, had been a favourite
of their quiet, almost taciturn father. Always filled
with ambition for his children, Joe Harper had fur-
nished Kenneth, as liberally as he could afford, the
money necessary for him to get the medical educa-
tion he wanted. He had not been a rich man but
he had been comfortably fixed financially. Starting
out as a carpenter doing odd jobs around Central
City, he had gradually expanded his activities to the
building of small houses and later to larger homes
and business buildings. Most of the two-story build-
ings that lined Lee Street in the business section of
Central City had been built by him. White and col-
oured alike knew that when Joe Harper took a con-
tract, it would be done right. Aided by a frugal and
economical wife, he had purchased real estate and,
though the profits had been slow and small, had man-
aged with his wife to accumulate during their thirty-
five years of married life between twenty and twenty-
five thousand dollars which he left at his death to his
wife and three children.
Kenneth had been furnished with the best that his
father could afford, while Bob, some ten years
younger than his brother, had had to wait until Ken-
neth finished school before he could begin his course.
Bob felt no jealousy of his favoured brother, yet

[ 23 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
the experiences that had been his in Central City
while Kenneth was away had tended towards a bitter-
ness which frequently found expression on his face.
He was the natural rebel, revolt was a part of his
creed. Kenneth was the natural pacifist—he never
bothered trouble until trouble bothered him. Even
then, if he could avoid it, he always did. It was not
strange, therefore, that he should have come home be-
lieving implicitly that his father was right when he
had said Kenneth could get along without trouble in
Central City as long as he attended to his own
business.
Kenneth talked on and on, unfolding the plans he
had made for the extending of the influence of his
hospital throughout the South. Bob, occupied with
his own thoughts, heard but little of it. Suddenly
he interrupted Kenneth with a sharply put question.
“Ken, why did you come back to Central City?"
he asked. He went on without waiting for a reply.
“If I had had your chances of studying up North and
in France, and living where you don't have to be
A afraid of getting into trouble with Crackers all the
time, I'd rather've done anything else than to come
back to this rotten place to live the rest of my life.”
Kenneth laughed easily, almost as though a five-
year-old had asked some exceedingly foolish ques.
tion.
“Why did I come back?” he repeated. “That's
easy. I came back because I can make more money
here than anywhere else.”
[24] ,


if tie unitting to in
allalshoort he is now hrs


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
“But that isn't the most important thing in life!”
Bob exclaimed.
“Maybe not the most important,” Kenneth
laughed, “but a mighty convenient article to have
lying around. I came back here where the bulk of
coloured people live and where they make money off
their crops and where there won't be much trouble
for me to build up a big practice.”
"That's an old argument,” retorted Bob. “Nearly
a million coloured people went North during the war
and they're making money there hand over fist. You
could make just as much money, if not more, in a
city like Detroit or Cleveland or New York, and you
wouldn't have to be always afraid you've given of-
fence to some of these damned ignorant Crackers
down here.”
“Oh, I suppose I could've made money there. Dr.
Cox at Bellevue told me I ought to stay there in New
York and practise in Harlem, but I wanted to come
back home. I can do more good here, both for my-
self and for the coloured people, than I could up
there.” He paused and then asserted confidently:
"And I don't think I'll have any trouble down here.
Papa got along all right here in this town for more
than fifty years, and I reckon I can do it too."
“But, Ken,” Bob protested, "the way things were
when he came along are a lot different from the way
they are now. Just yesterday Old Man Mygatt down
to the bank got mad and told me I was an “impudent
young nigger that needed to be taught my place' be-
;
[ 25 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
cause I called his hand on a note he claimed papa
owed the bank. He knew I knew he was lying, and
that's what made him so mad. They're already say-
ing I'm not a 'good nigger' like papa was and that
education has spoiled me into thinking I'm as good
as they are. Good Lord, if I wasn't any better than
these ignorant Crackers in this town, I'd go out and
jump in the river.”
Bob was working himself into a temper. Kenneth
interrupted him with a good-natured smile as he said:
“Bob, you're getting too pessimistic. You've been
reading too many of these coloured newspapers pub-
lished in New York and Chicago and these societies
that're always playing up some lynching or other
trouble down here ”
“What if I have? I don't need to read them to
know that things are much worse to-day than they
were a few years back. You haven't lived down
here for nearly nine years and you don't know how
things are changed.”
“It's you who have changed—not conditions so
much!” Kenneth answered. “What if there are
mean white folks? There are lots of other white
people who want to see the Negro succeed. Only
this morning Dr. Bennett told mamma he was glad I
came back and he'd do what he could to help me.
And there're lots more like ”
“That's nice of Dr. Bennett," interjected Bob.
“He can afford to talk big-he's got the practice of
this town sewed up. And, most of all, he's a white
man. Suppose some of these poor whites get it into

[ 26 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
their heads to make trouble because you're getting
too prosperous—what then? Dr. Bennett and all the
rest of the good white folks around here can't help
you!”
“Oh, yes, they can,” Kenneth observed with the
same confident smile. "Judge Stevenson and Roy
Ewing and Mr. Baird at the Bank of Central City
and a lot others run this town and they aren't going
to let any decent coloured man be bothered. Why,
I'll have a cinch around this part of Georgia!
There aren't more than half a dozen coloured doctors
in all this part of the country who've had a decent
medical education and training. All they know is
ladling out pills and fake panaceas. In a few years
I'll be able to give up general practising and give all
my time to major surgery. I'll handle pretty nearly
everything in this part of the State. And then you'll
see I'm right!”
“Have it your own way," retorted Bob. “But
I'm telling you again, you haven't been living down
here for eight or nine years and you don't know.
When all these Negroes were going North, some of
these same “good white folks' you're depending on
started talking about “putting niggers in their place'
when they couldn't get servants and field hands.
You'll find things a lot different from the way they
were when you went up North to school.”
“What’re you boys fussing about? What's the
trouble?”
Bob and Kenneth turned at the voice from the door.
way behind them. It was their mother.


[ 27 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
“Nothing, mamma, only Bob's got a fit of the
blues to-day.”
Mrs. Harper came in and looked from one to the
other of her sons. She was a buxom, pleasant-faced
woman of fifty-odd years, her hair once brown now
flecked with grey. She wiped the perspiration from
her forehead with the corner of her apron, announc-
ing meanwhile that supper was ready. As he rose,
Kenneth continued his explanation of their conversa-
tion.
“Bob's seeing things like a kid in the dark. He
thinks I'll not be able to do the things I came back
here to accomplish. Thinks the Crackers won't let
me! I'm going to solve my own problem, do as
much good as I can, make as much money as I can!
If every Negro in America did the same thing, there
wouldn't be any race problem.'”
Mrs. Harper took an arm of each of her sons and
led them into the dining-room where their sister Ma-
mie was putting supper on the table.
“You're right, Kenneth,” Mrs. Harper remarked
as she sat down at the table. "Your father and I
got along here together in Central City without a
bit of trouble for thirty-five years, and I reckon you
can do it too."
"But, mamma,” Bob protested, “I've been telling
Ken things are not what they were when you and
papa came along. Why— "
“Let's forget the race problem for a while,” Ken-
neth interrupted. “I'm too hungry and tired to talk
about it now.”
999
[ 28 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
“That's right," was Mrs. Harper's comment.
“Draw your chairs up to the table. You're not goin'
to have any trouble here in town, Ken, and we're
mighty glad you came back. Mrs. Amos was in this
afternoon and she tells me they're having some trou-
ble out near Ashland between the coloured share-
croppers and their landlords, but that'll blow over-
just as it's always done.”
“What's the trouble out there?” asked Kenneth.
He wasn't much interested, for he could hear Mamie,
in the kitchen beyond, singing some popular air to
the accompaniment of chicken-frying.
“It's a case where coloured farmers claim they
can't get fair settlements from their landlords for
their crops at the end of the year,” explained his
mother.
“Why don't they hire a lawyer?” Kenneth asked,
with little interest.
“That shows you've forgotten all about things in
the South,” said Bob with mingled triumph and de-
spair at his brother's ignorance. “There isn't a white
lawyer in Georgia who'd take a case like this. In the
first place, the courts would be against him because
his client's a Negro, and in the second place, he'd
have to buck this combination of landlords, store-
keepers, and bankers who are getting rich robbing
Negroes. If a white lawyer took a case of a Negro
share-cropper, he'd either sell out to the landlord or
be scared to death before he ever got to court. And
as for a Negro lawyer,” here Bob laughed sardoni-
cally, "he'd be run out of town by the Ku Klux

[ 29 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
Klan or lynched almost before he took the case!”
“Oh, I don't know so much about that!” Kenneth
replied. “There are landlords, without doubt, who
rob their tenants, but after all there are only a few
of them. And furthermore," he declared as Mamie
entered the room with a platter of fried chicken in
one hand and a plate of hot biscuits in the other,
“supper looks just a little bit more interesting to me
right now than landlords, tenants, or problems of
any kind.”
Mamie divested herself of her apron and sat down
to the table. She was an attractive girl of twenty-
two or twenty-three, more slender than Bob, and
| about Kenneth's height. Her hair was darker than
that of either of her brothers, was parted in the
middle and brushed down hard on either side.
Though not a pretty girl, she had an air about her as
though she was happy because of the sheer joy of
living. She had graduated from Atlanta University
two years before, and with two other girls had been
teaching the seven grades in the little ramshackle
building that served as a coloured school in the
town. That hard work had not as yet begun to tell
on her. She seemed filled with buoyant good health
and blessed with a lively good nature. Yet she too
was inclined to spells of depression like Bob's. She
resembled him more nearly than Kenneth. As has
every comely coloured girl in towns of the South like
Central City, she had had many repulsive experiences
when she had to fight with might and main to ward
off unwelcome attentions—both of the men of her
[ 30 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
own race and of white men. Especially had this
been true since the death of her father. Often her
face overclouded as she thought of them. She, like
Bob, felt always as though they were living on top
of a volcano—and never knew when it might
erupt. ...
The four sat at supper. Forgotten were problems
other than the immediate one of Kenneth's in getting
his practice under way. Eagerly they talked of his
plans, his prospects, his ambitions. Bob said noth-
ing until they began to discuss him and his plans
for returning to school the following fall, now that
Kenneth was back to complete the settling of the small
details that remained in connection with Joe Harper's
estate. ...
It was a happy and reasonably prosperous, intelli-
gent family group-one that can be duplicated many,
many times in the South.
vos
[ 31 ]


CHAPTER II
| ITUATED in the heart of the farming section of
the State, with its fertile soil, its equable cli-
mate, its forests of pine trees, Central City was
one of the flourishing towns of South Georgia. Its
population was between eight and ten thousand, of
which some four thousand were Negroes. The
wealth and prosperity of the town depended not so
much on the town itself as it did on the farmers of
the fertile_lands surrounding it. To Central City
they came on Saturday afternoons to sell their cot-
ton, their corn, their hogs and cows, and to buy in
turn sugar, cloth, coffee, farming-implements, shoes,
and amusement. It was divided into four nearly
equal sections by the intersection of the tracks of the
Central of Georgia Railroad and of the Georgia,
Southern and Florida Railway. Drowsy, indolent
during the first six days of the week, Central City
awoke on Saturday morning for "goin'ť town” day
with its bustle and excitement and lively trade. Then
the broad dustiness of Lee Street was disturbed by
the Fords and muddied wagons of farmers, white and
black. In the wagons were usually splint-bottom
chairs or boards stretched from side to side, occupied
by scrawny, lanky "po' whites” with a swarm of
children to match, clad in single-piece garments, once

[ 32 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
red in colour and now, through many washings with
lye soap, an indeterminate reddish brown. Or, if the
driver was a Negro, he generally was surrounded by
just as many little black offspring, clad also in greyish
or reddish-brown garments, and scrambling over the
farm products being brought to town for sale or ex-
change for the simple and few store products needed.
And beside him the usually buxom, ample-bodied
wife, clad in her finest and most gaudy clothing to
celebrate the trip to town looked forward to eagerly
all the week.
Crowded were the streets with vehicles and the
sidewalks with the jostling, laughing, loudly talking
throng of humans. After the noonday whistle had
blown signalling release to the hordes of whites work-
ing in the cotton mill over beyond the tracks, the crowd
was augmented considerably, the new-comers made
up of those who had deserted the country districts,
discouraged by the hard life of farming, by rainy
and unprofitable seasons, by the ravages of the boll
weevil and of landlords, both working dire distress
on poor white and black alike. Discouraged, they
had come to the city” to work at small wages in the
cotton mill.
All the trading done on these days did not take
place over the counters of the stores that lined Lee
Street. In the dirty little alleyways from off the
main street, men with furtive eyes but bold ways dis-
pensed synthetic gin, “real” rye whisky, and more
often “white mule,” as the moonshine corn whisky
is called. Bottles were tilted and held to the mouth
[ 33 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
a long time and later the scene would be enlivened
by furious but shortlived fights. Guns, knives, all
sorts of weapons appeared with miraculous speed-
the quarrel was settled, the wounded or killed re-
moved, and the throng forgot the incident in some
new joyous and usually commonplace or sordid
adventure.
.
When darkness began to approach, the wagons and
Fords, loaded with merchandise for the next week,
and with the children clutching sticky and brightly
coloured candies, began to rumble countrywards, and
Central City by nightfall had resumed its sleepy, in-
dolent, and deserted manner.
From the corner where Oglethorpe Avenue crossed
Lee Street and where stood the monument to the Con-
federate Dead, the business section extended up Lee
Street for three blocks. Here the street was dignified
with a narrow “park," some twenty feet in width,
which ran the length of the business thoroughfare.
Over beyond the monument lay the section of Cen-
tral City where lived the more well-to-do of its white
inhabitants. Georgia Avenue was here the realm of
the socially elect. Shaded by elms, it numbered sev-
eral more or less pretentious homes of two stories,
some of brick, the majority of frame structure.
Here were the homes of Roy Ewing, president of the
local Chamber of Commerce and owner of Ewing's
General Merchandise Emporium; of George Baird,
president of the Bank of Central City; of Fred Gris-
wold, occupying the same relation to Central City's
other bank, the Smith County Farmers' Bank; of
[ 34 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
Ralph Minor, owner and manager of the Bon Ton
Store.
Here too were the wives of these men, busying
themselves with their household duties and the minor
social life of the community. In the morning they
attended to the many details of housekeeping; in the
afternoon and early evening they sat on their front
porches or visited neighbours or went for a ride.
Placid, uneventful, stupid lives they led with no other
interests than the petty affairs of a small and unpro-
gressive town.
The young girls of Central City usually in the
afternoon dressed in all their small-town finery and
strolled down to Odell's Drug Store where the young
men congregated. Having consumed a frothy soda
or a gummy, sweetish sundae, they went to the Idle
Hour Moving Picture Palace to worship at the cellu-
loid shrine of a favourite film actor, usually of the
highly romantic type. Then the stroll homewards,
always past the Central City Hotel, a two-storied
frame structure located at the corner of Lee Street
and Oglethorpe Avenue opposite the Confederate
monument. In front were arm-chairs, occupied in
warm weather, which was nearly all the year round,
by travelling salesmen or other transients. Often a
sidelong glance and a fleeting, would-be-coy smile
would cause one of the chair-occupants to rise as
casually as he could feign, yawn and stretch, and
with affected nonchalance stroll down Lee Street in
the wake of the smiling one. ...
At the other end of Lee Street from the residential
[ 35 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
rainy west of sticky, gummu anes, veritabl.
section of the well-to-do whites, past the business sec-
tion of that main artery of the town, lay that portion
known generally as “Darktown.” Fringing it were
several better-than-the-average homes, neat, well
painted, comfortable-looking, fronted with smooth
lawns and tidy, colourful flower-beds. It was one
of these at the corner of Lee and State Streets that
the Harpers owned and occupied.
After crossing State Street, an abrupt descent was
taken by Lee Street. Here lived in squalor and filth
and abject poverty the poorer class of Negroes. The
streets were winding, unpaved lanes, veritable seas
and rivers of sticky, gummy, discouraging mud in
rainy weather, into which the wheels of vehicles sank
to their hubs if the drivers of those conveyances were
indiscreet enough to drive through them. In sum-
mer these eddying wallows of muck and filth and
mud dry up and are transformed into swirling storms
of germ-laden dust when a vagrant wind sweeps over
them or a vehicle drives through them, choking the
throats of unlucky passers-by, and, to the despair of
the dusky housewives, flying through open windows.
The houses that bordered these roads were for the
most part of three and four rooms, the exteriors un.
painted or whitewashed, the interiors gloomy and
smelly. But few of them had sanitary arrangements,
and at the end of the little patch of ground that was
back of each of them, in which a few discouraged
vegetables strove to push their heads above the
ground, there stood another unpainted structure,
small, known as “the privy.” In front there was
[ 36 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
SU
nearly always some attempt at flower-cultivation, the
tiny beds bordered with bottles, shells, and bits of
brightly coloured glass. The ugliness of the houses
in many instances was hidden in summer-time by
yines and rambler roses that covered the porches and
sometimes the fronts of the houses.
Around these houses, in the streets, everywhere,
there played a seemingly innumerable horde of
black and brown and yellow children, noisy, quarrel-
some, clad usually in one-piece dresses of the same
indeterminate shade of grey or red or brown that was
seen on the country children on Saturday. In front
of many of the houses, there sat on sunny days an
old and bent man or ancient woman puffing the omni.
present corn-cob pipe. ...
A half-mile westward from "Darktown,” and sep.
arated from it by the Central of Georgia Railroad
tracks, stood the Central City Cotton Spinning-Mill.
Clustered around its ugly red-brick walls stood dwell.
ings that differed but little from those of “Darktown.”
Here were the same dingy, small, unsanitary, un-
beautiful, and unpainted dwellings. Here were the
same muddy or dusty unpaved streets. Here were
the same squalor and poverty and filth and abject
ignorance. There were but few superficial or recog-
nizable differences. One was that the children wore,
instead of the brown plumpness of the Negro chil.
dren, a pale, emaciated, consumptive air because of
the long hours in the lint-laden confines of the mills.
The men were long, stooped, cadaverous-appearing.
The women were sallow, unattractive, sad-looking,


[37]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
each usually with the end of a snuff-stick protruding
from her mouth. The children, when they played at
all, did so in listless, wearied, uninterested, and apa-
thetic fashion. The houses looked even more gaunt
and bare than those in the quarter which housed
the poorer Negroes, for the tiny patches of ground
that fronted the houses here in “Factoryville” were
but seldom planted with flowers. More often it was
trampled down until it became a hard, red-clay, sun-
baked expanse on which the children, and dogs as
emaciated and forlorn, sometimes played.
Here there was but one strong conviction, but one
firm rock of faith to which they clung—the inherent
and carefully nurtured hatred of “niggers” and a
belief in their own infinite superiority over their
dark-skinned neighbours. Their gods were Tom
Watson "and Hoke Smith and Tom Hardwick and
other demagogic politicians and office-seekers who
came to them every two or four years and harangued
them on the necessity of their upholding white civili-
zation by re-electing them to office. But one appeal
was needed—but one was used—and that one always
successfully. Meanwhile, their children left school
and entered the mill to work the few years that such
a life gave them. And, in the meantime, the black
children they hated so-deprived by prejudice from
working in the mills, and pushed forward by often
illiterate but always ambitious black parents—went
to school. ... .
This, in brief, was the Central City to which Ken-
neth had returned. A typical Southern town—rea-


[ 38 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
sonably rich as wealth is measured in that part of
Georgia-rich in money and lands and cotton-amaz-
ingly ignorant in the finer things of life. Noisy, un-
reflective, their wants but few and those easily satis-
fied. The men, self-made, with all that that dis-
tinctly American term implies. The women con-
cerned only with their petty household affairs and
more petty gossip and social intercourse. But, be-
yond these, life was and is a closed book. Or, more,
a book that never was written or printed.
The companionship and inspiration of books was
unknown. Music, even with the omnipresent Vic-
trola, meant only the latest bit of cheap jazz or a
Yiddish or Negro dialect song. Art, in its many
forms was considered solely for decadent, effete
"furriners.” Hostility would have met the woman
of the town's upper class who attempted to exhibit
any knowledge of art. Her friends would have felt
that she was trying to put something over on them.”
As for any man of the town, at best he would have
been considered a "little queer in the head," at the
worst suspected of moral turpitude or perversion.
But two releases from the commonplace, monoto-
nous life were left. The first, liquor. Bootlegging
throve. The woods around Central City were in-
fested with “moonshine” stills that seldom were still.
The initiated drove out to certain lonely spots, de-
posited under well-known trees a jug or other con-
tainer with a banknote stuck in its mouth. One then
gave a certain whistle and walked away. Soon there
would come an answering signal. One went back to


[ 39 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
the tree and found the money gone but the container
filled with a colourless or pale-yellow liquid. ...
Or, the more affluent had it brought to them in town
hidden under wagon-loads of fodder or cotton.
The other and even more popular outlet of un-
fulfilled and suppressed emotions was sex. Central
City boasted it had no red-light district like Macon
and Savannah and Atlanta. That was true. All
over the town were protected domiciles housing slat-
ternly women. To them went by circuitous routes
the merchants whose stores were on Lee Street. To
them went the gangs from the turpentine camps on
their periodic pilgrimages to town on pay-day. And
a traveller on any of the roads leading from the town
could see, on warm evenings, automobiles standing
with engines stilled and lights dimmed on the side of
the road. Down on Harris and Butler Streets in
“Darktown” were other houses. Here were coloured
women who seemed never to have to work. Here was
seldom seen a coloured man. And the children
around these houses were usually lighter in colour
than in other parts of "Darktown."
Negro fathers and mothers of comely daughters
never allowed them to go out unaccompanied after
dark. There were too many dangers from men of
their own race. And even greater ones from men of
the other race. There had been too many disastrous
consequences from relaxation of vigil by certain
bowed and heart-broken coloured parents. And they
had no redress at law. The laws of the State against
intermarriage saw to it that there should be none.



[ 40 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
Central City inhabitants knew all these things.
But familiarity with them had bred the belief that
they did not exist—that is, they were thought a
natural part of the town's armament against scandal.
One soon grew used to them and forgot them. The
town was no worse than any other-far better than
most.
It was a rude shock to Kenneth when he began to
see these things through an entirely different pair of
eyes than those with which he had viewed them be-
fore he left Central City for the North. The sordid
'ness, the blatant vulgarity, the viciousness of it all
-especially the houses on Butler and Harris Streets
-appalled and sickened him. Even more was he
disgusted by the complacent acceptance of the whole
miserable business by white and black alike. On
two or three occasions he tentatively mentioned it to
a few of those he had known intimately years be-
fore. Some of them laughed indulgently—others
cautioned him to leave it alone. Finding no re-
sponse, he shrugged his shoulders and dismissed the
whole affair from his mind. "It was here long be-
fore I was born,” he said to himself philosophically,
“it'll probably be here long after I'm dead, and the
best thing for me to do is to stick to my own business
and let other people's morals alone.”

[ 41 ]


CHAPTER III
ENNETH came into contact with few others than
his own people during the first month after
his return to Central City. The first two
weeks had been spent in getting his offices arranged
with the innumerable details of carpentering, plas-
tering, painting, and disposition of the equipment he
had ordered in New York during the days he had
spent there on his return from France.
During the early months of 1917, when through
every available means propaganda was being used
to whip into being America's war spirit, one of the
most powerful arguments heard was that of the bene-
ficial effect army life would have on the men who
entered the service. Newspapers and magazines
were filled with it, orators in church and theatre and
hall shouted it, every signboard thrust it into the
faces of Americans. Alluring pictures were painted
of the growth, physical and mental, that would cer-
tainly follow enlistment “to make the world safe for
democracy.”
To some of those who fought, such a change prob-
ably did come, but the mental outlook of most of
them was changed but little. The war was too big
a thing, too terrible and too searing a catastrophe, to
be adequately comprehended by the farmer boys, the
[ 42 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
clerks, and the boys fresh from school who chiefly
made up the fighting forces. Their lives had been
too largely confined to the narrow ways to enable
them to realize the immensity of the event into which
they had been so suddenly plunged. Their most
vivid memories were of that damned second loot” or
of beaucoup vin blanc or, most frequently, of all-too-
brief adventures with the mademoiselles. With the
end of the war and demobilization had come the short
periods of hero-worship and then the sudden forget-
fulness of those for whom they had fought. The
old narrow life began again with but occasional re-
volts against the monotony of it all, against the blast-
ing of the high hopes held when the war was being
fought. Even these spasmodic revolts eventually
petered out in vague mutterings among men like
themselves who let their inward dissatisfaction dis-
sipate in thin air.
More deep-rooted was this revolt among Negro ex-
service men. Many of them entered the army, not
so much because they were fired with the desire to
fight for an abstract thing like world democracy, but,
because they were of a race oppressed, they enter-
tained very definite beliefs that service in France
would mean a more decent regime in America, when
the war was over, for themselves and all others who
were classed as Negroes. Many of them, consciously
or subconsciously, had a spirit which might have
been expressed like this: “Yes, we'll fight for de-
mocracy in France, but when that's over with we're
going to expect and we're going to get some of that


[ 43 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
same democracy for ourselves right here in Amer.
ica.” It was because of this spirit and determina-
tion that they submitted to the rigid army discipline
to which was often added all the contumely that race
prejudice could heap upon them.
Kenneth was of that class which thought of these
things in a more detached, more abstract, more sub-
conscious manner. During the days when, stationed
close to the line, he treated black men brought to
the base hospital with arms and legs torn away by ex-
ploding shells, with bodies torn and mangled by
shrapnel, or with flesh seared by mustard gas, he had
inwardly cursed the so-called civilization which not
only permitted but made such carnage necessary.
But when the nightmare had ended, he rapidly forgot
the nausea he had felt, and plunged again into his
beloved work. More easily than he would have
thought possible, he forgot the months of discom-
fort and weariness and bloodshed. It came back to
him only in fitful memories as of some particularly
horrible dream.
To Kenneth, when work grew wearisome or when
memories would not down, there came relaxation in
literature, an opiate for which he would never cease
being grateful to Professor Fuller, his old teacher
at Atlanta. It was “Pop”. Fuller who, with his be-
nign and paternal manner, his adoration of the best
of the world's literature, had sown in Kenneth the
seed of that same love. He read and reread Jean
Christophe, finding in the adventures and partic-
ularly in the mental processes of Rolland's hero many
[ 44 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
IS
of his own reactions towards life. He had read the
plays of Bernard Shaw, garnering here and there a
morsel of truth though much of Shaw eluded him.
Theodore Dreiser's gloominess and sex-obsession he
liked though it often repelled him; he admired the
man for his honesty and disliked his pessimism or
what seemed to him a dolorous outlook on life. He
loved the colourful romances of Hergesheimer, con-
sidering them of little enduring value but neverthe-
less admiring his descriptions of affluent life, enjoy-
ing it vicariously. Willa Cather's My Antonia he
delighted in because of its simplicity and power and
beauty.
The works of D. H. Lawrence, Kenneth read with
conflicting emotions. Mystical, turgid, tortuous
phrases, and meaning not always clear. Yet he rev-
elled in Lawrence's clear insight into the bends and
backwaters and perplexing twistings of the stream
of life. Kenneth liked best of all foreign writers
Knut Hamsun. He had read many times Hunger,
Growth of the Soil, and other novels of the Norwe-
gian writer. He at times was annoyed by their lack
of plot, but more often he enjoyed them because they
had none, reflecting that life itself is never a
smoothly turned and finished work of art, its causes
and effects, its tears and joys, its loves and hates
neatly dovetailing one into another as writers of fic-
tion would have it.
So too did he satisfy his love for the sea in the
novels of Conrad—the love so many have who are
born and grow to manhood far from the sea. Ken-

[ 45]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
neth loved it with an abiding and passionate love
loved, yet feared it for its relentless power and sav-
agery—a love such as a man would have for an al-
luring, yet tempestuous mistress of fiery and uncer-
tain temper. In Conrad's romances he lived by
proxy the life he would have liked had not fear of
the water and the circumstances of his life prevented
it. Flaubert, Zola, Maupassant he read and reread,
finding in the struggles of Emma Bovary and
Nana and other heroines and heroes of the French
realists mental counterparts of some of the coloured
men and women of his acquaintance in their strug-
gles against the restrictions of stupid and crass and
ignorant surroundings. The very dissimilarities of
environment and circumstance between his own ac-
quaintances and the characters in the novels he read,
seemed to emphasize the narrowness of his own life
in the South. So does a bedridden invalid read with
keen delight the adventurous and rococo romances of
Zane Grey or Jack London.
But perhaps best of all he admired the writing of
Du Bois—the fiery, burning philippics of one of his
own race against the proscriptions of race prejudice.
He read them with a curious sort of detachment-
as being something which touched him in a more or
less remote way but not as a factor in forming his
own opinions as a Negro in a land where democracy
often stopped dead at the colour line.
It was in this that Kenneth's attitude towards life
was most clearly shown. His was the more philo-
sophic viewpoint on the race question, that problem so

[ 46 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
close to him. The proscriptions which he and others
of his race were forced to endure were inconvenient,
yet they were apparently a part of life, one of its
annoyances, a thing which had always been and prob-
ably would be for all time to come. Therefore, he
reasoned, why bother with it any more than one was
forced to by sheer necessity? Better it was for him
if he attended to his own individual problems, solved
them to the best of his ability and as circumstances
would permit, and left to those who chose to do it the
agitation for the betterment of things in general. · If
he solved his problems and every other Negro did
the same, he often thought, then the thing we call the
race problem will be solved. Besides, he reasoned,
the whole thing is too big for one man to tackle it,
and if he does attack it, more than likely he will go
down to defeat in the attempt. And what would be
gained? ...
His office completed, Kenneth began the making of
those contacts he needed to secure the patients he
knew were coming. In this his mother and Mamie
were of invaluable assistance. Everybody knew the
Harpers. It was a simple matter for Kenneth to re-
new acquaintances broken when he had left for school
in the North. He joined local lodges of the Grand
United Order of Heavenly Reapers and the Exalted
Knights of Damon. The affected mysteriousness of
his initiation into these fraternal orders, the secret
grip, the passwords, the elaborately worded rituals,
all of which the other members took so seriously,
amused him, but he went through it all with an out-


[ 47 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
wardly solemn demeanour. He knew it was good
business to affiliate himself with these often absurd
societies which played so large a part in the lives
of these simple and illiterate coloured folk. Along
with the strenuous emotionalism of their religion, it
served as an outlet for their naturally deep feelings.
In spite of the renewal of acquaintances, the care-
ful campaign of winning confidence in his ability
as a physician, Kenneth found that the flood of
patients did not come as he had hoped. The col.
oured people of Central City had had impressed upon
them by three hundred years of slavery and that
which was called freedom after the Emancipation
Proclamation was signed, that no Negro doctor, how-
ever talented, was quite as good as a white one. This
slave mentality, Kenneth now realized, inbred upon
generation after generation of coloured folk, is the
greatest handicap from which the Negro suffers, de-
stroying as it does that confidence in his own ability
which would enable him to meet without fear or
apology the test of modern competition.
Kenneth's youthful appearance, too, militated
against him. Though twenty-nine years old, he
looked not more than a mere twenty-four or twenty-
five. "He may know his stuff and be as smart as
all outdoors,” ran the usual verdict, “but I don't
want no boy treating me when I'm sick.”
Perhaps the greatest factor contributing to the col.
oured folks' lack of confidence in physicians of
their own race was the inefficiency of Dr. Williams,
the only coloured doctor in Central City prior to

[ 48 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
Kenneth's return. Dr. Williams belonged to the old
school and moved on the theory that when he grad-
uated some eighteen years before from a medical
school in Alabama, the development of medical
knowledge had stopped. He fondly pictured himself
as being the most prominent personage of Central
City's Negro colony, was pompous, bulbous-eyed, and
exceedingly fond of long words, especially of Latin
derivation. He made it a rule of his life never to
use a word of one syllable if one of two or more
would serve as well. Active in fraternal order cir-
cles (he was a member of nine lodges), class-leader
in Central City's largest Methodist church, arbiter
supreme of local affairs in general, he filled the rôle
with what he imagined was unsurpassable éclat. His
idea of complimenting a hostess was ostentatiously
to loosen his belt along about the middle of dinner.
Once he had been introduced as the “black William
Jennings Bryan,” believed it thereafter, and thought
it praise of a high order.
He was one of those who say on every possible
occasion: “I am kept so terribly busy I never have
a minute to myself.” Like nine out of ten who say
it, Dr. Williams always repeated this stock phrase of
those who flatter themselves in this fashion—so nec-
essary to those of small minds who would be thought
great—not because it was true, but to enhance his
pre-eminence in the eyes of his hearers—and in his
own eyes as well.
He always wore coats which resembled morning
coats, known in local parlance as "Jim-swingers."
[ 49 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
He kept his hair straightened, wore it brushed
straight back from his forehead like highly polished
steel wires, and, with pomades and hair oils liberally
applied, it glistened like the patent leather shoes
which adorned his ample feet.
His stout form filled the Ford in which he made
his professional calls, and it was a sight worth see-
ing as he majestically rolled through the streets of
the town bowing graciously and calling out loud
greetings to the acquaintances he espied by the way.
Always his bows to white people were twice as low
and obsequious as to those of darker skin. Until
Kenneth returned, Dr. Williams had had his own
way in Central City. Through his fraternal and
church connections and lack of competition, he had
made a little money, much of it through his position
as medical examiner for the lodges to which he be-
longed. As long as he treated minor ailments—cuts,
colic, childbirths, and the like he had little trouble.
But when more serious maladies attacked them, the
coloured population sent for the old white physician,
Dr. Bennett, instead of for Dr. Williams.
The great amount of time at his disposal irritated
Kenneth. He was like a spirited horse, champing at
the bit, eager to be off. The patronizing air of his
people nettled him-caused him to reflect somewhat
bitterly that “a prophet is not without honour save
in his own country.” And when one has not the gift
of prophecy to foretell, or of clairvoyance to see,
what the future holds in the way of success, one is
not likely to develop a philosophic calm which en-

[50]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
ables him to await the coming of long-desired results.
He was seated one day in his office reading when
his mother entered. Closing his book, he asked the
reason for her frown.
"You remember Mrs. Bradley—Mrs. Emma Brad-
ley down on Ashley Street-don't you, Kenneth?”
Without waiting for a reply, Mrs. Harper went on:
“Well, she's mighty sick. Jim Bradley has had Dr.
Bennett in to see what's the matter with her but he
don't seem to do her much good.”
Kenneth remembered Mrs. Bradley well indeed.
The most talkative woman in Central City. It was
she who had come to his mother with a long face
and dolorous manner when he as a youngster had
misbehaved in church. He had learned instinctively
to connect Mrs. Bradley's visits with excursions to
the little back room accompanied by his mother and
a switch cut from the peach-tree in the back yard-
a sort of natural cause and effect. Visions of those
days rose in his mind and he imagined he could feel
the sting of those switches on his legs now.
“What seems to be the trouble with her?” he asked.
“It's some sort of stomach-trouble-she's got an
awful pain in her side. She says it can't be her ap-
pendix because she had that removed up to Atlanta
when she was operated on there for a tumour nearly
four years ago. Dr. Bennett gave her some medi-
cine but it doesn't help here any. Won't you run
down there to see her?”
"I can't, mamma, until I am called in profession-
ally. Dr. Bennett won't like it. It isn't ethical.
[51]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
Besides, didn't Mrs. Bradley say when I came back
that she didn't want any coloured doctor fooling with
her?”
“Yes, she did, but you mustn't mind that. Just
run in to see her as a social call.”
Kenneth rose and instinctively took up his bag.
Remembering, he put it down, put on his hat, kissed
his mother, and walked down to Mrs. Bradley's.
Outside the gate stood Dr. Bennett's mud-splashed
buggy, sagging on one side through years of service
in carrying its owner's great bulk. Between the
shafts stood the old bay horse, its head hung de-
jectedly as though asleep, which Central City always
connected with its driver.
Entering the gate held by one hinge, Kenneth made
his way to the little three-room unpainted house
which served as home for the Bradleys and their six
children. On knocking, the door was opened by Dr.
Bennett, who apparently was just leaving. He stood
there, his hat on, stained by many storms, its black
felt turning a greenish brown through years of service
and countless rides through the red dust of the roads
leading out of Central City. Dr. Bennett himself
was large and flabby. His clothes hung on him in
haphazard fashion and looked as though they had
never been subjected to the indignity of a tailor's
iron. A Sherlock Holmes, or even one less gifted,
could read on his vest with little difficulty those things
which its wearer had eaten for many meals past.
Dr. Bennett's face was red through exposure to many
suns, and covered with the bristle of a three days'
[ 52 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
COI
wn
growth of beard. Small eyes set close together, they
belied a bluff good humour which Dr. Bennett could
easily assume when there was occasion for it. The
corners of the mouth were stained a deep brown
where tobacco juice had run down the folds of the
flesh.
Behind him stood Jim Bradley with worried face,
his ashy black skin showing the effects of remaining
all night by the bedside of his wife.
Dr. Bennett looked at Kenneth inquiringly.
"Don't you remember me, Dr. Bennett? I'm Ken-
neth Harper."
“Bless my soul, so it is. How're you, Ken? .
Le's see it's been nigh on to eight years since you
went No'th, ain't it? Heard you was back in town.
Hear you goin' to practise here. Come 'round to
see me some time. Right glad you're here. I'll be
kinder glad to get somebody ť help me treat these
niggers for colic or when they get carved up in a
crap game. Hope you ain't got none of them
No'then ideas 'bout social equality while you was up
there. Jus' do like your daddy did, and you'll get
along all right down here. These niggers who went
over to France and ran around with them French-
women been causin' a lot of trouble 'round here,
kickin' up a rumpus, and talkin' 'bout votin' and
ridin' in the same car with white folks. But don't
you let them get you mixed up in it, 'cause there'll
be trouble sho's you born if they don't shut up and
git to work. Jus’ do like your daddy did, and you'll
do a lot to keep the white folks' friendship.”

[53]


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Dr. Bennett poured forth all this gratuitous ad-
vice between asthmatic wheezes without waiting for
Kenneth to reply. He then turned to Jim Bradley
with a parting word of advice.
“Jim, keep that hot iron on Emma's stomach and
give her those pills every hour. 'Tain't nothin' but
the belly-ache. She'll be all right in an hour or
two.”
Turning without another word, he half ambled,
half shuffled out to his buggy, pulled himself up into
it with more puffing and wheezing, and drove away.
Jim Bradley took Kenneth's arm and led him back
on to the little porch, closing the door behind him.
"I'm pow'ful glad ť see you, Ken. My, but you
done growed sence you went up No'th! Befo' you
go in dar, I want t tell you somethin'. Emma's been
right po’ly fuh two days. Her stomach's swelled up
right sma't and she's been hollering all night. Dis
mawning she don't seem jus' right in de haid. I
tol her I was gwine to ast you to come see her, but
she said she didn't want no young nigger doctah
botherin' with her. But don't you min' her. I
wants you to tell me what to do.”
Kenneth smiled.
"I'll do what I can for her, Jim. But what about
Dr. Bennett?”
“Dat's a' right. He give her some med'cine but
it ain't done her no good. She's too good a woman
fuh me to lose her, even if she do talk a li'l' too much.
You make out like you jus' drap in to pass the time
o' day with her.”
[54]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
0
white the fir worn shiny Staph.
Kenneth entered the dark and ill-smelling room.
Opposite the door a fire smouldered in the fire-place,
giving fitful spurts of flame that illumined the room
and then died down again. There was no grate, the
pieces of wood resting on crude andirons, blackened
by the smoke of many fires. Over the mantel there
hung a cheap charcoal reproduction of Jim and
Emma in their wedding-clothes, made by some local
"artist" from an old photograph. One or two non-
descript chairs worn shiny through years of use stood
before the fire. In one corner stood a dresser on
which were various bottles of medicine and of “Ma-
dame Walker's Hair Straightener.” On the floor a
rug, worn through in spots and patched with frag-
ments of other rugs all apparently of different col-
ours, covered the space in front of the bed. The
rest of the floor was bare and showed evidences of
a recent vigorous scrubbing. The one window was
closed tightly and covered over with a cracked shade,
long since divorced from its roller, tacked to the up-
per ledge of the window.
On the bed Mrs. Bradley was rolling and tossing
in great pain. Her eyes opened slightly when Ken-
neth approached the bed and closed again imme-
diately as a new spasm of pain passed through her
body. She moaned piteously and held her hands
on her side, pressing down hard one hand over the
other.
At a sign from Jim, Kenneth started to take her
pulse.
“Go way from here and leave me 'lone! Oh,
[55]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
Lawdy, why is I suff'rin' this way? I jus' wish I
was daid! Oh-oh-oh!”
This last as she writhed in agony. Kenneth drew
back the covers, examined Mrs. Bradley's abdomen,
took her pulse. Every sign pointed to an attack
of acute appendicitis. He informed Jim of his
diagnosis.
"But, Doc, it ain't dat trouble, 'cause Emma says
dat was taken out a long time ago.”
“I can't help what she says. She's got appendici-
tis. You go get Dr. Bennett and tell him your wife
has got to be operated on right away or she is going
to die. Get a move on you now! If it was my
case, I would operate within an hour. Stop by my
house and tell Bob to bring me an ice bag as quick as
he can."
Jim hurried away to catch Dr. Bennett. Kenneth
meanwhile did what he could to relieve Mrs. Brad-
ley's suffering. In a few minutes Bob came with the
ice bag. Then Jim returned with his face even more
doleful than it had been when Kenneth had told him
how sick his wife was.
"Doc Bennett says he don't care what you do. He
got kinder mad when I told him you said it was 'pen-
dicitis, and tol' me dat if I couldn't take his word,
he wouldn't have anything mo' to do with Emma.
He seemed kinder mad 'cause you said it was mo'
than a stomach-ache. Said he wa’n't goin' to let no
young nigger doctor tell him his bus'ness. So, Doc,
you'll have ť do what you thinks bes”.”
“All right, I'll do it. First thing, I'm going to
[ 56 ]


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move your wife over to my office. We can put her
up in the spare room. Bob will drive her over in
the car. Get something around her and you'd better
come on over with her. I'll get Dr. Williams to help
me.”
Kenneth was jubilant at securing his first surgical
case since his return to Central City, though his pleas-
ure was tinged with doubt as to the ethics of the man-
ner in which it had come to him. He did not let that
worry him very long, however, but began his prep-
arations for the operation.
First he telephoned to Mrs. Johnson, who, before
she married and settled down in Central City, had
been a trained nurse at a coloured hospital at At-
lanta. She hurried over at once. Neat, quiet, and
efficient, she took charge immediately of prepara-
tions, sterilizing the array of shiny instruments, pre-
paring wads of absorbent cotton, arranging bandages
and catgut and hæmostatics.
Kenneth left all this to Mrs. Johnson, for he knew
in her hands it would be well done. He telephoned
to Dr. Williams to ask that he give the anæsthesia.
In his excitement Kenneth neglected to put in his
voice the note of asking a great and unusual favour
of Dr. Williams. That eminent physician, eminent
in his own eyes, cleared his throat several times be-
fore replying, while Kenneth waited at the other end
of the line. He realized his absolute dependence.
on Dr. Williams, for he knew no white doctor would
assist a Negro surgeon or even operate with a col-
oured assistant. There was none other in Central

reve
[ 57 ]


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City who could give the ether to Mrs. Bradley. It
made him furious that Dr. Williams should hesitate
so long. At the same time, he knew he must restrain
the hot and burning words that he would have used.
The pompous one hinted of the pressure of his own
work—work that would keep him busy all day.
Into his words he injected the note of affront at be-
ing asked—he, the coloured physician of Central
City—to assist a younger man. Especially on that
man's first case. Kenneth swallowed his anger and
pride, and pleaded with Dr. Williams at least to come
over. Finally, the older physician agreed in a con-
descending manner to do so.
Hurrying back to his office, Kenneth found Mrs.
Bradley arranged on the table ready for the opera-
tion. Examining her, he found she was in delirium,
her eyes glazed, her abdomen hard and distended,
and she had a temperature of 105 degrees. He
hastily sterilized his hands and put on his gown and
cap. As he finished his preparations, Dr. Williams
in leisurely manner strolled into the room with a
benevolent and patronizing “Howdy, Kenneth, my
boy. I won't be able to help you out after all. I've
got to see some patients of my own.”
He emphasized “my own,” for he had heard of the
manner by which Kenneth had obtained the case of
Mrs. Bradley Kenneth, pale with anger, excited
over his first real case in Central City, stared at Dr.
Williams in amazement at his words.
"But, Dr. Williams, you can't do that! Mrs.
Bradley here is dying!”
[58]


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like that-least of all, a young whippersnapper just
out of school ...” he shouted.
By this time Kenneth's patience was at an end.
He seized the lapels of the other doctor's coat in
one hand and thrust his clenched fist under the nose
of the now thoroughly alarmed Dr. Williams.
"Are you going to help—or aren't you?” he de-
manded.
The situation was becoming too uncomfortable for
the older man. He could stand Kenneth's opposi-
tion but not the ridicule which would inevitably fol.
low the spreading of the news that he had been beaten
up and made ridiculous by Kenneth. He swallowed
-a look of indecision passed over his face as he
visibly wondered if Kenneth really dared hit him—
followed by a look of fear as Kenneth drew back
his fist as though to strike. Discretion seemed the
better course to pursue he could wait until a later
and more propitious date for his revenge—he agreed
to help. A look of relief came over Jim Bradley's
face. A grin covered Bob's as he saw his brother
showing at last some signs of fighting spirit. With-
out further words Kenneth prepared to operate. ...
The patient under the ether, Kenneth with sure,
deft strokes made an incision and rapidly removed
the appendix. Ten-twelve-fifteen minutes, and
the work was done. He found Mrs. Bradley's peri-
toneum badly inflamed, the appendix swollen and
about to burst. A few hours' delay and it would
have been too late. ...
The next morning Mrs. Bradley's temperature had
[ 60 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
gone down to normal. Two weeks later she was
sufficiently recovered to be removed to her home.
Three weeks later she was on her feet again. Then
Kenneth for the first time in his life had no fault to
find with the vigour with which Mrs. Bradley could
use her tongue. Glorying as only such a woman
can in her temporary fame at escape from death by
so narrow a margin, she went up and down the streets
of the town telling how Kenneth had saved her life.
With each telling of the story it took on more embel-
lishments until eventually the simple operation
ranked in importance in her mind with the first
sewing-up of the human heart.
Kenneth found his practice growing. His days
were filled with his work. One man viewed his
growing practice with bitterness. It was Dr. Wil-
liams, resentful of the small figure he had cut in
the episode in Kenneth's office, which had become
known all over Central City. Of a petty and vindic-
tive nature, he bided his time until he could force
atonement from the upstart who had so presumptu-
ously insulted and belittled him, the Beau Brummel,
the leading physician, the prominent coloured citi-
zen. But Kenneth, if he knew of the hatred in the
man's heart, was supremely oblivious of it.
The morning after his operation on Mrs. Bradley,
he added another to the list of those who did not wish
him well. He had taken the bottle of alcohol con-
taining Mrs. Bradley's appendix to Dr. Bennett to
show that worthy that he had been right, after all, in
his diagnosis. He found him seated in his office,

[61]


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Dr. Bennett, with little apparent interest, glanced at
the bottle.
"Humph!” he ejaculated, aiming at the cuspidor
and letting fly a thin stream of tobacco juice which
accurately met its mark. "You never can tell what's
wrong with a nigger anyhow. They ain't got nach-
eral diseases like white folks. A hoss doctor can
treat 'em better'n one that treats humans. I always
said that a nigger's more animal than human. ..."
Kenneth had been eager to discuss the case of Mrs.
· Bradley with his fellow practitioner. He had not
even been asked to sit down by Dr. Bennett. He
realized for the first time that in spite of the super-
iority of his medical training to that of Dr. Bennett's,
the latter did not recognize him as a qualified physi-
cian, but only as a “nigger doctor.” Making some
excuse, he left the house. Dr. Bennett turned back
to the local paper he had been reading when Ken-
neth entered, took a fresh chew of tobacco from the
plug in his hip pocket, grunted, and remarked: “A
damned nigger telling me I don't know medicine!”
[ 62 ]


CHAPTER IV
Iwo months passed by. Kenneth had begun to
secure more patients than he could very well
handle. Already he was kept busier than Dr.
Williams though there was enough practice for both
of them. Kenneth soon began to tire of treating
minor ailments and longed to reach the time when he
could give up his general practice and devote his
time to surgery. Except for the delivery of the ba-
bies that came with amazing rapidity in the com-
munity, he did little else than treat colic, minor cuts,
children's diseases, with an occasional case of tuber-
culosis. More frequently he treated for venereal dis-
eases, though this latter was even more distasteful to
him than general practice while at the same time
more remunerative.
A new source of practice and revenue began grad-
ually to grow. The main entrance to his office was
on Lee Street. This door was some fifty feet back
from Lee Street, and the overhanging branches of the
elms cut off completely the light from the street
lamp at the corner. One night, as he sat reading in
his office, there came a knock at his door. Opening
it, he found standing there Roy Ewing. Ewing had
inherited the general merchandise store bearing his
name from his father, was a deacon in the largest
[63]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
Baptist Church in Central City, was president of the
Central City Chamber of Commerce, and was re-
garded as a leading citizen.
Kenneth gazed at his caller in some surprise.
“Hello, Ken. Anybody around?”
On being assured that he was alone, Ewing en-
tered, brushing by Kenneth to get out of the glare of
the light. Kenneth followed him into the office,
meanwhile asking his caller what he could do for
him.
“Ken, I've got a little job I want you to do for me.
I'm in a little trouble. Went up to Macon last month
with Bill Jackson, and we had a little fun. I guess
I took too much liquor. We went by a place Bill
knew about where there were some girls. I took a
fancy to a little girl from Atlanta who told me she
had slipped away from home and her folks thought
she was visiting her cousins at Forsyth. Anyhow, I
thought everything was all right, but I'm in a bad
way and I want you to treat me. I can't go to Dr.
Bennett 'cause I don't want him to know about it.
I'll take care of you all right, and if you get me fixed
up I'll pay you well.”
* Kenneth looked at him in amazement. Roy Ew-
ing, acknowledged leader of the “superior race”!
He knew too much of the ways of the South, however,
to make any comment or let too much of what was
going on in his mind show on his face. He gave the
treatment required. That was Kenneth's introduc-
tion to one part of the work of a coloured physician

[ 64 ]


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rie
SC
in the South. Many phases of life that he as a youth
had never known about or, before his larger expe-
rience in the North and in France, had passed by him
unnoticed, he now had brought to his attention.
This was one of them. He began to see more clearly
that his was going to be a difficult course to pursue.
He determined anew that as far as possible he would
keep to his own affairs and meddle not at all with the
life about him.
When Ewing had gone, Kenneth returned to his
reading. Hardly had he started again when Bob
came in.
“Can you stop for a few minutes, Ken? I want
to talk with you.”
With a look of regret at his book, Kenneth settled
back and prepared to listen.
“What world problem have you got on your mind
now, Bob?”
"Don't start to kidding me, Ken. I don't see how
you can shut your eyes to how coloured people are
being treated here.”
“What's wrong? Everything seems to me to be
getting along as well as can be expected.”
“That's because you don't go out of the house un.
less you are hurrying to give somebody a pill or a
dose of medicine. To-day I came by the school to
get Mamie and bring her home. You ought to see
the dump they call a school building. It's a dirty
old building that looks like it'll fall down any time
a hard wind comes along. All that's inside is a
[65]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
eachers » 'welve doli, anybody
rickety table, and some hard benches with no desks,
and when it rains they have to send the children
home, as the water stands two or three inches deep
on the floor. Outside of Mamie they haven't one
teacher who's gone any higher than the sixth or
seventh grade—they have to take anybody who is
willing to work for the twelve dollars a month they
pay coloured teachers.”
Bob's face had on it the look of discontent and
resentment that was almost growing chronic.
"Well, what can we do about it? I'm afraid
you're getting to be a regular Atlas, trying to carry
all the burdens of the world on your shoulders. I
know things aren't all they ought to be, but you and
I can't solve the problems. The race problem will
be here long after we're dead and gone.”
“Oh, for goodness' sake, shut up that preachy tone
of long-suffering patience, will you?—and forget
your own little interests for a while. I know you
think I'm silly to let these things worry me. But
the reason why things are as bad as they are is just
because the majority of Negroes are like you-al-
ways dodging anything that may make them unpopu-
lar with white folks. And that isn't all. There's a
gang of white boys that hang around Ewing's Store
that meddle with every coloured girl that goes by.
I was in the store to-day when Minnie Baxter passed
by on her way to the post office, and that dirty little
Jim Archer said something that made me boil all
over. And it didn't help any to know that if I had
said a word to him, there would have been a fight,


[66]


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and I would have been beaten half to death if I
hadn't been killed.”
“Yes, I've seen that, too. What we ought to do is
to try and keep these girls off of Lee Street, unless
someone is with them. If we weren't living in the
South, we might do something. But here we are, and
as long as we stay here, we've got to swallow a lot of
these things and stay to ourselves.”
"But, Ken, it isn't always convenient for someone
to go downtown with them. I'll tell you what let's
do. Let's get the better class of coloured people to-
gether like Reverend Wilson, Mr. Graham, Mr.
Adams, and some others, and form a Coloured Pro-
tective League here in Central City. We can then
take up these cases and see if something can't be done
to remedy them.”
Bob leaned forward in his eagerness to impress
Kenneth with his idea.
"You see, if any one or two of us takes up a case
we are marked men. But if there are two or three
hundred of us they can't take it out on all of us.”
"That's true. But what about the effect on the
white people whose actions you want to check? If
Negroes start organizing for any purpose whatever,
there'll always be folks who'll declare they are plan-
ning to start some trouble. No, I don't think we
ought to do anything just now. I tell you what I'll
do. The next time I see Roy Ewing, I'll speak to
him and ask him to stop those fellows from annoy-
ing our girls, The fellows can take care of
themselves.”


[ 67 ]


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Bob rose and shrugged his shoulders and said noth-
ing more. Kenneth after a minute or two returned
to his book.
Nothing further was said on the subject for sev-
eral days. When Mr. Ewing called the following
week, Kenneth brought the matter up, and told him
what Bob had said about the boys in front of Ew-
ing's store.
“I've seen them doing it, Ken, and I spoke to them
only to-day about it. But you know, boys will be
boys, and they haven't done any harm to the girls.
Their talk is a little rough at times, but as long as
it stops there, I don't see why anybody should
object.”
“But, Mr. Ewing, Bob tells me that they say some
pretty raw things. Suppose one of them said the
same things to Mrs. Ewing, how would you feel
then?”
Ewing flushed.
“That's different. Mrs. Ewing is a white woman.'
“But can't you see that we feel towards our women
just as you do towards yours? If one of those
fellows ever spoke to my sister, there's be trouble,
and the Lord knows I want to get along with all the
people here, if I can. If this thing called democracy
that I helped fight for is worth anything at all, it
ought to mean that we coloured people should be
protected like anybody else.”
Mr. Ewing looked at Kenneth sharply.
“I know that things aren't altogether as they ought
to be. It's pretty tough on fellows like you, Ken,

[68]


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who have had an education. While you were away,
a bunch of these mill hands 'cross the tracks got
Jerry Bird, a nigger that'd been working for me
nearly five years. He came here from down the
country some place after you left for up North.
Jerry was as steady a fellow as I've ever seen-as
honest as the day was long. I trusted Jerry any-
where, lots quicker than I would've some of these
white people 'round here. He had a black skin but
his heart was white. One night Jerry was over to
my house helping Mrs. Ewing until nearly ten
o'clock. On his way home this bunch of roughnecks
from “Factoryville” stopped him while they were
looking for a nigger that'd scared a white girl.
When Jerry got scared and started to run, they took
out after him and strung him up to a tree. And he
wasn't any more guilty of touching that white girl
than you or me.”
“What did you do about it?” asked Bob.
"Nothing. Suppose I had kicked up a ruckus
about it. They found out afterwards that the girl
hadn't been bothered at all. But just suppose I had
gone and cussed out the fellows who did the lynching.
Most of them trade at my store. Or if they don't, a
lot of their friends do. They'd have taken their
trade to some other store and I'd 'a' gained nothing
for my trouble.”
“But surely you don't believe that lynching ever
helps, do you?”
“Yes and no Lynching never bothers folks like
you. Why, your daddy was one of the most re-
[69]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
e or
spected folks in this town. But lynching does keep
some of these young nigger bucks in check.”
“Does it? It seems to me that there isn't much
less so-called rape around here or anywhere else in
the South, even after forty years of lynching. Mr.
Ewing, why don't you and the other decent white
people here come out against lynching?”
“Who? Me? Never!” Ewing looked his
amazement at the suggestion. “Why, it would ruin
my business, my wife would begin to be dropped by
all the other folks of the town, and it wouldn't be
long before they'd begin calling me a ‘nigger-lover.'
No, sir-ee! I'll just let things rock along and
let well enough alone.”
"Mr. Ewing, if fifty men like you in this town
banded together and came out flat-footedly against
lynching, there are lots more who would join you
gladly."
“That may be true,” Ewing answered doubtfully.
“But then again it mightn't. Let's see who might be
some of the fifty. There's George Baird, he's presi-
dent of the Bank of Central City, and Fred Gris-
wold, president of the Smith County Farmers' Bank.
You can count them out because they'd be afraid of
losing their depositors. Then there's Ralph Minor
who owns the Bon Ton Store. He's out for the same
reason that I am. Then there's Nat Phelps, who
runs the Central City Dispatch. He has a hard
enough time as it is. If he lost a couple of hundred
subscribers, he'd have to close up shop. And so it
goes."
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een
“What about the preachers? It doesn't seem
much of a religion they're preaching if the command-
ment, 'Thou shalt not kill,' doesn't form part of
their creed.”
"Oh, you needn't look for nothing much from
them. Three years ago old Reverend Adams down
to the First Methodist took it into his head he was
going to tackle something easy—nothing like the race
problem. He started in to wipe out the bootleggers
’round here, thinking he could get a lot of support.
But he didn't, because most of the folks he figgered
on lining up with him were regular customers of the
fellows he was after.” Ewing chuckled at the mem-
ory of the crusade that had died “aborning."
“When the next quarterly conference was held, they
elected a new pastor for the First Methodist. No,
Ken, it ain't so easy as it looks. You're asking me
to do something that not a Southern white man has
done since the Civil War- ”
Rising, he walked towards the door and remarked:
“My advice to you is to stay away from any talk
like this with anybody else. There probably ain't
another man in town who would've talked to you like
this, and if the boys in the Ku Klux Klan knew I had
been running along like this with a coloured man, I
don't know what'd happen to me. See you later.
So long!”
Kenneth walked up and down the room with his
hands stuffed deep into his pockets, his thoughts
rushing through his head in helter-skelter fashion.
He was suddenly conscious of a feeling that he
.
[71]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
eparing peoing to happeouide and co
had been thrust into a tiny boat and forced to em-
bark on a limitless sea, with neither compass nor
chart nor sun nor moon to guide him. Would he
arrive? Or would he go down in some squall which
arose from he knew not where or when? The whole
situation seemed so vast, so sinister, so monstrous,
that he shuddered involuntarily, as he had done as a
child when left alone in a dark room at night. Re-
ligion, which had been the guide and stay of his
father in like circumstances, offered him no solace.
He thought with a faint smile of the institution known
as the Church. What was it? A vast money ma-
chine, interested in rallies and pastors' days and
schemes to milk more dollars from its communi-
cants. In preparing people to die. He wasn't in-
terested in what was going to happen to him after
death. What he wanted was some guide and com-
fort in his present problems. No, religion and the
Church as it was now constituted wasn't the answer.
What was? He could not give it.
"Here I am,” he soliloquized, “with the best edu-
cation money can buy. And yet Roy Ewing, who
hasn't been any further than high school, tells me
I'd better submit to all this without protest. Yet he
stands for the best there is here in Central City, and
I suppose he represents the most liberal thought of
the South. How's it all going to end? Even a rat
will fight when he's cornered, and these coloured peo-
ple aren't going to stand for these things all the
time. What can I do? God, there isn't anything
-anything I can do? Bob is right! Something

[72]


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must be done, but what is it? I reckon these white
folks must be blind—or else they figure on leaving
whatever solution there may be to their children,
hoping the storm doesn't break while they are liv.
ing. No! That isn't it. They think because
they've been able to get away with it thus far, they'll
always be able to get away with it. Oh, God, I'm
helpless! I'm helpless!”
Kenneth had begun to comprehend the delicate
position a Negro always occupies in places like Cen-
tral City-in fact, throughout the South. So little
had he come into contact with the perplexities of the
race question before he went away to school, he had
seen little of the windings and turnings, the tortuous
paths the Negro must follow to avoid giving offence i
to the dominant white sentiment. As he saw each
day more and more of the evasions, the repressions,
the choking back of natural impulses the Negro prac-
tised to avoid trouble, Kenneth often thought of the
coloured man as a chip of wood floating on the sur-
face of a choppy sea, tossed this way and that by
every wind that blew upon the waters. He must of
necessity be constantly on his guard when talking
with his white neighbours, or with any white men in
the South, to keep from uttering some word, some
phrase which, like a seed dropped and forgotten, lies
fallow for a time in the brain of the one to whom
he talks, but later blossoms forth into that noxious
death-dealing plant which is the mob. Innocent
enough of guile or malice that word may be, yet he
must be careful lest it be distorted and magnified
[73]


CHAPTER V
ENNETH was roused by a light tap upon the
door. Opening it, Mamie stood on the thresh-
old. Inquiring whether Kenneth had fin-
ished his work, and on being told he had, she entered.
“Kenneth, why do you spend all your time here in
the office? Don't you think mamma and I want to
talk with you occasionally?”
Mamie seated herself on the arm of Kenneth's
chair.
“Seems like you're becoming a regular hermit
since you've been back. Come on in the parlour-
Jane Phillips is in there and she wants to see you.
Remember her?”
Kenneth smiled. “Remember Jane Phillips?
Of course I do. Scrawny little thing-running all
to legs and arms. She was a homely little brat,
wasn't she?”
It was now Mamie's turn to smile.
“I'm going to tell her what you said,” she threat-
ened. “She's lots different from the girl you re-
member.”
They went into the parlour.
Jane Phillips stood by the piano. She turned as
Kenneth and Mamie entered the room, and came to-
wards them, a smile on her face. Kenneth, as he
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THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
advanced towards her, was frankly amazed at the
transformation in the girl whom he had not seen for
nine years. Jane laughed.
"Don't you know me, Kenneth? Or must I call
you Dr. Harper now?”
“No, my name is still Kenneth— ” he answered.
“Tell Jane what you called her a few minutes ago,
or I will,” interrupted Mamie. Kenneth looked em-
barrassed. Jane insisted on being told, whereupon
Mamie repeated Kenneth's description of Jane as a
child.
Caught between the upper and nether millstones of
the raillery of the two girls, Kenneth tried to explain
away his embarrassment, but they gave him no peace.
“Let me explain,” he begged. “When I went
away you were a scrawny little thing, a regular tom-
boy and as mischievous as they make them. And
now you're a—you're—you're ” Jane laughed
at his attempt, somewhat lacking in fullness, to say
what she had become with the passage of the years.
“Whatever it is you are trying to say, I hope it's
something all right you are calling me—though from
your tone I'm not at all sure,” she ended, letting a
note of mock concern creep in her voice.
By this time Kenneth had somewhat recovered his
composure. He entered into the spirit of play him-
self by telling her his surprise had been due to his
finding her unchanged from the little girl he had
once known, but Jane laughed at his ineffectual ef-
forts to answer Mamie's and her teasing. To change
[76]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
the conversation, he demanded that she tell him all
that she had been doing since he saw her last.
"There isn't much to tell,” she declared. “I went
away soon after you did, going to Fisk University,
graduated last June, got a position teaching in North
Carolina, and am home for the holidays. Next year
I want to have enough money to go to Oberlin and
finish my music. That's all there is to my little
story. You are the one who has been having all
sorts of experiences. I want to hear your story.”
"Mine isn't much longer," answered Kenneth.
"Four years of medical school. A year's interne-
ship in New York at Bellevue Three months in
training.camps. A year and a half in France. Six
months at the Sorbonne. Then New York. Then
exams at Atlanta for my licence. Home. And here
I am."
"Don't you believe him, Jane," said Mamie.
“That's just his way of telling it. Ken has had all
sorts of exciting experiences, yet he has come home
and we can't get him to talk about a thing except
building a practice and a hospital.”
“What do you want me to talk about?” asked
Kenneth.
"Paris—school-army life what did you see?-
how do you like New York?-is New York as good
a place to live in as Paris?”
Kenneth threw up his hands in mock defence at
the barrage of questions Jane and Mamie fired at
him.
:
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“Just a minute—just a minute," he begged them.
“I could talk all night on any one of the questions
you've asked and then not finish with it or tell you
more than half. If you two will only be quiet, I'll
tell you as much as I can.”
Mrs. Harper, hearing the voices, came into the
room. The three women sat in silence as Kenneth
told of his years at school, of his stay in New York,
his experiences in the army, of the beauties of Paris
even in war time, of study at a French university.
He gave to the narrative a vividness and air of reality
that made his auditors see through his eyes the scenes
and experiences he was describing. Though none of
them had been in France, he made them feel as
though they too were walking through the Place de la
Concorde viewing the statues to the eight great cities
of France or shopping in the Rue de la Paix or at-
tempting to order dinner in a restaurant with an all-
too-inadequate French vocabulary. He finished.
"Now you've got to sing for me, Jane, as a reward
for all the talking I've been doing.”
With the usual feminine protests that she had no
music with her, Jane went to the open piano. She
inquired what he would like to have her sing.
“Anything except the ‘Memphis Blues,' which is all
I've heard since I came back to Central City," he
answered.
Jane ran over the keys experimentally, improvis-
ing. A floor lamp stood near the piano casting a
soft light over her. Her long, delicately pointed fing-
ers lingered lovingly on the ivory keys, and then she
[ 78 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
ti
retire for the evening. Mamie had gone to prepare
something cool for them to drink. Kenneth had not
heard them go. In fact, lost in the momentary for-
getfulness created by Jane and the song, he had com-
pletely forgotten them. He did not, however, fail
to realize that the dreams he was having were in large
measure due to the soft light, to surprise at the great
changes in Jane, to the lulling seductiveness of the
music. He was sure that his feeling was due in
largest measure to a reaction from his unpleasant
conversation with Roy Ewing. He vaguely realized
that when on the morrow he saw Jane by daylight, she
I would not seem half so charming and attractive.
Yet he was of such a temperament that he could give
himself up to the spell of the moment and extract
from it all the pleasure in it. It was in that manner
he put aside the things which were unpleasant, ena-
bling him to shake off memories like mists of the
morning ascending from the depths of a valley.
The song was ended. Herself caught in its spell,
Jane swung into that most beautiful of the Negro
spirituals, “Deep River.” Into it she poured her
soul. She filled the room with the pathos of that
song born in the dark days of slavery of a people
torn from their home and thrust into the thraldom of
human bondage.
And then Jane sang "Nobody Knows the Trouble
I've Seen.” The song ended, her fingers yet clung to
the keys but her hands hung listless. Kenneth knew
not how or when he had risen from his chair and
gone to the piano where he stood behind Jane.
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Something deep within them had been touched by the
music-a strange thrill filled them, making them ob-
livious to everything except the presence of each
other. Kenneth lightly placed his hands on her
shoulders. Without speaking or turning, she placed
her hands for a moment on his. He bent over her
while she raised her face to his, her eyes misty with
tears born of the emotion aroused by the song.
Though often laughed at in real life and often dis-
torted in fiction, love almost at first sight had been
born within them. Kenneth slowly brought her face
nearer his while Jane, with parted lips, let the back of
her head rest against his breast. Love, with its strange
retroactive effects, brought to both of them in that mo-
ment the sudden realization, though neither of them
had known it, that they had always loved each other.
Not a word had been spoken—each was busy con-
structing his love in silence. A great emptiness in
their lives had been suddenly, miraculously filled.
Their lips were almost touching when a noise
brought them to themselves with a shock. It was
Mamie. She entered the room bearing a tray on
which were sandwiches, cakes, and tall glasses in
which cracked ice clinked coolingly. Kenneth hid
his annoyance and, with as nonchalant an air as pos-
sible, went back to his chair.
When they had eaten, Jane rose to go. Kenneth
walked home with her. Neither spoke until they had
reached her gate. Jane entered as Kenneth held it
open for her. He would have followed her in but
she turned, extended her hand to him as a sign of
[ 81 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
dismissal, and asked him to leave her there. Ken-
neth said nothing, but his face showed his disappoint-
ment at being hastened away by the same girl who
less than half an hour before had almost been in his
arms.
"Please don't say anything, Ken,” she pleaded.
“It was my fault-I shouldn't have done what I did.
I used to worship you when I was little, but I thought
I had gotten over that—until to-night.”
Her voice sank almost to a whisper. In it was a
note of trouble and perplexity. She went on:
“I–oh, Kenneth—what happened to-night must
not be repeated.”
Puzzled and a bit hurt, he asked her what she
meant.
"Don't get the wrong idea, Ken. I wouldn't do
anything to hurt you for the world.”
“But what is it, Jane?” begged Kenneth. "I love
you, Jane, have always loved you. I was blind-
until to-night- ”
Kenneth poured forth the words in a torrent of emo-
tion. Whirling thoughts tore through his brain. He
sought to seize Jane's hand and draw her to him, but
she eluded him.
“No-no-Kenneth, you mustn't. I can't let you
make love to me. Let's be friends, Ken, and enjoy
these few days and forget all we've said to-night,
won't you, please?” she ended pleadingly.
Kenneth said nothing. He turned abruptly and
strode away without even saying good night. Hands
thrust deep into his pockets, his head hanging in dis-
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THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
appointment and wounded pride, he hurried home
without once turning to look back. ...
Her ten days of vacation passed all too soon for
Jane. She and Kenneth saw each other frequently,
but never alone until the night before she returned
to North Carolina. It was at a dance given in her
honour. All evening he had been seeking a dance
with her, but met with no success until the party was
almost over. They danced in silence. Jane
seemed suddenly sad. All evening she had been
happy, gay, even flirtatious, but now that she was
with Kenneth, her gaiety had been dropped like a
mask. Half-way through the dance they came near
a door that opened on a balcony overlooking a flower
garden. Saying nothing to Jane, Kenneth danced
her through the door and on to the balcony, where
they sat on a bench that stood in the semi-darkness.
Though it was December, the air was warm. No
sound disturbed the silence of the night save the
music and voices which floated through the open
door.
"Haven't you anything to say?” Kenneth anxiously
inquired, taking one of Jane's hands in his.
"Nothing except this—I don't know whether I care
for you or not,” said Jane as she freed her hand
and drew herself away. Her voice was firm and de-
termined. Kenneth, ignorant of the ways of a maid
with a man, said nothing, but his shoulders drooped
dejectedly.
“What happened the other night was madness—I
was very foolish for allowing it.” She paused, and
[83]


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then went on. “Kenneth, I don't know, I want my
music, I want to see something of life I want to
live! I just can't tie myself down by marrying-
I don't know whether I'll ever want to. You'll have
to wait—if you care to- ”
It was half command, half question. He said
nothing.
He did not know how she longed for him to argue
with her, override her objections, convince her against
her will. She waited a full minute. Still he sat
there silent. She rose and re-entered the house,
leaving him there alone.
[ 84 ]


CHAPTER VI
care another
te lene for is, is a
IFE moved along evenly with Kenneth, busied å
usieu Carrosret
with the multitude of duties with which the phy- é s
sician in the half-rural, half-urban towns of tri
the South must deal. His days were filled with his blasto
work and he was usually to be found in his office un- 14:
til ten or eleven o'clock every evening. Often heitinn
was roused in the middle of the night to attend some
one of his patients. He did not mind this except
when calls came to him from the outlying country
districts. Not infrequently he made long trips of
seven, eight, or ten miles into the country to treat
some person who might just as well have called him
during the previous day. He had purchased a Ford
runabout in which he made these trips.
On a Sunday morning soon after his return to
Central City, Kenneth with his mother, Mamie, and
Bob attended the Mount Zion Baptist Church, but
this he did without much eagerness, solely as a duty.
Though years had passed since last he entered the
church, Kenneth noticed that it stood as it always
had, save that it looked more down-at-heel than form-
erly. Before the door stood the same little groups,
eagerly snatching a few words of conversation before
entering. Near the door were ranged the young
men, garbed in raiment of varied and brilliant hue,
urn toe
re
[ 85]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
ogling the girls as they passed in with their parents.
There was much good-natured badinage and scuffling
among the youths, with an occasional burst of ribald
laughter at the momentary discomfiture of one of
their number. As he passed them, Kenneth smiled
to himself as he remembered how he but a few years
since had been one of that crowd around the same
door. That is, one of the crowd until his father, with
a stern word or perhaps only a meaningful glance,
had been wont to summon him within the church.
Often had he been teased unmercifully by the other
boys when one of these summonses had come.
Though the jests had been hard to bear, the likelihood
of paternal wrath had been too unpleasant an alter-
native for him to dare disregard his father's
commands.
Kenneth noticed the vestibule had survived the pas-
sage of years without apparent change, if one dis-
regarded the increased dinginess of the carpet.
There was the same glass-covered bulletin board with
its list of the sick and of those who were delinquent
in the payment of their dues. There was the same
dangling rope with a loop at the end of it, and the
same sexton was about to ring the bell above, an-
nouncing the beginning of the morning service.
There were the same yellowed walls, the same
leather-covered swinging doors with the same greasy
spots where countless hands had pushed them to enter
the auditorium of the church. Kenneth smiled to
himself as he remembered how he once had de-
clared in a dispute with a boy whose parents at-
[ 86 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
tended the Methodist church near by that the Mount
Zion Baptist Church was "the biggest and finest
church in the whole world.” He thought of the No-
tre Dame Cathedral in Paris, of St. Paul's in Lon-
don, as he recalled the boast of his youth.
Inside, the same air of unchanging permanence
seemed also to have ruled. As he followed the
officious usher and his mother and sister to their pew,
Kenneth noted the same rows of hard seats worn
shiny by years of use, the same choir loft to the left
of the pulpit with its faded red curtains. The same
worn Bible lay open on the pulpit kept open by a
hymn-book. Beside it was the same ornately carved
silver pitcher and goblet. Kenneth felt as though he
had never left Central City when he looked for and
found the patches of calcimine hanging from the
ceiling and the yellowed marks on the walls made
by water dripping from leaks in the roof. As a boy
he had amused himself during seemingly intermin-
able sermons by constructing all sorts of fanciful
stories around these same marks, seeing in them
weirdly shaped animals. Once he had laughed
aloud when, after gazing at one of them, it had sud-
denly dawned upon him that the shadow cast by a
pendent flake of calcimine resembled the lean and
hungry-looking preacher who was pastoring Mount
Zion at the time. Kenneth would never forget the
commotion his sudden laughter had caused, nor the
whipping he received when he and his father reached
home that Sunday.
The hum of conversation ceased. The pastor, the
[ 87]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
Reverend Ezekiel Wilson, entered the pulpit from a
little door back of it. The choir sang lustily the
Doxology. All the familiar services came back to
Kenneth as he sat and looked at the dusky faces
around him.
Preliminaries ended, the Reverend Wilson began
to preach. He was a fat, pompous, oily man—with
a smooth and unctuous manner. His voice sank at
times to a whisper—at others, roared until the rafters
of the building seemed to ring with its echoes. He
played on it as consciously as the dried-up little or-
ganist in the gaily coloured bonnet did on the keys of
the asthmatic little organ. His text was taken from
the 13th chapter of First Corinthians, first verse
that familiar text, “Though I speak with the tongues
of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am be-
come as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.”
Slowly, softly, he began to speak.
“Breddern and sisters, they's a lot of you folks
right here this mawnin' what thinks you is Christ'uns.
You think jus' 'cause you comes here ev'ry Sunday
and sings and shouts and rants around dat you is got
the sperit of Jesus in you. Well, I'm tellin' you
this mawnin' dat you'd better wake up and get yo’self
right with God, 'cause you ain't no mo Christ’un dan
if you neveh been to chu'ch a-tall. De Good Book
says you got to have char’ty, and de Good Book don't
lie.”
There came from the Amen corner a fervently
shouted “Amen!” From another came as equally
[ 88 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
fervid a shout: “Ain't it the truth!” The preacher
paused for effect. He mopped his brow and glared
around the congregation. His auditors sat in ex-
pectant silence. Suddenly he lashed out in scath-
ing arraignment of the sins of his flock. Each and
every one of its faults he pilloried with words of fire
and brimstone. He painted a vivid and uncomfort-
ably realistic picture of a burning Hell into which
all sinners would inevitably be cast. Almost with
the air of a hypnotist, he gradually advanced the
tempo of his speech. Like a wind playing over a
field of corn, swaying the tops of the stalks as it wills,
so did he play on the emotions and fears and passions
of his congregation. Only a master of human psy.
chology could have done it. It was a living, breath-
ing, vengeful God he preached, and his auditors fear.
fully swayed and rocked to and fro as he lashed
them unmercifully. Lips compressed, there came
from them a nasal confirmation of the preacher's
words that ranged from deep, guttural grunts of ap-
proval as he scored a point to a high-pitched rising
and falling moan that sounded like nothing so much
as a child blowing through tissue paper stretched
over a comb. Frequently the preacher would with-
out perceptible pause swing into a rolling, swing-
ing, half-moaning song which the congregation took
up with fervour. The beat was steadily advanced
by the leader until he and his audience were worked
up to an emotional ecstasy bordering on hysteria.
His jeremiad ended, the preacher painted a glowing
ne
[ 89 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
picture of the ineffable peace and joy that came to
those who rested their faith in Him who died for the
remission of their sins.
A tumultuous thunderous climax-a dramatic
pause and then he swung into a fervent prayer in
which the preacher talked as though his God were
an intimate friend and confidant. The entire drama
lasting more than an hour was thrilling and enervat-
ing and theatric. Yet beneath it lay a devout sin-
cerity that removed the scene from the absurd to that
which bordered on the magnificent. To these hum-
ble folk their religion was the most important thing
in their lives, and, after all, what matters it what
a man does? It is the spirit in which he performs
an act that makes it dignified or pathetic or ludicrous
<not the act itself.
In spite of his sophistication, Kenneth never was
able entirely to ward off the chills of excitement that
ran down his spine at these weird religious ceremo-
nies. He saw through the whole theatric perform-
ance and yet way down beneath it all there was a
sincerity and genuineness that never failed to im-
press him. This was not a mere animalism nor was
it the joke that white people sometimes tried to make
of it. Fundamentally, it was rooted and grounded
in an immutable and unfailing belief in the supreme
power of a tangible God-a God that personally di-
rected the most minute of the affairs of the most
lowly of creatures. It had been the guide and ref-
uge of the fathers and mothers of these same people
through the dark days of slavery. In the same man-


[90]


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oppt neth walked hind
Was this the did not
ner it was almost the only refuge for these children
and grandchildren of the slaves in withstanding the
trials of a latter-day slavery in many respects more
oppressive than the pre-Civil War variety.
Kenneth walked home from church running over
these things in his mind. Was this religious fervour
the best thing for his people? Why did not the
Church attract more intelligent and able young men
of his race instead of men like Reverend Wilson?
Why didn't some twentieth-century Moses arise to
lead them out of the thraldom of this primitive re-
ligion? Would that Moses, when he came, be able
to offer a solace as effective to enable these people
of his to bear the burdens that lay so heavily upon
them?
He thought again of his conversation with Roy
Ewing. What was the elusive solution to this prob-
lem of race in America? Why couldn't the white
people of the South see where their course was lead-
ing them? Ewing was right. No white man of
the South had ever come out in complete defiance of
the present regime which was so surely damning the
South and America. Kenneth saw his people kept
in the bondage of ignorance. Why? Because it
was to the economic advantage of the white South
to have it so. Why was a man like Reverend Wil-
son patted on the back and every Negro told that
men of his kind were “safe and sane leaders”? Why
was every Negro who too audibly or visibly resented
the brutalities and proscriptions of race prejudice in-
stantly labelled as a radical-a dangerous character


♡

[91]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
interfering with their affairs or making them re-
sponsible for the consequences.
Kenneth usually ended these arguments with him.
self with a feeling of complete impotence, of travel-
ling around like a squirrel in a circular cage. No
matter where he started or how fast or how far he trav-
elled, he always wound up at the same point and
with the same sense of blind defeat. Oh, well, better
men than he had tried to answer the same questions
and failed. He'd stay to himself and attend to his
own business and let such problems go hang. But
in spite of himself he often found himself enmeshed
in this endless maze of reasoning. Just as fre-
quently he determined to put from himself again the
perplexing and seemingly insoluble problems.
It was after one of these soliloquies on his way
from church one bright Sunday in April that Ken-
neth reached home and found a call for him to come
at once to a house down on Butler Street, in the
heart of the Negro district in the bottoms. Telling
his mother to keep dinner for him as he would be
back shortly, he hurried down State Street. Turn-
ing suddenly into Harris Street, which crossed State,
which in turn would lead him to the house he sought
on Butler Street, he caught a fleeting glimpse of a
white man who looked like George Parker, cashier of
the Bank of Central City Parker, if it was he,
turned hastily at Kenneth's approach and went up a
narrow alley which ran off Harris Street. Kenneth
thought nothing of the incident other than a vague

[ 93 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
1044,
and quickly passing wonder at Parker's presence in
that part of town.
Kenneth hurried on, instinctively stepping over or
around the numerous children whose complexions
ranged in colour from a deep black to a yellow that
was almost white, and mangy-looking dogs that
seemed to infest the street. Approaching the house
he sought, he found a group of excitedly talking
Negroes gathered around the gate. The group sep-
arated to let him pass, and from it came one or two
greetings to Kenneth in the form of "Hello, Doc.”
He paid little attention to them, but proceeded up
the path to the house.
Entering, he was surprised to find it furnished
more ornately and comfortably than usual in that
section. He knew the place of old, remembering
that his father had always warned him against going
into this section. Here it was reported that strange
things went on, that a raid by the police was not un-
common. He had upon one occasion seen the patrol
wagon, better known as the “Black Maria,” drive
away loaded with bottles of whisky and with a nonde-
script lot of coloured men and women. Most of the
property in this section was owned by white people,
which they held on to jealously. They charged and
received rentals two or three times as high as in
other sections of “Darktown.”
Kenneth found in the front room another excited
and chattering lot of men and women. The men
seemed rather furtive and were dressed in "peg-top”
trousers with wide cuffs, and gaudily coloured shirts.
-
[94]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
The women were clad in red and pink kimonos and
boudoir caps. With an inclusive "Hello, folks,”
Kenneth followed a woman who seemed to be in
charge of the house into the next room. In the centre
of the darkened room there stood the bed, dishev-
elled, the sheets stained with blood. On them lay
a man fully clothed, his eyes closed as though in
great pain, and breathing heavily, with sharp gasps
every few seconds. By the bed, bathing the man's
brow, stood a woman in a rumpled night-dress and
kimono. Kenneth recognized the man as Bud
Ware, sometimes a Pullman porter, who used his
occupation, it was rumoured, to bring liquor from
Atlanta, which his wife sold. It was his wife Nancy
who bathed his brow and who moved away from the
bed when Kenneth approached. She informed him
that he had come home unexpectedly from his run,
and had been shot. Kenneth said nothing but went
immediately to work. He found Bud with two bul.
let holes in his abdomen and one through his right
leg. It was evident that he had but a few hours, at
most, to live. Kenneth did what he could to relieve
Bud's suffering. Turning to Nancy, he told her what
he had discovered. She stared at Kenneth wide-
eyed for a minute and then burst forth in an agony
of weeping.
“Oh, Lawdy, why didn't I do what Bud tol me to
do? Bud tol' me to let dat man alone! Why didn't
I do it? Why didn't I do it?”
Her screams mounted higher and higher until they
reached ear-piercing shrieks. A head or two were

[95]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
stuck interrogatively through the opened door at the
sound of Nancy's woe, and as quickly withdrawn.
Kenneth administered an opiate to Bud to relieve his
pain and sat by the bed to do what he could in the
short while that life remained. The sordidness of
the whole affair sickened him and he longed to get
away where he could breathe freely.
Strengthened by the opiate, Bud's eyes flickered
and then opened for a fraction of a minute. He
smiled faintly when he recognized Kenneth. He
made several ineffectual attempts to speak, but each
effort resulted only in a gasp of pain. Kenneth
ordered him to lie still. Bud, however, kept trying
to speak. Roused by Nancy's shrieks, he finally
managed to gasp out a few words, interrupted by
spasms of pain that shook his whole body.
"I knows I ain't got long, Doc. Dat's a' right,
Nancy, I ain't blamin' you none. I knows you
couldn't he'p it.”
He fell back on the pillow, coughing and writh-
ing in pain.
“Lif' me a li'l—hiar—on the pillar, Doc. Dat's
mo' like-it! Doc—I ain't been much 'count. I
tol' dat man Parker—to stop foolin' with my ’oman
—but—he keep on—comin' here—when I'm gone.
He knew I wuz sellin' liquor—an' he tol Nancy he
wuz gwine—hav' his brudder—She'ſ Parker put me
on-chain gang—if she tell me he come here-w'en
I wuz gone.”
He had another paroxysm of coughing and lay for
a minute as though already dead. Kenneth adminis-

[96]


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tered restoratives, meanwhile telling Nancy to keep
quiet, which only made her weep the louder. After
a few minutes Bud began speaking again.
"I come home to-day—an' kotched him here.
W’en I got mad an' tol him—to get out-and
stahted towards him—he grabbed his gun an'—shot
me.” After a pause: "Doc, whyn't dese white fo’ks
--leave our women alone?—I ain't nevah bothered
none of their women.-An' now—I's done got-
killed jus' 'cause–1–12 "
He half raised himself on the pillow, looking at
Nancy.
“Doan cry, Nancy gal—doan cry— ”
He fell back dead. Kenneth, of no further as-
sistance, left Nancy to her grief after promising to
send the undertaker in to prepare Bud's body for
burial, and made his way out through the crowd,
now greatly increased in numbers, gathered around
the door. He wondered if anything would be done
about the murder, at the same time knowing that
nothing would." The South says it believes in purity.
What was that phrase the Ku Kluxers used so much
—“preservation of the sanctity of the home, protec-
tion of the purity of womanhood”? Yes, that was
it. Suppose the races of the two principals had been
reversed—that Bud Ware had been caught with
George Parker's wife. Why, the whole town would
have turned out to burn Bud at the stake. Weren't
coloured women considered human—wasn't their
virtue as dear to them as to white women? Nancy
and Bud weren't of much good to the community-


[97]


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but if Bud wanted his wife kept inviolate, hadn't he
as much right to guard her person as George Parker
to protect his wife and two daughters? Again he
felt himself up against a blind wall in which there
was no gate, and which was too high to climb. He
had determined to stay out of reach of the long
į arms of the octopus they called the race problem-
but he felt himself slowly being drawn into its
insidious embrace.
[98]


CHAPTER VII
ENTRAL CITY was the county seat of Smith
1 County. The morning after the murder of
Bud Ware, Kenneth went down to the County
Court House to file his report on the death. It was
a two-story building, originally of red brick but now
of a faded brownish red through the rains and sun
of many years. It sat back from the street about
fifty feet and was surrounded by a yard covered here
and there with bits of grass but for the most part
clear of all vegetation, its red soil trampled by many
feet on “co't day.” The steps were worn thin
through much wear of heavy boots. On either side
of the small landing at the top, there hung a bulletin
board on which were pasted or tacked yellow notices
of sheriff's sales, rewards for the arrest of criminals,
and other court documents. The floor of the dark
and narrow hallway was stained a reddish colour by
the mud and dust from the feet of those who had
entered the building. Just inside the doorway, on
either side, were rectangular boxes filled with saw-
dust for the convenience of those of a tobacco-
chewing disposition, which included most of the
male population. The condition of the floor around
the boxes seemed to indicate that only a few of these
had realized for what purpose the boxes had been
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THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
placed there. Over all was a liberal coating of the
dust that had blown in the door and windows.
Entering the office of the County Health Commis-
sioner, Kenneth found that dignitary in his shirt-
sleeves, feet comfortably placed on top of his desk.
"Good morning, Mr. Lane. I've come to make a
report of a death.”
At the sound of Kenneth's voice, County Commis-
sioner of Health Henry Lane turned in his chair
without moving his feet to see who it was that had
entered. Long, lanky, a two days' growth of red
beard on his face, Mr. Lane removed the corn-cob
pipe from his mouth with a rising and falling of a
prominent Adam's apple. Seeing that his visitor
was only a Negro, he replaced his pipe in his mouth
and, between several jerky puffs to get it going again,
querulously replied:
“Can't you see I'm busy? Why don't you save up
them repo'ts till you git a passel of them, and then
bring 'em in? Got no time ť be writin' up niggers'
deaths, anyhow. . Ev'ry time I turn 'round, some
nigger's gittin' carved up or shot or somepin'.”.
"I understand it's the law, Mr. Lane, that deaths
of anybody, white or coloured, must be reported by
the physician at once.”
“Drat the law. That's fo’ white folks.”
He drew himself out of his chair with great
reluctance and ambled over to the counter, drawing
to him a pad and pencil as he turned towards
Kenneth.
“What nigger's dead now?” he inquired.
[ 100 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
“Bud Ware, who lived at 79 Butler Street,” replied
Kenneth.
“How'd he die?” was the next question.
“Shot through the abdomen.”
“Know who shot him?”
“Yes. George Parker.”
“Th' hell you say! And you come in here to re-
po't it?"
Kenneth was somewhat startled at the ferocity of
the Commissioner's expression, which had replaced
that of laziness and resentment at being disturbed.
“I thought it my duty . . .” he began.
Lane spat disgustedly.
“Duty, Hell! You're a God-damned fool and one
of these damned niggers that's always causin' trou.
ble 'round here. I always said eddication spoiled a
nigger and, by God, you prove it. Lemme tell you
somepin'—you'd better remember s’long's you stay
'round these parts. When you hear anything 'bout
a white man havin' trouble with a nigger, you'd bet-
ter keep your mouth shet. They's lots of niggers
been lynched for less'n you said this mornin'. Ain't
you got sense enough t know you hadn't any business
comin' in here t tell me 'bout Mr. Parker? Don't
you know his brother's sheriff? If y' aint, goin' up
No'th tuk away what li'l' sense you might've had befo'
you went."
Kenneth stood silent, a deep red flush suffusing
his face, while the official continued his vituperative
tirade. His fists, thrust deep into his pockets, were
Elenched until they hurt, but he did not feel the pain.

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THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
He longed to take that long, yellow, unshaven neck in
his hands and twist it until Lane's eyes popped out
and his face turned black. He knew it would be sui-
cide if he did it. He realized now that he had done
an unwise thing in telling Lane who had killed Bud
Warehe should have remembered and said that he
did not know. If he was going to stay in the South,
he would have to remember these things.
When Lane had paused for breath, Kenneth bade
him good morning and left the room. As he
went down the steps, he heard Lane shouting after
him:
“You'd better not lemme hear o'you doin' any
talkin' 'bout this. If y' do, you'll fin' yo’self bein’
paid a visit one o' these nights by the Kluxers!”
Hardly had Kenneth left the court house before
Lane rushed as fast as his natural indolence would
permit him into the office of Sheriff Robert Parker-
known throughout the county as "She'f Bob.” Lane
was so indignant he spluttered in trying to speak.
The sheriff looked at him amusedly and counselled:
"Ca'm yo’self, Henry. What's eatin' you?”
“Bob, d’you know George shot and killed a nigger
buck over in 'Darktown' yestiddy mornin' named
Ware?” Lane finally managed to get out.
“Yeh. What about it? George tol me about it
las' night,” was the sheriff's easy reply.
“Well, that nigger doctor Harper who's been up
No'th studyin' and come back here las' fall, come
into my office this mornin' to repo't it, and he had
the gall ť tell me George done it.”
[102]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
“Th’ black bastard! What th’ hell's he got to do
with it?”
"Said it was his duty. You bet I tol him good
an' plenty where he got off at. Guess he won't come
in here repo'tin' no more ‘accidents’ like George run
into.”
Sheriff Parker's face had assumed the colour of
an overripe tomato as he jumped to his feet and
banged his right fist on the table with a resounding
thwack.
"I'll keep my eye on that nigger," he promised.
"His daddy was as good a nigger as ever I did see, -
but they ain't no way o'tellin' what these young
bucks'll do. Roy Ewing was saying only this
mornin' that Bob, that nigger doctor's kid brother,
was tellin' him the other day that he'd have to stop
them boys 'roun' the sto’ from botherin' with th' nig-
ger gals when they pass by. Humph! They ain't
no nigger gal that's pure after she's reached fo’teen
years oľ. Yep, I'll jus' kep my eye on those boys,
and the first chance I git, I'll— !”
His eyes narrowed in malevolent fashion as he
left his threat unuttered.
In the meantime, Kenneth had gone home. He
hesitated to talk the matter over with Bob or tell him
what had happened to Bud Ware or what had taken
place at the court house that morning. Bob was so
hot-headed and insults made him angry so easily, he
was afraid of what might be the outcome if Bob
knew what had occurred. He would breathe a deep
sigh of relief when Bob left in the fall to go back to
[ 103 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
non
himself entered the reception room and called out to
Kenneth as he sat in his office:
"Good mawnin', Brudder Harper. It certainly
has done my heart good to see you attendin' chu'ch
ev'ry Sunday with your folks. Mos' of these young
men and women, as soon's they get some learning,
thinks they's too good to 'tend chu’ch. But, as I
says to them all th' time, th' Lawd ain't goin' ť bless
none of them, even if they is educated, if they don't
keep close to Him."
Kenneth rose and showed his visitor to a seat. He
did so with an inward repugnance as the coarseness
of the man repelled him. Mr. Wilson seemed al-
ways overheated even in the coldest weather, and his
face shone with a greasiness that seemed to indicate
that his body excreted oil instead of perspiration.
Yet, perhaps this man could give him some ray of no
light, if there was any to be had.
He told Mr. Wilson of his experiences of the past
two days. The preacher's eyes widened with a mild
surprise and the unctuous, benevolent mask which he
wore most of his waking hours seemed to drop rap-
idly as he heard Kenneth through to the end without
comment. At the same time he dropped his illiterate
speech much to Kenneth's surprise, when he finally
spoke.
“Dr. Harper, I've been watching you since you
came back here. I knew that you were trying to į
keep away from this trouble that's always going on
around here. That's just why I came here to-day.
[ 105 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
Your case is a hard one, but it's small to what a lot
of these others are feeling. I have asked a number
of the more sensible coloured men to meet at any
house to-night. I think it would be a good thing to
talk over these things and try to find a way to avoid
any trouble.”
Kenneth looked at him in surprise, not at the idea
of holding a meeting, but at the language the man
was using.
“I hope you'll pardon me for asking so personal
a question, Reverend Wilson, but you don't talk now
as I've always heard you before. Why, your lan-
guage now is that of an educated man, and before
you—you—talked like a-like a— "
Mr. Wilson laughed easily.
“There's a reason-in fact, there are two reasons
why I talk like that. The first is because of my
own folks. Outside of you and your folks, the Phil.
lips family, and one or two more, all of my congrega-
tion is made up of folks with little or no education.
They've all got good hard common sense, it's true.
They'd have to have that in order just to live in the
South with things as they are. But they don't want
a preacher that's too far above them they'll feel
that they can't come to him and tell him their trou-
bles if he's too highfalutin. I try to get right down
to my folks, feel as they feel, suffer when they suf-
fer, laugh with them when they laugh, and talk with
them in language they can understand.”
Mr. Wilson smiled, almost to himself, as memories
of contacts with his lowly flock came to him.
0

[ 106]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
“I remember when I first started preaching over
at Valdosta. I was just out of school and was filled
up with the ambition to raise my people out of their
ignorance. I was determined I would free them
from a religion that didn't do anything for them but
make them shout and holler on Sunday. I was go-
ing to give them some modern religion based on in-
telligence instead of just on feeling and emotion.”
He chuckled throatily in recollecting the spiritual and
religious crusade on which he had based such exalted
hopes.
: “I preached to them and told them of Aristotle
and Shakespeare and Socrates. One Sunday, after
I'd preached what I thought was a mighty fine ser-
mon, one old woman came up after the services and
said to me: “Brer Wilson, dat's a' right tellin' us
'bout Shakespeare and Homer and all dem other
boys. But what we want is for you t tell us some-
thin' 'bout Jesus!'”
Kenneth laughed with the preacher at the old wo-
man's insistence on his not straying from the religion
to which they were used.
“I had to discard my high-flown theories and come
down to my folks if I wanted to do any good at all.”
He continued:
“These same folks, however, don't want you to come
down too close. Like all people with little educa-
tion, whether they’re black, white, or any other col-
our, they like to look up to their leaders. So I use
a few big words now and then which have a grand
and rolling sound, and they feel that I am even more


[107]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
wonderful because I do know how to use big words
but don't use them often."
He paused while Kenneth looked at this man and
saw him in a new light. He had known that Mr.
Wilson, many years before coming to Central City,
had attended a theological seminary in Atlanta, and
he had wondered how a man could attend a school
of theology of any standing and yet use such poor
English. It had never occurred to him that it might
be deliberate.
“And then there's another reason,” continued Rev-
erend Wilson. “The white folks here are mighty
suspicious of any Negro who has too much learning,
according to their standards. They figure he'll be
stirring up the Negroes to fighting back when any
trouble arises. I had to make a decision many years
ago. I decided that somebody had to help these poor
coloured folks bear their burdens, and to comfort and
cheer them. I knew that if I came out and said the
things I thought and felt, I would either be taken
out of my house some night and lynched, or else I'd
be run out of town. So I decided that I'd smile and
bear it and be what the white folks think they want
—what the coloured folks call a 'white man's nig-
ger. It's been mighty hard, but the Lord has given
me the strength somehow or other to stand it this
far.”
With his deliberately imperfect English, there had
gone from the preacher's face the subservient smile.
Kenneth felt his heart warming to this man. He
found his feeling of distaste and repulsion dissipat-



[ 108 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
ing, now that the shell had been removed and he saw
beneath the surface. The simile of the protective
device of the chameleon came to his mind. Yes, the
Negro in the South had many things in common with
the chameleon-he had to be able to change his col.
our figuratively to suit the environment of the South
in order to be allowed to stay alive. His own trou-
ble with the Parkers and Lane seemed much more
trivial now than before. He looked at Mr. Wilson
and asked:
"What's the purpose of this meeting to-night?
How can I help, Reverend Wilson?”
“It's like this. A good part of my congregation
is made up of folks who live out in the country.
They've had a lot of trouble for years getting honest
settlements from the landlords on whose land they
work. Within the last five years, two of my mem-
bers have been lynched when they wouldn't stand for
being cheated any longer. The folks out there are
in a pretty bad way, and they want us to advise with
them as to the best way to act. I haven't time to go
into the details now, but it'll all be taken up to-
· night. Can I count on your being there? We need
a man like you, with your education."
Kenneth deliberated several minutes before giving
his answer. What Mr. Wilson wanted him to do was
just exactly what he had determined not to do. But
what harm could come from attending the meeting?
If he didn't want to take any part in the plans, he
didn't have to. Anyhow, it seemed that the more a
man tried to keep away from the race question, the
on the


[109]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
mo
more deeply involved he became in it. Might as
well do what little he could to help, if he didn't have
to take too prominent a part. He'd go anyway. He
told Reverend Wilson they could look for him that
night.
[110]


CHAPTER VIII
ENNETH was late in reaching the meeting-place
that night. When he arrived he found all
there waiting for him. Besides himself and
Mr. Wilson were the Reverend Richard Young,
pastor of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church,
and Herbert Phillips, Jane's father. There were
also three men from the farming district whom Ken-
neth did not know, but who were introduced as Tom
Tracy, Hiram Tucker, and James Swann.
Mr. Wilson opened the meeting after the introduc-
tions had been completed.
“Brothers, we've met here this evenin’ to talk over
some way we can he'p these brothers who live out
in the country and who ain't been able to get an hon-
est settlement from the folks they's been farmin' for.
I'm going to ask Brother Tucker to tell us just how
things are with the folks out his way. Brother
Tucker.”
“Brother” Tucker rose and stood by the table
around which they were seated and on which flickered
an oil lamp. He was a man between fifty and sixty
years of age, of medium height and thick-set. His
black skin was wrinkled with age and toil. His
hands, as they rested on the table in front of him,
were gnarled and hardened through a lifetime of

[111]


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ploughing and hoeing and the other hard work of
farm life. It was Mr. Tucker's face, however, which
attracted interest. Out of the rolls of skin there
shone two kindly, docile eyes. One gained the im.
pression that these eyes had seen tragedies on top
of tragedies, as indeed they had, and their owner
had been taught by dire necessity to look upon them
in a philosophic and pacifist manner. One remem-
bered a biblical description: "He was a man of
sorrows and acquainted with grief.” Kenneth, as
he looked at him, felt that Socrates and Aristotle and
Jesus Christ must have had eyes like Brother Tuck-
er's. His impression was heightened by Mr. Tuck.
er's hair. Of a snowy whiteness, his head bald on
top, his hair formed a circle around his head that
reminded Kenneth of the picture-cards used at Sun.
day school when he was a boy, where the saints had
crowns of light hovering over their heads. The only
difference was that Mr. Tucker's halo seemed to be a
bit more firmly and closely attached than those of the
saints, which he remembered always seemed to be
poised perilously in mid-air. He had often won-
dered, as he gazed intently at the pictures, what would
have happened had a strong gust of wind come
suddenly upon the saints, and blown their haloes
away.
Mr. Tucker began speaking slowly, in the manner
of one of few words and as one unused to talking in
public.
"Brudders, me 'n' Brudder Trac, and Brudder
Swann ast Reverend Wilson here to let us come t
[112]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
town some time and talk over with you gent’men a
li'l' trouble we's been havin'. Y see, all of us folks
out dat way wuks on shares like dis. We makes a
'greement wif de landlord to wuk one year or mo'.
He fu’nishes de lan' and we puts de crap in de soil,
wuks it, and den gathers it. We's sposed to 'vide it
share and share alike wif de landlord but it doan
wuk out dat way. If us cullud folks ain't got money
enough to buy our seed and fert’lizer and food and
the clo’es we needs du'in'de year, we is allowed t
take up dese things at de sto'. Den when we goes to
settle up after de cott'n and cawn's done laid by,
de sto' man who wuks in wif de landlord won't giv' us
no bill for whut we done bought but jes' gives us a
li'l piece of paper wif de words on it: “Balance
Due.”
He paused to wipe the perspiration from his face
caused by the unusual experience of speaking at such
length. He continued:
“An' dat ain't all. W’en we starts to pickin' our
cotton, dey doan let us ca'y it to de gin and weigh it
ourself. De lan’lord send his wagons down in de
fiel' and as fas' as we picks it, dey loads it on de
wagons and takes it away. Dey doan let us know
how much it weighs or how much dey sells it for.
Dey jus' tells us it weighs any 'mount de lan'lord wants
to tell us, and dey says dey sol' it at any price dey
set. W'en we comes to settle up for de year, dey
'ducts de balance due' from what we's got comin'
t'us from our share of de craps. I's been wukin'
for nigh on to six years for Mr. Taylor out near


[113]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
Ashland and ev'y year I goes deeper in debt dan de
year befo'. Las' year I raised mo' dan twenty-fo'
bales of cott'n dat weighed mo’ dan five hundred
poun's each. My boy Tom whut's been t school
figgered out dat at eighten cents a poun'—and dat's
de price de paper said cott'n sol' at las' year—I
oughter got mo' dan a thousan' dollars for my share.
An' dat ain't all neither. Dey was nearly twelve
tons of cott'n seed dat was wuth 'bout two hundred
and fo’ty dollars. An'den dey was mo' dan three
hundred bush'ls of cawn at a dollar'n a ha'f a bush'l
dat makes fo’ hundred and fifty dollars mo'. All
dat t'gether makes nearly three thousan' dollars an’
I oughter got 'bout fifteen hundred dollars fo' my
share.
Tucker stopped again and shifted his feet while
Tracy and Swann nodded agreement with his state-
ments.
"Las' year me 'n' my wife said we wuz gwine t get
along without spendin' no mo' money at de sto' dan
we had to, so's we could get out of debt. We wukked
ha’d and all our chillen we made wuk in de fiel's
too. My boy Tom kept account of ev’ything we
bought at de sto', and when de year ended he fig-
gered it up an' he foun' we'd done spent jus' even
fo' hundred dollars. But when we goes to make a
settlement at de end of de year, Mr. Taylor said he
sol our cott'n at eight cent a poun' and didn'have
but sev’n hundred and thutty-five dollars comin' to
us. An' den he claim we tuk up 'leven hundred dol-
lars wuth of stuff at de sto' which he done paid for,


[114]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
so that leave me owin' him three hundred 'n' sixty-
five dollars dat I got to wuk out next year.”
His face took on a dejected look as though the load
had become almost too heavy to bear. His voice
took on at the same time a plaintive and discouraged
tone.
“An' when you adds on dat three hundred dollars
dat Mr. Taylor says I owed him from las' year, dat
makes neah’ly sev’n hundred dollars I owes, and it
doan look like I's evah goin't git out of debt. An'
I thought we wuz goin' to be able to sen’ Tom and
Sally and Mirandy ť Tuskegee dis year off de 'leven
hundred dollars I thought I wuz gwine ť make.”
The discouraged air changed to one of greater
courage and determination. His voice rose in his
resentment and excitement.
“Now I's tiahed of all dis cheatin' an' lyin'! Mr.
Taylor mus' take me for a fool if he thinks I'm
gwine stan' for dis way of doin' things all de time.
I stahted to tell him dat I knew he wuz cheatin' me
in Janua'y w’en he give me dat statemen', but den I
'membered whut happen t Joe Todd two years ago
w’en he tol' dat oľ man Stanton dat he wukked for,
de same thing. W'en ol' man stahted thit Joe, Joe
hit him fust and run. Dey came one night and call
Joe to his do' and tuk him down in de swamp an’
de nex’ mawnin' dey foun' Joe full of bullets, hangin'
to a tree. De paper say Joe done spoke insultin' to
a white 'oman, but all de cullud folks, an' de white
too, know dat Joe ain't nevah even seen no white
’oman dat day. Dey knew dat if dey say he 'sulted

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a white 'oman, de folks up Nawth won't crit'cize dem
for lynchin' a nigger down here in Georgy. So I
jus' kep' my mouth close'. Now we wants t know
if dey ain't somethin' we c'n do ť make dese white
folks we wuks for stop cheatin' an' robbin' us po'
cullud folks.”
He sat down, evidently greatly relieved at finish-
ing a task so arduous. Kenneth had listened in
amazement to the story of exploitation, crudely told,
yet with a simplicity that was convincing and elo-
quent. Having lived in the South all his life, he
naturally was not unaware of the abuses under the
“share-cropping” or “tenant-farming” system in the
South, but it had never been brought home to him so
forcefully how close at hand and how oppressive and
dishonest the system really was. No wonder the
South lynched, disfranchised, Jim-Crowed the Negro,
he reflected. If the Negro had a yote and a voice
in the local government of affairs, most of these
bankers and merchants and landowners would have
to go to work for the first time in their lives instead
of waxing fat on the toil of humble Negroes like Hi-
ram Tucker. He turned to Tucker to get further in-
formation on the system.
"Mr. Tucker, have you and the other folks like
you ever thought of trying to get loans from the
Federal Government through the banks they have es-
tablished to aid farmers in buying land and raising
their crops?”
“Oh, yes, Doc. Soon's they started lendin' money
to farmers, I ’plied for a loan to buy me a li'l' place

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at Tucker's hi very heartily being ignora
Kenneth felt properly rebuked by this humble man
who, though illiterate, was far from being ignorant.
He joined in, but not very heartily, at the general
laughter at Tucker's homely sally.
Mr. Wilson, as acting chairman, ended the discus-
sion by calling on Tom Tracy. Tracy was a much
younger man than Tucker and was about Kenneth's
age. Tall, well built, intelligent looking, his dark
brown face had worn a scowl of discontent and
resentment while Tucker had been talking. He be-
gan talking in a clear voice that but poorly masked
the bitterness he felt but which he tried to keep out
of his voice. Older men like Mr. Tucker were al-
ways quick to rebuke any sign of “uppishness” in the
younger generation.
“I graduated from Tuskegee three years ago. My
old mother worked herself almost to death to keep
me in school, and I came back here determined to
earn enough money to let her rest the balance of her
life. But she and my father had been living all their
lives just like Mr. Tucker here, and they didn't have
anything to give me a start. So I went to work on
shares, taking that thirty acres that joins on to Mr.
Tucker's farm on the South. I took this land that
wasn't thought to be any good, because it had been
exhausted through overworking it year after year.
I bought some new ploughs and fixed it up fine. I
thought I could put the things I learned at Tuskegee
into practice and in a couple of years pay off all I owed.
But instead of doing that, I'm getting deeper in debt
every year. I rent my place from Ed Stewart and

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he knows that I know he's cheating and robbing and
lying to me, but when I try to show him where he is
wrong in his figures, all he does is to get mad and
start to cussing me and telling me that if I don't keep
a civil tongue in my head, the Ku Klux Klan will
be hearing about this 'sassy young nigger Tracy' and
I'll wish I had kept my mouth shut. I'm getting
sick of the whole thing, too. If it wasn't for the old
folks, I expect I'd 'a' started something long ago.
They are all talking about me being a dangerous
character out my way already. Say I'm too 'uppity'
and I need to be taught a lesson to show me that ‘nig.
gers must stay in their places.'” .
Tracy finished speaking in a tone that was almost
a shout. It could be seen that he was very near the
breaking-point from brooding over the wrongs he had
suffered.
Mr. Phillips, who had said nothing, broke in with
a question.
"Tom, why don't you move away from Ed Stew-
art's place if he doesn't treat you right?”
Tracy replied bitterly:
“Yes, suppose I tried to leave, what would hap-
pen? The same day I left, Sheriff Parker would
come and get me. They'd put me on trial for jump-
ing my contract and fine me. Old Stewart would be
in court to testify against me. He'd pay my fine
and then I'd have to go back to Stewart's place and
work a year or two for nothing, paying off the fine.
A fat chance I've got with the cards all stacked
against me!”


1
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Mr. Young, of the Bethel African Methodist Epis.
copal Church, nodded assent to Tracy's statement.
“Brother Tracy's right. Look at what happened
to Jeff Anderson down near Valdosta last spring.
He ran away and got to Detroit where he had a good
job working in an automobile plant. They swore
out a warrant against him for stealing, brought him
back, and the last I heard of him he was back down
there working out a three-hundred-dollar fine. No,
Brother Phillips, you've been reading the law that
applies to white folks—not to us coloured people.”
James Swann's story was along the same lines as
the others. The seven men entered into a discus-
sion of ways and means of taking some action which
would alleviate conditions before the harvesting of
the crop which was now in the ground. One sug-
gestion after another was offered, only to be as
quickly discarded because of local difficulties. Mid-
night came, with no decision reached. When it be-
came apparent that nothing would be settled, Ken-
neth was chosen with Mr. Wilson and Mr. Phillips
to work out some plan to be reported at the meeting
to be held one week later.

[120]


CHAPTER IX
HERE was being held another meeting the same
night. Two miles from Central City, to the
I North, was a natural auditorium, an amphi-
theatre formed by three hills. In this place a meet-
ing alfresco was in progress. Though the place was
far enough from the road to be reasonably free from
prying intruders, sentinels paced the narrow roads
that led to the place of assemblage. Skeleton-like
pine-trees formed an additional barrier to the lonely
spot, making as they did a natural fringe atop the
three hills.
There was no moon. Light was furnished by pine
torches fastened in some instances to trees, in others
borne aloft by members of the gathering. About
three hundred men were ranged in a circle around
a rudely carved cross stuck in the ground. Each
man was garbed in a long white robe reaching to his
feet. On the left breast of each hood was a cross
with other strange figures. Over the head of each
man was a cowl with holes for eyelets. It was a
meeting of Central City Klan, Knights of the Ku
Klux Klan, Realm of Georgia. The Exalted Cy.
clops, whose voice bore a remarkable likeness to that
of Sheriff Parker, was initiating new members into
the mysteries of the order. He held in his hand a

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sheet from which he was reading the oath which the
"aliens” repeated after him with their right hands
upraised. Whether through fright or excitement or
because the night air was chilly, the voices of the
embryo “knights” had a strange quaver in them.
Around them, rank on rank, stood the Klansmen,
who followed the ceremony closely.
“... will willingly conform—to all regulations,
usages, and requirements—of the Knights of the Ku Klux
Klan--which do now exist–or which may hereafter–be
enacted—and will render—at all times—loyal respect,
and steadfast support—to the Imperial Authority of
same. ..."
The droning voices ended the monotonous recital.
The flickering torches gave forth a weird light that
was lost in the darkness cast by the trees. The pun-
gent odour of burning resin and the thick stifling
smoke were blown by vagrant breezes into the faces
of the hooded figures, causing a constant accompani-
ment of coughs, sneezes, and curses to the mumbled
words. A recent rain-storm had left the low-lying
ground soggy and damp and mightily uncomfortable
underfoot. The crowd shifted uneasily as their feet
grew cold with the dampness. Moths, mosquitoes,
and other flying insects, attracted by the flaring lights,
swarmed, getting beneath the cowls and robes and
adding to the discomfort of the wearers. Even the
imperfect illumination showed the cheap material of
which the disguises were made, exhibited the wrin-
kles and dirt around the hems, revealed every aspect
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of the ill-fitting garments. Once from a spluttering
torch there fell a bit of blazing resin on the hand of
the man holding the light. With a yell he dropped
the torch, danced and howled with pain, a ludicrous
figure, until the agony had subsided. The torch,
flung hastily away, set fire to the underbrush into
which it had been cast. An unlooked-for intermis-
sion in the ceremonies followed as a score of the
figures, holding the skirts of their robes aloft like
old maids frightened at the appearance of a mouse,
stamped out the fire, circling and yelling like a
band of whirling deryishes.
Stodgy, phlegmatic, stupid citizens by day, these
by night went through the discomforts of so unpre-
pared a meeting-place, and through the absurdities
of the rites imposed upon them by clever rogues
who extracted from them fees and donations for the
privilege of being made to appear more silly than is
usually apparent. Add to that gullibility a natu-
ral love of the mysterious and adventurous and an
instinct towards brute action restrained only by fear
of punishment, by a conjuring of bogies and other
malevolent dangers, and one understands, at least
in part, the presence of these three hundred “white,
Gentile, Protestant” citizens of Central City at this
meeting.
The initiation ended, the Exalted Cyclops ordered
the Kligrapp or secretary to read several communi-
cations from the Imperial Klan Palace at Atlanta.
This he did, struggling manfully through the weird
and absurd verbiage that would have made any of
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the men present howl with laughter had he heard his
children using it in their play. Instead it was lis.
tened to attentively, seriously, and solemnly.
Then followed a recital of the work to be done by
the local Klan. The Kligrapp consulted a sheet of
paper in his hand.
“The eye that never sleeps has been seeking out
those in our city who have acted in a manner dis-
pleasing to the Invisible Empire. There is in Cen-
tral City a nigger wench named Nancy Ware who
has been saying evil things against our brother,
George Parker. In the name of our sacred order,
and in the furtherance of our supreme duty of pres-
ervation of white supremacy, she is being watched
and will be treated so as to end her dangerous
utterances.”
At this statement a robed figure that, even under
the disguise, seemed to resemble him who had been
"defamed” by Nancy Ware's tongue nodded approv-
ingly. The Kligrapp continued after a pause:
“Word has also come to us from Brothers Ed Stew-
art and Taylor that there's a young nigger named
Tom Tracy out this way who's going around among
the niggers saying that they have got to stop white
people from robbing them on their crops. Tracy
hasn't done anything but talk thus far, but we will
keep our eye on him and stop him if he talks too
much.” Cowled heads nodded approvingly.
"And then there's a nigger doctor who came in
my office I mean, he went into the office of Health
Commissioner Lane—and had the gall to repo't the


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death of a nigger bootlegger and say that a white
man had killed him for fooling around with the nig.
ger's wife. This nigger's daddy was one of the best
niggers that ever lived here in this town, and this
boy's keeping away from the other trouble-making
niggers, but we've got to watch all these niggers
that's been spoiled by goin' to school.” He added,
as an afterthought: "... up Nawth.”
And so he droned on. Negroes, two Jews, three
men suspected of Catholic leanings—all were con-
demned by the self-appointed arbiters of morals and
manners. One or two men were singled out as vio-
lating the code of morals by consorting with Negro
women. There was not much to report on this score,
as those who were violating this rule in Central City
had rushed, on formation of a Klan there, to join
the order, that they might gain immunity from at-
tack and yet continue their extra-legal activities with-
out check or interference. With the conclusion of
the Kligrapp's report, the meeting dispersed, the
members silently entered the woods and there dis-
robing, and scattering to their various homes. Some
went towards "Factoryville,” some towards the coun-
try districts, others climbed into automobiles parked
near the road and drove towards the residential sec-
tion of Central City where lived the more affluent
merchants and other upper-class whites of the
town.
The place was soon deserted. The ceremony had
been a strange mixture of the impressive and the ab-
surd. There was underneath the ridiculously

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worded language, the amusing childlike observance
of the empty ceremonies, the queer appearance of the
robes all designed alike with little regard for fatness
or thinness of the prospective wearers, a seriousness
which betokened a belief in the urgent need of their
organizing in such a manner. They had been duped
so long by demagogues, deluded generation after
generation into believing their sole hope of existence
depended on oppression and suppression of the Ne-
gro, that the chains of the ignorance and suppression
they sought to fasten on their Negro neighbours had
subtly bound them in unbreakable fashion. They
opposed every move for better educational facilities
for their children, for improvement of their health
or economic status or welfare in general, if such im-
provement meant better advantages for Negroes.
Creatures of the fear they sought to inspire in others,
their lives are lived in constant dread of the things of
evil and terror they preached. It is a system based
on stark, abject fear—fear that he whom they termed
inferior might, with opportunity, prove himself not
inferior. This unenlightened viewpoint rules men
throughout the South like those who formed the Cen-
tral City Klan-dominates their every action or
thought-keeps the whites back while the Negro-
in spite of what he suffers—always keeps his face
towards the sun of achievement. ...
In spite of the secrecy surrounding the meeting,
next morning all Central City talked of what had
taken place on the previous evening. In such a town,
where little diversion exists, the inhabitants seize with

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avidity upon every morsel of news that promises en-
tertainment. Though they had taken fearful oaths'
of secrecy, it was asking too much of human frailty
to expect three hundred men to refrain even from
mysterious hints of their doings. With the love that
simple minds have of the clandestine, the midnight
secrecy, the elaborately arranged peregrinations to the
place of meeting, the safeguards adopted by the lead-
ers not so much to prevent interference as to impress
their followers, the “inviolable oath,” the grips and
passwords--all these added to the human desire to
be considered important in the eyes of family and
friends and neighbours. Thus many of the three
hundred dropped hints to their wives of what had
been said and done. Over back fences, at the stores
on Lee Street, in the numerous places where women
contrived to meet and gossip, the one topic discussed
was the meeting of the night before. One told her
bit of information to another, who in turn contrib-
uted her mite. Each in turn told a third and a
fourth. With each telling, the ball of gossip grew,
and each repetition bore artistic additions of fact or
fancy designed to add to the drama of the story. By
noon the compounded result assumed the proportions
of a feat bordering on the heroic.
At the noonday meal, known as dinner, the men
found themselves viewed in a new and admiring light
by their spouses and offspring. They basked in the
temporary glamour and sought to add to the fame of
their midnight prowling by elaborate hints of deeds
of dark and magnificent proportions.

W
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In turn, to the Negro section of Central City were
borne the tales by cooks and laundresses and maids,
servants, with acutely developed ears, in the houses
of the whites. Everywhere in the Negro section, in
homes, on street corners, over back fences, the news
was discussed by the dusky inhabitants of the town.
In the eyes of a few, fear could be discerned. Most
of the Negroes, however, discussed the news as they
would have talked about the coming of the circus to
town. Some talked loudly and in braggart fashion
of what they would do if the “Kluxers” bothered
them. Others examined for the hundredth time well-
oiled revolvers. Most generally the feeling was a
hope the Klan would not bother any coloured person
—but if it did — !...
It was natural that the news should eventually
reach Nancy Ware and Tom Tracy and, last of all,
Kenneth. Mrs. Amos, bustling with importance, has-
tened as fast as her rheumatism would allow to tell
Mrs. Harper what the Klansmen had said or, to be
more accurate, what Dame Rumour said the Klans-
men had said, about Kenneth and Bob. It was ob-
vious the two men had taken on a new importance in
her eyes in being singled out for the attention of the
clandestine organization.
That night in Kenneth's office the brothers talked
over the news. Kenneth scoffed at what seemed to
him a fantastic and improbable tale. He looked
searchingly at his brother.
“Well Bob, what do you make of it?”
"Trouble for somebody," said Bob positively.


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are &
“And I have a sort of feeling that that somebody is
us,” he added after a pause.
"I'm not so sure,” was Kenneth's doubtful re-
joinder. “Some of these Crackers are just mean
enough to start something, but I'm pretty sure there
are enough decent white people in Central City to
check any trouble that might start.”
Bob said nothing, though his face showed plainly
he did not share his brother's confidence. Kenneth
went on:
“Besides, they must have sense enough to know
that a sheet and pillow-case won't scare coloured
folks to-day as they did fifty years ago. It wasn't
hard to scare Negroes then—they'd just come out of
slavery, and believed in ghosts and spooks and all
those other silly things. But to-day— "
“I think white people are right sometimes," broke
in Bob with conviction, “when they say education
ruins a Negro. One of those times is when you talk
like that.”
The irony in his voice was but thinly veiled. He
continued:
"The Southern white man boasts he knows the Ne-
gro better than anybody else, but he knows less what
the coloured man is really thinking than the man in
the moon. I'll bet anything you say, that seven out
of every ten men in town believe that you and I and
all the rest of us coloured folks are scared to death
every time we hear the word 'Ku Klux. They be-
lieve the sight of one of those fool robes'll make us
run and hide under a bed— ”

[129]


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“Oh, I don't go quite that far,” interrupted Ken-
neth. “I only said I thought some of the good white
people ”
“You can name all your 'good white folks' on one
hand,” replied Bob irritably. “A lot they could do
if these poor white trash decide to raise hell. Why,
they'd lynch Judge Stevenson or Roy Ewing or any-
body else if they tried to stop ’em. Look what they
did to Governor Slaton at Atlanta just because he
commuted the sentence of that Jew, Leo Frank!” he
added triumphantly. “A mob even went out to his
house to lynch him—the governor!”
“But that was an extraordinary case,” replied
Kenneth.
“Call it what you will, it just shows you how far
they will go when they are all stirred up. And with
this Ku Klux outfit to stir them up, there's no telling
what’ll happen.”
"Bob, do you really believe what you said just
now about most of them really believing Negroes will
be scared by the Klan? That seems so far-fetched.”
"Believe it? Of course I do. Just use your eyes
and see how Negroes fool white folks all the time.
Take, for instance, old Will Hutchinson who works
for Mr. Baird. Will cuts all sorts of monkey-shines
around Baird, laughs like an idiot, and wheedles old
Baird out of anything he's got. Baird gives it to
him and then tells his friends about his good nigger
Will’ and boasts that Will is one ‘darky' he really
knows. Then Will goes home and laughs at the fool
he's made of Baird by acting like a fool.” Bob
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laughed at the memory of many occasions on which
Will had bamboozled his employer. “And there are
Negroes all over the South doing the same thing every
day!” he ended.
“That's true,” admitted Kenneth, “but what ought
we to do about this meeting last night?”
"Do?” echoed Bob. A determined look came to
his face, his teeth clenched, his eyes narrowed until
they became thin slits. “Do?” he repeated. "If
they ever bother me, I'm going to fight—and fight
like hell!”
Long into the night Kenneth sat alone in his office,
wondering how it was all going to turn out.

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who sat beside him. Afterwards, they had ridden
home atop a Fifth Avenue bus, and the whole city
seemed filled with romance. He had imagined him-
self at the time deeply in love. But that tender epi-
sode had soon ended when he told her he was plan-
ning to return to Georgia. “Kenneth!” she had ex-
claimed. “How can you think of living down South
again? It's silly of you even to think of it! I could
never think of living down there where they are likely
to lynch you at a moment's notice! It's too bar-
baric, too horrible an existence to consider even for
a minute!” Kenneth had tried to show her that it
wasn't as bad as it had been painted, that coloured
people who minded their own business never had
any trouble. But she had been obdurate. Kenneth
left the house in a huff, and had never gone back
again. What silly notions women have, he had
thought to himself. The reason they talked about
the South that way was because of sheer ignorance.
As if he couldn't manage his own affairs and keep
away from trouble! Humph! Well rid of the silly
creature, and he felt glad he had found out before
going in too deep.
But now this was different. Jane had no such
absurd notions as those girls up North had. She
wasn't the sort that couldn't leave promenading down
Seventh Avenue in New York or State Street in
Chicago or U Street in Washington. It wasn't that
she didn't know what it meant to live in the North.
Hadn't she been to Atlantic City and New York and
Washington with her mother? No, Jane was just

[133]


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IT
the sort of girl who would make the right sort of
companion for him in a place like Central City.
Intelligent, with a good education, talented musically
—she would make an ideal wife. Kenneth found
himself musing along in this fashion until aroused
by his mother as she called him to supper.
It was darned silly of him, he thought as he arose
to comply, to go along thinking like this. He and
Jane had spoken no word of love when she had been
at home at Christmas. Nor had their letters been
other than those of good friends. But hadn't she
written him almost every week since she left? She
must think something of him to have done that. He
determined that as soon as he could he would skil
fully direct the conversation to the point where he
could find out just where he stood. It was time that
he was thinking about settling down, anyhow. He
would be twenty-nine his next birthday—he was mak-
ing money—if he acted wisely his future was as-
sured. Yes, he would find out how Jane felt. Both
his mother and Mamie liked Jane—and Mr. Phillips
had called him “my boy” several times lately and had
repeated to him snatches of the letters that Jane
had written home. The only doubtful quantity was
the attitude of Jane herself.
On Monday morning Kenneth reached the railroad
station long before the train arrived. He tried to
sit in the filthy little waiting-room with the sign over
the door, “FOR COLOURED,” but the air was so
oppressive that he chose rather to walk up and down
the road outside the station. At last the train came.
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He walked down towards the engine where the Jim
Crow car was. It was half baggage car and half
coach. A motley crowd of laughing, shouting Ne-
groes descended, calling out to friends and relatives
in the group of Negroes on the ground. Standing
on tiptoe, Kenneth strained his eyes to get glimpse
of Jane. The windows of the coach were too dirty
to see inside. At last she appeared on the platform,
dainty, neat, and looking as though she had just
emerged from her own room, in spite of the filth and
cindery foulness of the coach. Kenneth thought of
the simile of a rose springing up from a bed of noi.
some and unlovely weeds as he hurried forward to
help Jane with her bags through the crowd of col-
oured people that flocked around the steps.
Jane greeted him cordially enough, her eyes shin-
ing with pleasure at seeing him again. Kenneth,
however, felt a vague disappointment. He had let
his thoughts run riot while she had been away. So
far as he was concerned, the only things necessary
were the actual asking of the all-important question
and the choosing of a wedding-day. As he followed
her to his car, he turned over in his mind just what
it was that disappointed him so in her greeting. He
couldn't put his finger on it exactly, but she would
have greeted Bob or any other man just as warmly
and he would not have felt jealous at all. Maybe
she's tired from the ride in that dirty and noisy car?
She'll be quite different when I go over to see her
to-night, he thought.
He inquired regarding her trip—was it pleasant?

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“Ugh, it was horrible!” she replied, shuddering at
the memory of it. “I had a Pullman as far as At-
lanta, but there I had to change to that dirty old
Jim Crow car. There was a crowd of Negroes who
· had three or four quarts of cheap liquor. They
were horrible. Why, they even had the nerve to of.
fer me a drink! And the conductor must have told
everybody on the train that I was up front, because
all night long there was a constant procession of white
men passing up and down the coach looking at me
in a way that made my blood boil. I didn't dare
go to sleep, because I didn't know what might hap-
pen. It was awful!”
She sat silent as she lived over again the horror of
the ride. Then, shaking off her mood, she turned
to him with a cheerful smile. “Thank Goodness,
it's over now, and I don't want to think of it any
more than I can help. Tell me all about yourself
and what you've been doing and everything,” she fin-
ished all in a breath.
He told her briefly what had been going on, of his
plans for the hospital, of the meeting at Reverend
Wilson's, and other items of interest about life in
Central City, until they had arrived at her home. He
waited for an invitation to come in, but in the excite-
ment of seeing her mother and father again, she for-
got all about Kenneth. Placing her bags on the
porch, he turned and left after promising to run over
for a while that evening.
The time seemed to go by on dragging feet that
day. It seemed as though evening never would come.
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It did at last, however, and as soon as he finished with
the last patient, he went over to Jane's home. Re-
freshed by a long rest, she greeted him clad in a
dress of some filmy blue material. They seated
themselves on the porch, shaded by vines from the
eyes of passers-by. Over Kenneth there came a feel-
ing of contentment-life had not been easy for him
and he had been denied a confidante with whom he
could discuss the perplexities he had experienced in
Central City. The talk for a time drifted from one
topic to another. Before he knew it, Kenneth was
telling Jane of his ambitions, of the plans he had
made before coming back to Central City, of the suc-
cesses and failures he had met with, of his hopes for
the future. Jane listened without speaking for some
time. Life among coloured people is so intense, so
earnest, so serious a problem in the South, that never
do two intelligent Negroes talk very long before the
race problem in some form is under discussion.
Jane interrupted Kenneth in the midst of his recital.
“Kenneth, did you really believe that you could
come back here to Central City and keep entirely
away from the race problem?”
"I don't know that I thought it out as carefully as
that, but I hoped to do something like that,” was his
uneasy reply. He had the feeling that she didn't
altogether approve of him. Her next words proved
that she didn't.
. “Well, you can't do it. Just because your father
got along all right is no reason why you should do
the same things he did. You are living in a time

Life amonls
problem in very long
[ 137 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
the South have got to do. That is, those who've got
any sense and backbone. If they don't, then this
thing they call the race problem is going to grow so
big it's going to consume the South and America.
It's almost that big now.”
She paused for breath. Kenneth started to speak
but she checked him with her hand.
"I'm not through yet! I've been thinking over this
thing for a long time, just as every other Negro has
done who's got brains enough to do any thinking
at all. I am sick and tired of hearing all this prat-
ing about the 'superior race.' Superior-humph!
Kenneth, what you and all the rest of Negroes need
is to learn that you belong to a race that was centuries
old when the first white man came into the world.
You've got to learn that a large part of this thing
they call “white civilization' was made by black
hands, as well as by yellow and brown and red hands,
too, besides what white hands have created. You've
got to learn that the Negro to-day is contributing as
much of the work that makes this civilization pos-
sible as the white race, if not more. Be proud of
your race and quit whining and cringing! You'll
never get anywhere until you do! There, I've
wanted to get that out of my system for a long time
ever since we talked together last Christmas. Now
it's out and I'm through!”
Kenneth sat quiet. While she had been pouring
forth her tirade, he had thought of several logical
arguments he could have advanced. But she had
given him no chance to utter them. Now they seemed

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THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
weak and useless. He was resentful—what did
women know about the practical problems and dif.
ficulties of life, anyway? His anger was not abated
by the realization that Jane felt that he had been try-
ing to avoid his responsibility to himself and to his
people—that he had been a coward. And yet she
was right in a general way in what she had said.
Masking as well as he could the chagrin he felt at
her words, he told her of the trouble Tucker and
Tracy and Swann and the other share-croppers were
having, and gave her further details of the meeting at
Reverend Wilson's.
She sensed the wound to his pride that she had in-
flicted. She did not regret doing what she had done
-on the long ride home she had determined that
she would tell him those very things as soon as she
could find opportunity—but, with a woman's natural
tenderness, she regretted the necessity of hurting him.
She put her hand over his for an instant, touched at
his dejected manner.
"I'm sorry, Ken, if I hurt you, but I did it because
you are too fine a man, and you've got too good an
education, to try to dodge an issue as plain as yours.
Why, Kenneth, you've had it mighty soft-just
think of the thousands of coloured boys all over the
South who are too poor to get even a high-school
training. You've never had to get down and dig for
what you've got-perhaps it would have been better
if you had. It's men with your brains and educa-
tion that have got to take the leadership. You've got

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THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
to make good! That's just the reason they try to
make it hard for men like you—they know that if
you ever get going, their treating the Negro as they
have has got to stop! They're darned scared of edu-
cated Negroes with brains—that's why they make it
hard for you!”
Kenneth threw out his hands, palms upward, and
shrugged his shoulders.
"I suppose I agree with you in theory, Jane, but
what are the practical ways of doing the things you
say I ought to do? How, for example, can I help
Tracy and Tucker and all the rest of the farmers
who're being robbed of all they earn every year?”
“Don't get angry now just because I touched your
masculine vanity. I know about the share-cropping
system in a general way. Tell me the facts that were
brought out at the meeting.”
Kenneth told her in detail the things Hiram Tucker
and the others had said. She sat in thought for a
minute, her chin cupped in the palm of her hand, her
elbow resting on the arm of the chair, as she rocked
back and forth. Kenneth sat watching her in what
was almost sardonic amusement. He had been
wrestling with this same problem ever since Thurs-
day night and was no nearer a solution than he had
been then. It would be amusing in a few minutes,
after all her high-flown thoughts and elaborate gen-
eralities about bucking the race question, when she
would be forced to admit that when it came to solv-
ing one of the practical problems of the whole ques.

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THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
tion her generalizing would be of no avail. He was
aroused by a question thrown at him suddenly by
Jane.
“Do these folks have to buy their supplies from
the landlord ?
"Not that I know of,” he replied. “They buy
from the landlord, or the merchant designated by
the landlord, because they haven't the money or the
credit to trade anywhere else.”
There followed another pause while the rocking
began again.
“Do you remember any of the economics you
learned at school?” was the next query. He replied
that he supposed he did.
“Have you got any books on co-operative socie-
ties?” He doubted whether he had.
"Well, never mind.” She swung her chair around,
facing Kenneth, and leaned forward intently, the
light from the arc-lamp in the corner illumining her
face and revealing the eager, enthusiastic look upon

it.
“Kenneth, why can't those coloured people pool
their money and buy their goods wholesale and then
distribute them at cost?”
Kenneth laughed, it must be confessed a little
cheerfully, that she had gone from one problem into
the mazes of another that was just as difficult.
“For the very same reason that they are in the pre-
dicament they are in to-day. They haven't got the
money. Perhaps you can tell me where the money
to start this co-operative scheme is coming from?"
[ 142]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
“That's an easy one to answer. It's going to come
from you and papa and three or four more of these
folks here in town who can afford it! Oh, Ken,
can't you see what a big thing you can do? There
are lots of people, white people I mean, right here
in Central City, who'd be glad to help these poor
Negroes get out of debt. Papa was telling us to-
day about a talk he had with Judge Stevenson the
other day. The Judge said he wished there was
some way to help without it making him unpopular
with the other folks here in town. Of course, the
folks who are making money off this system, the
landlords and the store-keepers, won't like it, but you
can go and talk with folks like Judge Stevenson and
Mr. Baird down at the Bank of Central City. If
this first trial succeeds—and I know it will be a suc-
cess—it'll spread all over Smith County, and then
all over Georgia, and then all over the South, and the
coloured folks will have millions of dollars that
they've been cheated out of before. That, Kenneth
Harper, is one way you can lead, and it won't get
you in bad with the white people at least the decent
ones—either.”
Kenneth began to be infected by her enthusiasm.
He saw that her idea had possibilities. But, man-
like, he didn't want to give in too soon or too readily.
“There is something in what you say, Jane, but the
details will have to be worked out first before we can
tell if it is a practicable idea. I'll think it— "
Jane interrupted him, showing that she hadn't even
been listening to him.

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THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
employ the very best lawyers money could get to
take one of those cases where a Negro had not been
able to get a fair settlement with his landlord, and
make a test case of it. What if they did lose in the
local court? They'd take it to the State Supreme
Court! What if they did lose even there? They'd
take it clear up to the United States Supreme Court!
They were sure to win there. Kenneth walked home
with his head whirling with the project's possibilities.
He saw a new day coming when a man in the South
would no longer be exploited and robbed just because
he was black. And when that came, lynching and
everything else like it would go too. He felt already
like Matthew and Andrew and Peter and John and the
other disciples when they started out to bring the
good news to the whole world. For wasn't he a
latter-day disciple bringing a new solution and a new
hope to his people?
It was not until Kenneth had gone to bed that he
realized that though he had been with Jane all the
evening, he had had not one minute when he could "*
have spoken of love to her. Musing thus, he fell
asleep.
[ 145]


CHAPTER XI
ARLY the next morning Kenneth rose and rum-
7. maged through his books until he found his
old and battered text-books on economics.
Into these he dipped during the intervals between
patients, making notes of ideas which seemed useful
in the organization of the co-operative society. The
more he read, the more feasible the plan seemed.
Properly guided and carefully managed, there was
no reason, so far as he could see, why the society
should not be a success. Eighty per cent of the farm-
ers of the South, white and coloured, he estimated,
suffered directly or indirectly from the present eco-
nomic system. Though his interest was in the Negro
tillers of the soil, success in their case would inevi-
tably react favourably on the white just as oppres-
sion and exploitation of the Negro had done more
harm to white people in the South than to Negroes.
Kenneth felt the warm glow of the crusader in a
righteous cause. Already he saw a new day in the
South with white and coloured people free from
oppression and hatred and prejudice-prosperous
and contented because of that prosperity. He could
see a lifting of the clouds of ignorance which hung
over all the South, an awakening of the best in all
the people of the South. Thus has youth dreamed
ove
1
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THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
since the beginning of time. Thus will youth ever
dream. And in those dreams rests the hope of the
world, for without them this world with all its de-
fects would sink into the black abyss of despair,
never to rise again.
His work finished for the day, he went as soon as
he decently could to talk with Jane. She, too, had
been at work. Eagerly they planned between them
the infinite details of so ambitious a scheme. Con-
fidently they discounted possible difficulties they
might expect to encounter—the opposition of the
whites who were profiting from the present system,
the petty jealousies and suspicions of those who
would gain most from the success of their scheme.
They realized that the Negro had been robbed so
much, both by his own people and by the whites, that
he was chary of new plans and projects. They
knew he was contentious and quarrelsome. These
things seemed trivial, however, for with the natural
expansiveness of the young they felt that difficulties
like these were but trifles to be airily brushed
aside.
Jane was not too much engrossed in their plans to
notice the change in Kenneth's manner. She had
watched him closely during the times she had seen
him since his return. He had been almost morose,
his mind divided between his work and the effort to
keep to a “middle-of-the-road” course in his relations
with the whites. The inevitable conflict within him-
self, the lack of decisiveness in his daily life that he
consciously developed and which was so diametri-
[ 147]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
CU
cally opposite to that he used in his profession, had
begun to create a complex personality that was far
from pleasing. In a freer atmosphere Kenneth
would have been a direct, straightforward charac-
ter, swift to decision and quick of action. One can-
not, however, compromise principle constantly and
consciously without bearing the marks of such con-
flicts.
His compromises were not all conscious ones,
though. He believed honestly it was wisest that he
observe some sort of half-way ground between rank
cowardice and uncompromising opposition to the
conditions which existed. In doing so, he had no
sense of physical or moral timidity. He knew no
Negro could yet safely advocate complete freedom
for the Negro in the South. He felt there had been
improvement during the past half-century in those
conditions. He believed that in time all of the
Negro's present problems would be solved satisfac-
torily. If, by not trying to rush things, he could help
in that solution, he was content. In believing thus,
Kenneth was different in no way from the majority of
intelligent Negroes in the South: temporizing with
the truth, it may be, yet of such temporizations and
compromises is the life of the Negro all over the
South.
With the evolving of a plan which enabled him to
be of help and, at the same time, involved him in
no danger of trouble with his white neighbours, Ken-
neth took on an eagerness which was at marked var.


[ 148 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
iance with his former manner. His eyes shone with
the desire to make their plan a success. Of a tender
and sympathetic nature, almost with the gentleness
of a woman, he realized now that the burdens of his
race had lain heavy upon him. He had suffered in
their suffering, had felt almost as though he had been
the victim when he read or heard of a lynching, had
chafed under the bonds which bound the hands and
feet and heart and soul of his people. But launched
as he now was on a plan to furnish relief from one
of the worst of those bonds, he had changed over-
night into a determined and purposeful and ardent
worker towards the goal he and Jane had set for
themselves. Jane rejoiced at the changed air of Ken.
neth—he seemed to have emerged from the shell in
which he had encased himself and, womanlike,
she rejoiced that he had done so through her own
work.
So absorbed had they been in discussion of their
plans that the time had flown by as though on wings.
Ten o'clock was announced by Mr. Phillips in the
room above by the dropping of his shoes, one after
the other, on the floor. Kenneth needed no second
signal, he rose to go. Jane went to the door with
him.
"Kenneth, you're entirely different from the way
you were yesterday. I'm so glad. ..."
The next morning he called on Judge Stevenson.
The Judge's office was above the Bon Ton Store in a
two-story brick building on Lee Street. Kenneth
[ 149 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
VEVE
ORN
W
climbed the flight of dingy, dusty stairs which bore
alternately on the vertical portions tin signs in.
scribed:
RICHARD P. STEVENSON, ATTORNEY-AT-Law
and
DR. J. C. CARPENTER, DENTIST.
The judge's office was at the head of the stairs
and in it Kenneth found the old lawyer seated near
the window, his coat off, and in his mouth the long,
thin, villainous-looking cigar without which few per-
sons in Central City ever remembered seeing him,
though none had ever seen one of them lighted. He
chewed on it ruminatively when in repose. When
engaged in an argument, either in or out of a court-
room, and especially when opposition caused his
choleric temper to be aroused, he chewed furiously
as though he would have enjoyed treating his enemy
of the moment in similar fashion. He was tall and
thickset, his snow-white hair brushed straight back
from his forehead like the mane of a lion. Skin
reddened by exposure to sun and wind, bushy eye-
brows from under which gleamed fiery eyes that
could shift in an instant from twinkling good humour
to flashing indignation or anger, thin nose and ample
mouth, his face was one that would command re-
spect or at least attention in almost any gathering.
He wore loosely fitting, baggy clothes that draped
his ample figure with a gracefulness that added to
his distinguished appearance. Many thought he
resembled at first glance that famous Kentuckian,
[ 150 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
Henry Watterson, and indeed he did bear an unmis-
takable likeness to “Marse Henry.”
The judge's life had beer, a curious combination
of contradictions. He had fought valiantly in the
Confederate army as a major, serving under “Stone-
wall” Jackson, whose memory he worshipped second
only to that of his wife, who had died some ten years
before. He bore a long scar, reminder of the wound
that had laid him low during the battle of Atlanta.
His mode of brushing his hair back was adopted to
cover the mark, but when he talked, as he loved to do,
of his martial experiences, he would always, at the
same time in the narrative, brush, with one sweep of
his hand, the hair down over his forehead and reveal
the jagged scar of which he was inordinately proud.
With the end of the Civil War, he had reconciled
himself to the result though it had meant the loss of
most of his wealth. He harboured little bitterness
towards the North, unlike most of his comrades in
arms who never were willing to forgo any oppor-
tunity to vent their venomous hatred of their con-
querors. Judge Stevenson had counselled against
such a spirit. So vigorously had he done it, he had
alienated most of those who had been his closest
friends. Following a speech he had delivered at
one of the reunions of Confederate veterans in which
he urged his comrades at least to meet half-way the
overtures of friendliness from the North, he had
been denounced from the floor of the convention as
a “Yankee-lover,” and threatened with violence.
Judge Stevenson with flashing eye and belligerent
[ 151 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
manner had jumped to his feet, offered to fight any
man, or any ten men, who thought him guilty of
treachery to the cause of the Confederacy, and when
none accepted the challenge, denounced them as
cowards and quit the convention.
He had hoped that, with the passing on, one by
one, of the unreconstructed veterans of the Confed-
eracy, a newer and less embittered generation, with
no personal memories of the gall of defeat, would
right things. Instead had come the rise of the poor
whites with none of the culture and refinement of the
old Southern aristocracy, a nation of petty minds
and morals, vindictive, vicious, dishonest, and stupid.
Lacking in nearly all the things that made the old
South, at least the upper crust of it, the most civi-
lized section of America at that time, he saw his
friends and all they stood for inundated by this flood
of crudeness and viciousness, until only a few
remained left high and dry like bits of wreckage
from a foundered ship cast up on the shore to rot
away, while all around them raged this new regime,
no longer poor in purse but eternally impoverished
in culture and civilizing influences. On these the
judge spat his contempt and he poured upon their un-
concerned heads the vials of his venom and wrath.
The second devastating blow he suffered was the
succumbing, one by one, of his children to the new
order. Nancy, his eldest daughter, had run away
from home and married a merchant whose wealth
had been gained through the petty thievery of pad-
ding accounts and other sharp practices on poorer

[ 152]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
wa
17
US
whites and Negroes. Mary Ann, his other daughter,
whom he loved above all others of his children, had
fallen victim to an unfortunate love affair with a
dashing but worthless son of their next-door neigh-
bour. She had died in giving birth to her child,
which, fortunately, the judge thought, had been born
dead. His son had “gone in for politics.” He had
been successful, as success was measured by the
present-day South, but in his father's eyes, judged
by the uncompromising standards of that member
of an older and nobler generation, he had sunk to
levels of infamy from which he could never recover.
The crowning misfortune dealt the judge by an
unkind fate was the loss of his gentle, kindly wife.
She had uncomplainingly borne their misfortunes
one after another, had calmed and soothed her
husband's irascible tantrums, had been a haven to
which he could come and find repose when buffeted
by a world which he did not and could not under-
stand. As long as she lived, he had been able to
bear up despite the bitter disappointments life had
dealt him. He had gone away to try a case in a
near-by county, had returned after a two days' ab-
sence and found her with a severe cold and fever.
For three weeks he did not leave her bedside, drove
away in anger the trained nurse Dr. Bennett brought
to the house, ministered gently to his wife's every
need, and held her in his arms as she breathed her
last breath. Frantic at this last and most crushing
blow, he cursed the doctor, though Dr. Bennett had
done all he could in his bungling way, cursed God,
[ 153 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
gers placed end to end, and his chin resting on the
natural bridge thus formed, the judge listened to
Kenneth's recital of his plan without comment other
than an occasional non-committal grunt.
“... And what I would like from you, Judge
Stevenson, is, first, do you think the plan will work,
and, second, will you draw up the articles of incor-
poration and whatever other legal papers we need?”
Kenneth ended. As an afterthought he added:
“You see, we want to do the job legally and above
board, so there won't be any misunderstanding of
our motives.”
For a long time Judge Stevenson said nothing, nor
did he give any indication that he was aware Ken-
neth had stopped speaking. In fact he seemed obliy-
ious even of Kenneth's presence. Knowing better
than to interrupt him, Kenneth awaited somewhat
anxiously the judge's opinion. When the silence had
lasted nearly five minutes, a vague alarm began to
creep over Kenneth. Suppose the judge wasn't as
friendly towards coloured people as he had sup-
posed? A word from him could start serious trou-
ble before they got started. He wondered if he had
acted wisely in revealing so much of their plans.
He felt sure he had done wrong when he saw a look
of what appeared to be anger pass over the judge's
face.
At last the old lawyer cleared his throat, his usual
preliminary to speech. But when he did talk he be-
gan on another subject.
“What’re the folks out your way saying about these
[ 155 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
Kluxers? Any of you getting worried about these
fools parading 'round like a bunch of damn fools?”
“To tell you the truth, Judge, I don't really know
yet what the coloured people are thinking.” He felt
that on this subject he could speak frankly to the
judge, as he was too sensible a man to take much
stock in the antics of the Klan. Yet, he was not too
sure-coloured people must always keep a careful
watch on their tongues when talking to white people
in the South.
“You ain't getting scared out there, are you?” the
judge pressed the point.
“No, I wouldn't call it scared. Most of those with
whom I've talked don't want any trouble with any-
body—they want to attend to their own business and
be let alone. But if they are attacked, I'm afraid
there will be considerable trouble and somebody will
get hurt.” He paused, then went on: “And that some-
body won't be entirely composed of Negroes, either."
“I reckon you're right, Ken. These fools don't
know they're playing with dynamite.” His voice took
on a querulous tone. “We've been getting along
all right here, 'cept when some of these po' whites
out of the mill or from the tu pentine camps or some
bad nigras tank up on bad liquor or moonshine.”
He did not say "Negro” nor yet the opprobrious
“nigger," but struck somewhere between the two-
“nigra.” “And now these fools are just stirring up
trouble Lord knows where it'll end.”
He ran his hand through his hair—a favourite trick
of his when excited, and paced up and down the room.
[156]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
“I've been telling some of the boys they'd better
stay away from that fool business of gallivanting
around with a pillow-slip over their heads. They
talk about being against bootleggers and men run-
ing around with loose women-humph!—every
blamed bootlegger and blind tiger and whore-
master in town rushed into the Klan 'cause they
know'd that was the only way they could keep from
getting called up on the carpet! A fine bunch they
are!"
The judge spat disgustedly.
“Now about this plan you got-have you thought
about the chances of your being misunderstood?
Suppose some of these ornery whites get it into their
heads you're trying to start trouble between the
races. What're you going to do then?” he asked.
“That's just why we want to do the job right,”
answered Kenneth. “We want to do everything le-
gally so there can't be any wrong ideas about the
society. I know every time coloured people start
forming any kind of an organization besides a church
or a burial society, there are white people who begin
to get suspicious and think that Negroes are organiz-
ing to start some mischief. That's why we want you
and the other good white people to know all about
our plans from the start.”
“I ain't trying to discourage you none,” replied
Judge Stevenson doubtfully, “but do you think you
are wise in starting coloured folks to thinking about
organizing when this Klan's raising hell all over the
South?”


[ 157]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
PV
n
“How else are we going to do anything?” asked
Kenneth. “Farmers have been robbed so long they
are getting tired of it. If something isn't done,
there's going to be lots more trouble than a society
like ours can possibly cause. This share-cropping
business causes more trouble than any other thing
that's done to Negroes. Lynching is mighty bad, but
after all only a few Negroes are lynched a year, while
thousands are robbed every year of their lives.”
“That's so. That's so,” agreed the judge, but the
doubt had not been dispelled from his voice nor re-
moved from his face. He removed his cigar from
his mouth, viewed its mangled appearance through
much chewing upon it, threw it with an expression
of disgust out of the window, narrowly missing a
man passing in the street below. He chuckled as he
placed a fresh cigar in his mouth.
“ 'Taint no harm in trying, though,” he said, half
to himself.
“Besides, our plan is to enlist the support of every
white man in the county who stands for something,"
went on Kenneth, eager to gain the old man as a
staunch ally. “We know there'll be opposition from
some of the landlords and merchants and bankers
who are making money off this system, but we figure
there are enough decent white people here to help
us through. ..."
“Mebbe so. Mebbe so," replied the judge,
though there was a distinct note of doubt in his voice
now. “I wouldn't be too sure, though. I wouldn't
be too sure.”
[ 158 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
“But, Judge, ” interrupted Kenneth. The
judge silenced him with a movement of his hand.
"Ken, have you ever thought out what a decent
white man goes through with in a town like Central
City? Have you thought what he has to put up with
all over the South? There ain't a whole lot of them,
but just figure what'd happen to a white man to-day
who tried to do anything about cleaning up this rot-
ten state of affairs we got here. Why, he'd be run
out of town, if he wasn't lynched!”
“But, Judge,” began Kenneth again, “take lynch-
ing, for example. You know, and I know, and every-
body in the South knows that if a Negro is arrested
charged with criminal assault on a white woman, if
he's guilty, there isn't one chance in a million of his
going free. Why don't they bring them to trial and
execute them legally instead of hanging and burning
them?"
“Why? Why?” The judge repeated the inter-
rogative as though it were a word he had never heard
before. “You know, and so do I and all the rest of
us here in the South, that nine out of ten cases where
these trifling women holler and claim they been
raped, they ain't been no rape. They just got caught
and they yelled rape to save their reputations. And
they lynch the nigra to hush the matter up.”
Kenneth was amazed at the old man. Not amazed
at what he said, for that is common knowledge in the
South. He was astounded that even so liberal a man
as the judge should frankly admit that which is de-
nied in public but known to be true. He hesitated to


[ 159 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
press the inquiry further, and thought it expedient
to shift the conversation away from such dangerous
ground.
:- .. .. . S eine
“Why don't men like yourself speak out against
the things you know are wrong, Judge?”.
“What would happen to us if we did? Count me
out 'cause I'm so old I couldn't do much. But take
right here in Central City the men I've talked with just
like I'm talking to you. How many of them could
say what they really want to? I don't mean on the
race question. I mean on any question—religion,
politics—oh—anything at all. Suppose Roy Ew-
ing or any other white man here said he was tired
of voting the Democratic ticket and was going to
vote Republican or Socialist. Suppose he decided he
didn't believe in the Virgin Birth or that all bad
folks were burned eternally in a lake of fire and
brimstone after they died. If they didn't think he
was crazy, they'd stop trading with him and all the
womenfolks would run from Roy’s wife and daughter
like they had the smallpox. That's the hell of it,
Ken. These po' white trash stopped everybody from
talking against lynching nigras, and they've stopped
us from talking about anything. And far's I can
see, things're getting worse every day.”
“Couldn't you organize those white people who
think like you do?” asked Kenneth.
"No, that ain't much use either. It all goes back
to the same root-self-interest-how much is it go-
ing to cost me? I tell you, Ken, the most tragic
figure I know is the white man in the South who



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wants to be decent. This here system of lynching
and covering up their lynching with lying has grown
so big that any man who tries to tackle it is beat
befo' he starts. Specially in the little towns. Now
in Atlanta there's some folks can speak out and say
most anything they please, but here ” The old
lawyer threw out his hands in a gesture of hopeless-
ness.
“Why can't the South see where their course is
leading them?” asked Kenneth. “Suppose there
wasn't a white man in the South who was interested
in the Negro. Suppose every white man hated every
Negro who lived. Why couldn't they see even then
that they are doing more harm to themselves than
they could ever do to the Negro? With all its rich
natural resources, with its fertile soil and its wonder-
ful climate, the South is farther behind in civilization
than any other part of the United States—or the
world, for that matter. Aren't they ever going to
see how they're hurting themselves by trying to keep
the Negro down?”
“That's just it,” replied the judge. “A man starts
out practising cheating in a petty way, and before he
knows it he's crooked all the way through. He
starts being mean part of the time, and soon he's mean
all over. Or he tries being kind and decent, and
he turns out to be pretty decent. It's just like a man
drinking liquor—first thing he knows, he's liable to
be drunk all the time.”
The judge shifted his cigar to a corner of his
mouth and let fly a stream of tobacco juice from the


[ 161 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT

other corner, every drop landing squarely in the box
of sawdust some ten feet away. He went on:
“That's just what's the matter with the South.
She's been brutal and tricky and deceitful so long
in trying to keep the nigras down, she couldn't be
decent if she tried. If acting like this was going to
get them anywhere, there might be some reason in it
all, but they've shut their eyes, they refuse to see that
nigras like you ain't going to be handled like yo’
daddy and folks like him were.”
“What are we going to do—what can we do?" asked
Kenneth. Never had he suspected that even so fine
a man as Judge Stevenson had thought things through
as their conversation had indicated. He felt the sit-
uation was not entirely hopeless when men like the
judge felt and talked as he did. Perhaps they were
the leaven that would affect the lump of ignorance
and viciousness that was the South.
“What are we going to do?” echoed the elder man.
“God knows—I don't! Mebbe the lid will blow off
some day—then there would be hell to pay! One
thing's going to help, and that's nigras pulling up
stakes and going North. When some of these white
folks begin to see their fields going to seed, they'll
begin to realize how much they need the nigra-
just like some of 'em are seeing already."
“But are they seeing it in the right way?” asked
Kenneth. “Instead of trying to make things better
so Negroes are willing to stay in the South, they're
trying more oppressive methods than ever before.
They're beating up labour agents, charging them a

ance

[ 162 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
thousand dollars for licences, lynching more Negroes,
and robbing them more than ever.”
“Oh, they'll be fools enough until the real pinch
comes. Far's I can see, instead of stopping nigras
from going North, them things are hurrying them up.
Wait till it hits their pocket-books hard. Then the
white people'll get some sense.”
"Let's hope so," was Kenneth's rejoinder as he rose
to go. “It's been mighty comforting to talk like this
with you, Judge. Things don't seem so hopeless
when we've got friends like you.”
66 'Tain't nothing. Nothing at all,” replied the
judge. “Just like to talk with somebody's got some
sense. It's a pity you're coloured, Ken, you got too
much sense to be a nigra.”
Kenneth laughed.
"From all we've been saying, a coloured man's got
to have some sense or else he's in a mighty poor fix
nowadays."
He did not resent the old man's remark, for he
knew the judge could not understand that he was
much more contented as a member of a race that was
struggling upward than he would have been as one
of that race that expended most of its time and
thought and energy in exploiting and oppressing
others. The judge followed him to the door promis-
ing to draw up the necessary legal documents for
the co-operative society. When Kenneth broached
the subject of payment, the old man waved his hand
again in protest.
“Ain't got long to live, so's I got to do what little

as
[ 163 ]


-
-
- -
-
- -
CHAPTER XII
ROM Judge Stevenson's office Kenneth went di-
K rectly to tell Jane of the interview. So ab-
1 sorbed was he in contemplation of the wider
vision of the problem he was attacking which the
judge's words had given him, he forgot to telephone
her to ask if it was agreeable for him to call at so
unconventional an hour. He found her clad in a
bungalow apron busily cleaning house and singing as
she worked.
They sat on the steps of the back porch while he
told her all that had been said. Taken out of his
preoccupation with his own affairs, Kenneth had
shaken off his negative air and now he talked con-
vincingly of their plans. Jane said nothing until he
had finished.
“That's fine!” she exclaimed when he had ended.
“Even if Judge Stevenson is doubtful of how much
we can accomplish, we can do something. Now all
that remains is for you to present your plan-
“Not mine, yours,” he corrected
"No, it will have to be yours," she answered.
“You know how folks are in the South—they think
all that women can do is cook and keep house and
bear children. If you want the thing to go, it'll be
best to make them think it's your scheme.”
- -
-
-
----
-
--
- -
--
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Kenneth demurred, but in vain. She would have
it no other way. She felt no jealousy. She knew
of the peculiar Southern prejudice which relegated
women to a position of eternal inferiority. Though
she felt the injustice of such arbitrary assumptions,
she did not resent it. Like all women, coloured
women, she realized that most of the spirit of revolt
against the wrongs inflicted on her race had been born
in the breasts of coloured women. She knew, and in
that knowledge was content, that most of the work of
the churches and societies and other organizations
which had done so much towards welding the Negro
into a racial unit had been done by women. It was
amusing to see men, vain creatures that they are,
preen themselves on what they had done. It was
not so amusing when they, in their pride, sought to
belittle what the women had done and take all the
credit to themselves. Oh, well, what did it matter?
The end was the all-important thing—not the means.
Jane appreciated Kenneth's thoughtfulness and felt
no tinge of jealousy if her idea—their idea—should
be a success in forming societies to help poor, help-
less Negroes out of the morass in which they were
bogged. Of such material has the coloured woman
been made by adversity.
She watched Kenneth as he told her the develop-
ments of which he had thought, the details he had
worked out. Each day, it seemed to her, Kenneth
became more keenly alive each day saw a brighter
sparkle in his eyes, a springiness in his step that had
not been there before. There are many men who

[ 167]


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could willingly have followed—and do follow-
without revolt or much inward conflict a course of
self-abnegation such as he had mapped out for him-
self. Not so, however, with Kenneth. He was al.
most puritanical in his devotion to the fixed moral
code he had worked out for his own guidance. It
was not a superimposed one, but an integral part of
his very being. Nothing could have induced him to
surrender to deliberate malice or guile or what he
considered dishonesty or cowardice. His was a sim-
ple nature, free from the barnacles of pettiness which
encumber the average man. He was not essentially
religious in the accepted meaning of the word. He
believed, though he had not thought much on the sub-
ject of religion, so immersed had he been in his be-
loved profession, in some sort of a God. Of what
form or shape this being was, he did not know. He
had more or less accepted the beliefs his environ-
ment had forced upon him. He doubted the malig-
nity of the God described by most of the ministers
he had heard. As a matter of fact, he was rather
repelled and nauseated by the religion of the modern
Church. Narrow, intolerant of contrary opinion,
prying into the lives and affairs of its communicants
with which it had no concern, its energies concen-
trated on raising money and not on saving souls, of
little real help to intelligent people to enable them
to live more useful lives here on earth, and centering
instead on a mysterious and problematical life after
death, he felt the Church of Jesus Christ had so little
of the spirit of the Christ that he had little


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patience with it. He went to services more as a
perfunctory duty than through any deep-rooted be-
lief that he could get any real help from them in
meeting the problems of life he faced. He bore the
Church no grudge or ill will—it simply was not a
factor in the life of to-day as he saw it.
Nevertheless he had a deep religious or, better, an
ethical sense. When he was about to return to Cen-
tral City, that ethical code had been adapted to con-
ditions he expected to find there. It was galling to
him to accept a position of subserviency to things he
knew were unjust and wrong, tacitly to admit his in-
feriority to men to whom he knew he was superior in
morals and training and in all the decencies of life,
solely because of the mere accident that they had
been born with skins which were white and he with
one which was not white. When doubts had as-
sailed him, he had quieted or salved his conscience
by the constant reminder that he was following such
a course for greater eventual good. On his return,
when he had found a course such as he had charted
for himself was becoming increasingly difficult, he
had refused to face the facts his mind told him were
true and had plunged more deeply into his work,
seeking in it an opiate. Only when Jane had con-
fronted him with the utter futility of his course and
had, in effect, accused him of being a moral quitter
in considering only himself and blinding himself to
the far greater problems of those so closely bound to
him by race, did his eyes begin to be opened. Wea-
ried of illusory hopes of peace through compromise,


[169]


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he had grasped the tangible reality of work towards a
definite end, through means which he had created and
which he would guide and develop as far as he could.
With the buoyant hopes and ambitions of the young,
especially of the very young, he felt that he had al-
ready created that which he was hoping to create.
Like a traveller who has lost his way in a dense for-
est, an indefinable restlessness had pervaded his be-
ing and made him sorely discontented. Now that he
had found what seemed the path which would lead
him into the clear, open air, the clouds of doubt and
perplexity were cleared away just as the bright sun,
as it bursts forth after a shower in spring, drives
away the moisture in the air.
They sat there in the warm sunlight of early sum-
mer, dreaming and planning all the great things they
were going to accomplish. It had rained earlier in
the morning and from the ground rose a misty va-
pour. The odour of warm wet earth mingled with
the aroma of the flowers. Hens scratched indus-
triously for food to feed the cluster of tiny chicks
around them. A cat sneaking along the fence slyly
crept near. With a great fluttering of wings and
raucous cackling, the hens drove him away. From
afar off came the voices of two women, resting for
a minute from their morning toil, gossiping with
much loud laughter. It was a peaceful, restful
scene. To Kenneth as he sat there, problems seemed
remote and out of place in that place where all was
so calm.
He looked at the girl by his side. It seemed
m their mort was a peacelems seemed
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THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
10
Jane had never looked more charming clad in her
bungalow apron, dust-cloth in hand. He was glad
she had made no silly, conventional excuses because
of her dress. The usual girl would have tried to
rush indoors and change her dress. Most women,
he reflected, looked like angels at night, but in the
harsh glare of morning looked terrible. Jane
seemed to him to be even prettier without powder
or the soft light of evening. He felt a thrill of
pleasure as he saw her dusting furniture in their
home.
They rose as Kenneth started to leave. Jane was
telling him of some trivial incident, but Kenneth
heard nothing of what she said. He turned towards
her suddenly.
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 eve-
ning, 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 Ken-
neth 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 blind-
ing, searing, devastating passion which swept every-
thing before it. She felt none of this passion and
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THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
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 be-
came 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 be-
gin 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 ex-
cellent antidote for undue pride and conceit. ....
The next evening the seven men met again at Mr.


[ 172 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
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 fol.
lowed in the wake of the Klan rides of the seventies,
the net result of similar rides to-day is a more de-

[173]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
termined 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 Ken-
neth, in a measure, that Tracy had received the
threat on the day it came. With such a reminder be-
fore them, the seven felt there was greater need than
ever before for organization for mutual protection.
They discussed means of protecting Tracy, but he
assured them he was amply able to take care of him-
self. He had sent his parents that day to stay with
friends until the trouble had blown over, telling them
nothing of the warning, as he did not want them to
be worried by it. Two of his friends had agreed to
stay with him at night. He was well supplied with
ammunition and was sure the three of them could
successfully repel any attack that might be made
upon him. Such trying periods have happened to
Negroes so frequently in the South that they have
become inured to them. The subject was soon
dropped.
Then Kenneth presented his plan. He outlined in
detail how the society should be organized. He
proposed that the first lodge be formed at Ashland,
then gradually spread until there was a branch in
every section of the county. They left until later
the problem of extending the society's activities to
other parts of Georgia and the neighbouring States.
Each member would be required to pay an initia-
tion fee of one dollar. Men would pay monthly dues
of fifty cents each, women twenty-five. The sums
thus secured were to be pooled. Half of the amount
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THE FIRE IN THE FLINT

was to purchase supplies like sugar, flour, shoes,
clothing, fertilizer, seeds, farm implements, and the
other things needed to satisfy the simple wants of the
members. To make up any deficit, Kenneth and
Mr. Phillips agreed to lend money that the supplies
might be purchased for cash, effecting thereby a
considerable saving. The other half was to be used
as the nucleus of a defence fund with which a test
case might be made in the courts when any member
was unable to secure a fair settlement with his
landlord.
Similarly were other details presented and dis-
cussed and adopted or modified. A name had to be
chosen. Kenneth would have preferred a short, sim-
ple one, but here he was overruled. That it might
appeal to the simple, illiterate class to which most
of the prospective members belonged, a sonorous,
impressive name was necessary. They decided on
“The National Negro Farmers' Co-operative and
Protective League.”
At first the plan was considered a bit too ambitious,
but as Kenneth warmed up to it in presenting it as
simply and forcefully as he could, the objections, one
by one, were overcome. One change, however, had
to be made. It came from Hiram Tucker.
“Ain't you figgerin' on havin' no signs and pass-
words and a grip like dey have with de Odd Fellers
and de Masons and de Knights of Pythias?” he
asked.
“I didn't think that was necessary,” replied Ken-
neth.

[175]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
"Well, lemme tell you somethin', son. Ef you
figgers on gettin' a big passel of these cullud folks
’round here to jine in with us, you'll have ť have
some 'ficials with scrumptious names, and passwords
and grips. Dese here ign'ant folks needs somethin'
like dat to catch their ’magination. If you put dat
in, they'll jine like flies 'round molasses."
Kenneth had hoped that the society would be run
on a dignified and intelligent basis, but he realized
that Hiram Tucker might be right after all. Most
of the share-croppers were ignorant—at least, illit-
erate. Mere show and pomp and colourful uni-
forms and high-sounding names played a large part
in their lives, which, after all, wasn't so much a ra-
cial as a human trait. Hadn't the Ku Klux Klan
outdone, in absurdity of name and ceremony and
dress, anything that Negroes had ever even thought
of?
This question was disposed of, after more discus-
sion, by the adoption of Hiram Tucker's suggestion.
Kenneth was appointed to work out the details of
organization, and the meeting adjourned. The Na-
tional Negro Farmer's Co-operative and Protective
League had been born.

[176]


CHAPTER XIII
THE days that followed were full of interest for
Kenneth and Jane. The constitution and by-
1 laws were drafted and approved and sent to At-
lanta to be printed by a coloured printing firm. Judge
Stevenson prepared the articles of incorporation and
did the necessary legal work, still refusing any pay
for his services. Kenneth had offered to pay him out
of his own pocket, but the judge told him: “Keep
your money, Ken, I c'n wait. I'm gettin' along in
years now and I've been hopin' that this problem
that's cursin' the South would be settled befo' I
passed on. But what with these damn fool Kluxers
kickin' up hell 'round here, I don't know whether I'll
see it or not. Your idea may do some good—I don't
know whether it will or not—but if I c'n help, let
me know." Kenneth thanked him and had been im-
measurably encouraged by the old man's attitude.
As soon as the literature they had ordered was re-
ceived, the first meeting was called by Tucker and
Tracy at Ashland. Jane and her father drove out
with Kenneth, who was to present the plan to the
group gathered. The meeting was held at a little
wooden church, whitewashed on the outside, and fur-
nished within only with rude benches. On the walls
were one or two highly coloured lithographs of reli-

[177]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
gious subjects. The hall seated not more than two
hundred and was crowded to capacity. Even the
windows were comfortably filled by those unable to
obtain a seat on the floor. The illumination was
furnished by four kerosene lamps attached to the
walls, two on each side.
Hiram Tucker acted as chairman, while Tom Tracy
took minutes of the meeting. After a preliminary
announcement of the purpose of the gathering by the
chairman, Kenneth was called upon to outline the
plan that had been proposed. At the outset, having
had no experience as a public speaker, he stumbled
and faltered and knew not what to do with his hands.
After a few minutes he jammed them into the side
pockets of his coat and, warming to his subject, swung
into a clear, forceful, and convincing recital of the
purpose and possibilities of the co-operative societies.
His enthusiasm became infectious. His audience be-
gan to share his zeal. Humble and lowly folks,
their vision limited by the life they led, they had the
feeling, as Kenneth talked on, of having been face to
face with a blank wall of immeasurable height and
impenetrable thickness. Under the spell of his
words they seemed to see the miraculous opening of
a door in this wall. Hope, which had been crushed
to earth year after year by disappointing settlements
for their labour, began to mount.
As for Kenneth, he had forgotten his self-imposed
inhibitions and prohibitions. Gone was the hesita-
tion and doubt. He had seen a light where he had
thought there was no light. His voice rang true and


[178]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
WATO
firm, and there was a look of eager earnestness on
his face as the pale, flickering light from the oil
lamps illumined it.
He finished with a flourish so dear to the hearts of
coloured audiences. It was what the old-style col-
oured preacher used to call “de 'rousements.”
"You husbands and sons and brothers, three years
ago you were called on to fight for liberty and justice
and democracy! Are you getting it?" He was an-
swered by a rousing “No!” “What are you going
to do about it?” he demanded. "Single-handed, you
can do nothing! Organized, you can strike a blow
for freedom, not only for yourselves but for count-
less generations of coloured children yet unborn!
No race in all history has ever had its liberties and
rights handed to it on a silver platter—such rights
can come only when men are willing to struggle and
sacrifice and work and die, if need be, to obtain them!
I call on you here to-night to join in this movement
which shall in time strike from our hands and feet
the shackles which bind them, that we may move on
as a race together to that greater freedom which
we have so long desired and which so long has been
denied us! Only slaves and cowards whine and beg!
Men and women stand true and firm and struggle
onwards and upwards until they reach their goal!”
He paused impressively while the audience sat mute.
He looked over the assemblage for a full minute and
then demanded in a ringing voice: “What do you
choose to be slaves or men?”
He sat down. A salvo of applause greeted him.


[179]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
A Daniel had arisen to lead them! Kenneth took
on a new importance and affection in the eyes and
minds of his hearers. He had heard their Macedo-
nian cry and answered it.
As he mopped his brow, Kenneth felt that he had
made a good beginning, although he was a bit
ashamed of having made so direct an appeal at the
end to emotion instead of to reason. At the same
time he knew that it had been necessary. " 'Rouse-
ments” were absolutely essential to awaken the re-
sponse needed to get the co-operative societies under
way. Without them his humble audience might not
have been aroused to the point of action that was so
necessary.
Following Kenneth, Mr. Wilson made a stirring ap-
peal to the crowd to come forward and give their
names if they wanted to join the newly formed so-
ciety. Those who had the money were urged to join
at once. At first, only a few came forward. Then
they came in numbers until around the table at which
sat Secretary Tracy there was an excited, chattering,
milling throng.
After the meeting Mr. Phillips accepted Mr. Wil-
son's invitation to ride home in his car. Kenneth
did not object-it enabled him to be alone with
Jane. They talked of the meeting as they walked
to the car. Jane gave Kenneth's hand a faint
squeeze. “Oh, Kenneth, you were splendid!” she
declared.
It was a perfect night—one created for making
love. A soft light filtered through the leaves of

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THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
the trees, casting a lace-like shadow on the earth.
The air was soft and languorous, as it can be only on
a spring evening in the South, as soft and caressing
as the touch of a baby's hands. From near at hand
came the mingled odour of honeysuckle and cape
jasmine and magnolia blossoms and roses. The
world seemed at peace. No sound disturbed the air
save the chattering and singing of a mockingbird, as
lovely as the sob of velvety, full-throated violins, and
the voices, growing fainter and fainter, of the crowd
leaving the now deserted church. It would have
taken a much stronger man than Kenneth to resist
the spell of so perfect an evening. He was not maw-
kishly sentimental—rather he detested the moon-
calfish type of man who rolled his eyes and whispered
empty, silly compliments in the ear of whatever girl
he met. On the other hand, he was amazingly ig-
norant of women. As a youngster he had been ex-
ceedingly chary of the little girls of the neighbour-
hood, preferring to spend his time playing baseball
or shooting marbles. This shyness had never en-
tirely left him. From his youth on he had had but
one strong passion in his life that passion had
possessed his every thought and in it was centred
his every ambition-his desire and determination to
become a great surgeon. His one serious venture
into the realm of love-making had been the affair with
the girl in New York, but that had not taken a strong
enough hold upon him to leave much of a mark. So
rapidly had it begun and ended that he had had in it
little experience in the great American sport of
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-
-
-
THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
“petting.” It was thus easy for him to fall head over
heels in love with Jane, for she was, in fact, the first
girl in his life outside of his sister who had come into
his life in more than a casual way.
Jane, on the other hand, had, innocently enough,
flirted as every pretty girl (and many who are not
pretty) will do. She appreciated Kenneth's fine
qualities: he was capable, industrious, and handsome
in a way. He annoyed her at times by his almost
bovine stupidity in expressing his love. She natu-
rally liked the idea of having the love of a man who
is naïve, who has not run the whole gamut of emo-
tions in affairs with other girls; yet, also naturally
enough, she did expect him to have at least some
savoir faire, to be able to win her with some degree
of the finesse that every girl wants and expects. She
resented his business-like matter-of-factness in seek-
ing her—as coldly calculating, it seemed to her, as
though he were operating on one of his patients. In
this she was doing him an injustice. Underneath
his surface placidity Kenneth's love had become a
raging flame_he cursed the shell of professional
dignity which had crossed over and become a part of
himself.
Thus they walked through the soft spring air, she
wishing he would do that which he in his ignorance
felt would be the unwisest thing he could attempt.
Thus is life made up of paradoxical situations where
a word, a look, an otherwise insignificant gesture,
would clear away at one fell swoop mountainous
clouds of doubt and misunderstanding.
-
-
- --
-- -
-
-
- ----
-
-
-
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Jane stood, one foot on the ground, the other on
the step, her hand resting on the opened door of the
car. A faintly provocative smile flitted over her
face. Kenneth longed to seize this elusive, seductive
girl in his arms, press her close to him, and tell her
of his love. She wanted him to. Instead he steeled
himself against yielding to the impulse that almost
overcame him, and helped her with complete decorum
into the car. ...
They did not say much on the way home. Jane
bade him good night, he thought somewhat coldly--
as though she were vexed. He told her he was leav-
ing the next morning for Atlanta to operate on Mrs.
Tucker. She made no comment. He wondered as
he drove home what he had done to offend her. ...
As he neared the house, he suddenly remembered
that he had promised to look in on old Mrs. Amos,
whose rheumatics” had been giving her considerable
pain. It was charity work, as she would never be
able to pay him. She had sent for him several times
during the day, but he had been kept so busy he
had had no time to go. He was annoyed at himself
for promising to call to see the quarrelsome old
woman who was far more dictatorial and exacting
than most of the patients who paid him promptly.
With a muttered imprecation at being bothered with
her just after his annoying experience with Jane and
her inexplicable behaviour, he drove through the
darkened streets to Mrs. Amos' home. He found her
sitting in a creaky rocking-chair. She began imme-
diately to pour maledictions on his head for neglect-
.
e.
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THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
ing her all day. He answered her shortly, gave her
her medicine, and left.
Carefully guiding the car through the gullies and
holes in the unpaved street, he set out for home.
Nearing the corner of Harris and State Streets, he
heard a sound as of several automobiles. He looked
down Harris Street just in time to see three closed
cars stop suddenly at the corner. From one of them
two white-robed figures descended, lifting a large,
black bundle that seemed exceedingly heavy. This
done, the figures jumped hurriedly into the car, and
it with the other two speeded away in the direction
from which they had come.
Kenneth, his curiosity aroused, turned his car
around and drove to the spot to see what was going
on. As he slowed his car at the corner, a muffled
groan came from the object lying there in the street.
Hastily getting down, he turned it over and in the
half-light found it to be the body of a human being.
His hands felt sticky. Holding them close to his
face, he found them smeared with tar.
He got from his car a small flashlight. Going
back to the inert mass, he turned the ray of light on
the body and found it to be that of a naked woman,
covered with tar yet warm to the touch. Between the
dabs of the sticky mess on the woman's back were
long welts, some of them bleeding, as though a heavy-
thonged whip had been applied with great force.
The hair was dishevelled and in its strands were bits
of the melted tar. Kenneth experienced a feeling of
nausea at the revolting sight. The woman lay on her
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THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
ancy
face. From her mouth and nose there ran a stream
of blood which already was forming a little pool be-
neath her face that became bloody mud as it mixed
with the dust in the road. Seizing her by her left
shoulder, Kenneth half raised the body and turned
his flashlight on the woman's face. It was Nancy
Ware, the wife of the Negro killed by George Parker.
Half carrying, half dragging the limp form, Ken-
neth managed in some fashion to get Nancy to her
own home a few doors away. The door stood open
as though Nancy had left it for a minute to call on
one of her neighbours. On the table in the front
room, there stood a lamp yet burning, the chimney
blackened with the soot caused by the wind blowing
upon it. Beside the lamp lay a garment on which
Nancy had been sewing.
Kenneth placed her on the bed and hurried next
door to summon help. His efforts were unsuccess-
ful. He pounded on the door with both fists, calling
out in his excitement to the occupants to open up.
After what seemed an infinite delay, a window to the
left of the door cautiously opened and an inquiring
voice wanted to know what was the matter. Seeing
who it was, the owner of the voice disappeared and
a minute later opened the door. Kenneth hastily
told what had happened, brushing aside a muttered
excuse that the delay in answering was due to the fact
that "I didn' know but whut you might 'a' been the
p’lice.”
On going back to Nancy's cottage, Kenneth gave
her a restorative and endeavoured to relieve her suf.

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fering. She began to revive after a few minutes.
In the meantime the neighbours called by Kenneth
arrived, and they removed as much as they could of
the tar from Nancy’s body. Kenneth then examined
her back, finding it covered with long and ugly gashes
that bled profusedly. He dressed them and Nancy
was arranged as comfortably as possible. He found
himself so tired after the hard work and excitement
of the day and evening that he was almost ready to
drop in his tracks. At the same time he had an un-
controllable desire to find out just what had happened
to Nancy Ware. He was almost certain the Ku Klux
Klan had done it, but he wanted to hear the story
from Nancy's own lips. The neighbours had gone,
with the exception of an evil-looking, elderly woman
who had volunteered to remain with Nancy until
morning.
After the application of restoratives regularly for
an hour, she began to show signs of returning con-
sciousness. Kenneth watched her eagerly. Five
minutes later her eyelids fluttered. She gave a low
moan-almost a whimper. Suddenly she cried out
in the terror of delirium: "Doan let 'em whip me
no mo'! Doan let 'em whip me no mo?!” and
writhed in her agony. She struggled to arise but
Kenneth, sitting by the side of the bed, managed with
the aid of the other woman to restrain Nancy and
calm her. Afterwards she became more rational.
Her eyes opened. In them was a gleam of recogni-
tion of Kenneth and he knew she was regaining
consciousness.

[186]


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mis mind.
Another wait. Then, at Kenneth's questioning,
she began to tell what had happened. For weeks he
had thought but little of her and the tragedy that
had taken place in this same house, other events
having crowded it out of his mind.
"Doc, you won't let 'em get me again, will you?"
she pleaded with a whimper like a child's. Ken-
neth assured her he wouldn't.
“Doc, I ain't done nuthin' t' them Kluxers. Hones'
ť Gawd, I ain't.” Kenneth told her soothingly that
he knew she hadn't.
"I was jes' sittin' here tendin' to my own business
when dey come a rap on de do'. W’en I open de
do', dere wuz two o dem Kluxers standin' dere—
befo' I could holler dey grab me and put a rag in
my mouf.” A shudder passed through her body as
the terror came back to her at the memory of what
she had been through.
"Dey put me in a automobile and ca’ied me way
out yonder in de woods by de fact’ry. Dey pull all
my clo’es off me and den dey whip me till I couldn'
stan' up no mo'. Den dey tell me I been talkin' too
much. Doc, I ain't said a word t nobdy 'cept dat
dey oughter do somethin't that man George Parker
for killin' my man Bud. ... Den dey po’ed tar all
over me and kick me and spit on me some mo'. ...
Said I oughter had mo' sense dan t talk ’bout no
white gemmen. Oh-oh-oh-ain't dey nothin' to
he'p us po' cullud fo’ks—ain't dey nobody-ain't
dey nobody?”
It was just as Kenneth had suspected. Good God,

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and these were the self-elected defenders of morals
in the South! What if Nancy wasn't all that she
should have been?—whose was the greater fault-
hers or George Parker's? He could see him now
in the bank—smug, a hypocritical smile on his face,
talking about what the white people have got to do to
stop these troublesome "niggers” from getting too
cheeky—about protecting "pure” Southern woman-
hood from attacks by "black, burly brutes.” And
the Klan with all its boasted and advertised chivalry
—twenty or thirty strong men to beat up and maltreat
one lone woman, because she "talked too much” about
the brutal, cold-blooded murder of her husband!
Kenneth's optimism over the organization of the co-
operative societies began to cool-in its stead there
came a blind, unreasoning hatred and furious rage
against the men who had done this deed to Nancy
Ware. God, but he would have given anything he
owned to get them all together and kill them one by
one-slowly, with all the tortures he could devise!
The damned, cowardly devils! The filthy, smug-
faced hypocrites!
Nancy was resting easily Kenneth, shaken by the
fury of his anger, more devastating because he knew
that he could do nothing but hurl silent imprecations
on the heads of those who had done this deed-im-
potent because his skin was black and he lived in the
South-went home to roll and toss during the few
hours of the night which remained before he took the
train to Atlanta.

[ 188 ]


CHAPTER XIV
T seemed to Kenneth he had just fallen into a
1 troubled slumber when he was aroused by the
tinkling of the telephone bell at the side of his
bed. It was Hiram Tucker.
“Doc, I reck’n you won't have to go t Atlanty to-
day, after all. My wife, she tol' me to tell you she's
changed her min' 'bout that op'ration. ... What's
dat? ... Naw, suh, she's kinder skeered she won'
wake up from dat chlo'form. ... Yas, suh, yas,
suh, I knows 'rangements been made but, Doc, you
ain't married, so you don't know nuthin' 'tall 'bout
wimmenfolks. . . . Some day you'll learn dat when
dey says dey ain't gwine do somethin' dey’s done sot
dere minds on not doing, dey ain't gwine ť do it. ...
Hello. ... Hello. ... Hello!”
But Kenneth had hung up. He telephoned the lo-
cal telegraph office to send a wire to the hospital in
Atlanta to cancel the arrangements he had made for
the operation on the following day, and tumbled back
in bed to sleep like a log until late in the morning.
He was awakened by Bob, who informed him that
the reception room was half filled with patients who
were no longer patient at being kept waiting so long.
He arose reluctantly, his eyes still filled with sleep.
Bob leaned against the wall, hands in pockets, and
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THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
looked at his brother with a smile of amusement.
Kenneth, not thoroughly awakened as yet, paid no at-
tention to him for a time, but at last noticed Bob's
smile.
“Why this early morning humour? I've seen
many 'possums with a more engaging smile then the
one that distorts your face now!” he half-grum-
blingly, half-cheerfully observed.
Bob but grinned the more at Kenneth's remark.
"I was just thinking that if Jane could only get
one glimpse of you in the morning before breakfast,
your chances would be mighty slim with her.”
"Jane? What have my looks to do with her?”
Kenneth retorted with some heat, in a vain attempt
to spar for time.
Bob addressed the world in general, calling on it
for some aid in understanding this brother of his.
“Jane?” he mimicked Kenneth's tone of surprise.
“You talk like a ten-year-old boy with his first love
affair. Isn't he the innocent one, though? Why,
you poor maligned creature, everybody in Central
City who isn't blind knows that you are head over
heels in love with Jane Phillips. And,” he added
as an afterthought, "those who are blind have been
told it. But to return to my original observation,
if there was some means by which, with all propriety,
all the girls in the world who are in love could see,
and be seen by, the poor boobs with whom they are
so infatuated, marriage-licence bureaus would be
closed that day, never to open again.” This last
with an omniscient air of worldly wisdom that caused
SO
IS
[ 190 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT

Kenneth to burst into a roar of laughter, while Bob
watched him, somewhat discomfited.
“What’re you laughing at?” he demanded in an
aggrieved tone. Kenneth laughed all the harder.
“Why, you poor little innocent, you haven't gotten
rid of your pin feathers, and yet you are talking as
though you were a philosopher like Schopenhauer.
You'd better wait until you finish school and see
something of the world. Then you can talk a little
—though only a little as you did just now. By the
way, it's about time for you to be planning for school
this fall. Still thinking about going back to
Atlanta ?”
“I don't know what I want to do,” was Bob's trou-
bled rejoinder. “I've seen too much of what's go-
ing on around this town since papa died to be satis-
fied with school again. I've probably seen more of
the real sordidness and meanness and deviltry of
this place since I've been settling up papa's affairs
than you'll see in five years. At any rate, I hope you
don't,” he finished somewhat doubtfully.
"Bob”—Kenneth walked over and put his arm
around his brother's shoulders—the trouble with
you is that you're too darned sensitive. I know
things aren't all they ought to be around here, but
we've got to buckle down and make them that way.
And perhaps I've seen more of this deviltry than you
think.”
He told Bob of what had happened to Nancy Ware
the night before. A long whistle of surprise es-
caped from Bob's lips.
[191]


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“And this happened right here in the coloured sec-
tion?” he asked in surprise. Kenneth nodded in
assent.
"I felt they were planning some mischief but I
didn't think they would have the nerve to come right
here in 'Darktown' and do it. I wonder,” he said
musingly, “if that dirty little Jim Archer who said
those filthy things to Minnie Baxter that day is a
member of the Klan. I passed him on Lee Street
this morning and he grinned at me like a cat that
has just eaten a fat mouse."
"He may be,” Kenneth replied. “Nancy Ware
told me last night she recognized the voices of Sheriff
Parker and Henry Lane and George Parker and two
or three other prominent white people here."
“That settles it,” Bob answered determinedly.
“When you first came back here I thought you were
foolish to do so after having been in France. I said
I was going to get out of this country as soon as I
could and live in France or Brazil or any old place
where a man isn't judged by the colour of his skin.
But I've decided that I'd be a coward if I did run
away like that. Ken,” he said in voice that showed
he had passed in spite of his years from childhood
into the more serious things of manhood, “I'm going
to Harvard this fall. I'm going to take whatever
course I need to get into the law school. I'm going
to make myself the best lawyer they can turn out.
And then I'm coming back here to the South like you
did and give my time to fighting for my people!”
Bob's eyes flashed. In them was a light of

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high resolve such a look as might have shone in
the eyes of Garibaldi or of Joan of Arc.
Kenneth said nothing, but he gripped Bob's hand
in his and there passed between the two brothers
a look of mutual understanding and sympathy that
was more potent and meaningful than words.
Kenneth went down to attend to his patients and
nothing more was said of the incident between them.
Bob took on a new interest in life. His moodiness,
his brooding over the constant irritations and insults
he had to suffer in his dealings as a coloured man
with the whites of the town, his resentment at the at-
titude of condescension on the part of the poor and
ignorant whites who had neither his intelligence, his
education, nor his wealth—all these disappeared in
his eager preparations for the new life he had
mapped out for himself. He already saw himself a
powerful champion of his race and he gloried in that
vision with all of the impetuosity and idealistic fer-
vour of youth.
As for Kenneth, he divided his time between his
practice, Jane, and the formation of more branches
of the N. N. F. C. P. L.
Kenneth knew there was nothing to be done towards
the punishment of the men who had so brutally
beaten Nancy Ware. He knew that it would even
be unwise for him to talk too much about it. If
Sheriff Parker was himself a member of the Klan,
reporting the outrage to him would be in effect a serv-
ing of notice that he was meddling in the affairs of
the Klan which might bring disastrous results at a

[193]


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0-
time when Kenneth was most anxious to avoid such
a complication, certainly until the co-operative so-
cieties were well under way and actively function-
ing. Much as he chafed under the restraint and at
his own impotence in the situation, Kenneth knew that
his interference would be a useless and foolhardy
butting of his head against a stone wall.
· It occurred to him to tell what had happened to
Judge. Stevenson. He could be trusted and was as
much opposed to the outlawry of the Klan as Kenneth
himself. The judge listened gravely to the end with-
out comment other than a question here and there.
“That looks worse than I thought,” he said half to
himself. “A few mo' cracks like that and there'll be
hell to pay 'round here. But 'twon't do no good for
you t meddle in it,” he observed in answer to Ken-
neth's question as to what he could do. "If Nancy's
right about Bob Parker being in it, your sayin' any.
thing will only set them on you. You'd better go
ahead and get your societies on their feet and then
you'll have somethin' behin' you. Then you won't
be playin' a lone hand.”
As for the coloured people, there were several
days of excited gossip over what had happened to
Nancy Ware. There was not much to go on, as she
had been so frightened by her terrible experience that
she refused for once to talk. The only tangible ef-
fect was that mysterious parcels marked with the
names of household implements began to arrive at
the homes of the coloured people, but which contained
fire-arms and ammunition. There was also a notice.

he observed ; do no good
question as t
[ 194]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
able tightening of the lips and the development of a
less cordial relationship between white and black.
Negroes, feeling that there was no help they could ex-
pect from the law, felt that their backs were being
slowly pressed against the wall. Within a few hours
the old esprit cordial between white and black had
been wiped out. Negroes who had been happy-go-
lucky, care-free, and kindly in manner began to talk
among themselves of “dying fighting” if forced to
the limit.
July came with all its heat. August passed with
yet more heat. With the coming of September there
had been formed in Smith County alone seven branch
societies of the Co-operative and Protective League
with a membership of more than twelve hundred.
Kenneth worked as one inspired, one who knew
neither heat nor cold, fatigue nor hunger. During
the day he was busy with his practice, but it mattered
not how busy he had been, he was always ready and
willing to drive five, ten, fifteen miles at night to aid
in establishing new branches or directing and guiding
and advising those already established.
The Ashland Branch, through the hard work of
Hiram Tucker and Tom Tracy, had enrolled three
hundred and fifteen members. In its treasury it had
$657.85, to which it was constantly adding as new
members were enrolled. At a meeting held during
the latter part of August the members decided that
they would forgo the purchasing of their supplies in
bulk that year but would use the money raised to-
wards prosecuting one of the cases of dishonest

[ 195]


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7
settlements when the time came for such settlements,
usually in December or January. This step was de-
cided upon after due and lengthy deliberation, as it
was felt that if they could end the cheating of the
farmers through court action, then these same farm.
ers would have more money through the settlement
of their accounts for the present season and could
then begin the co-operative buying and distribution
the following year.
News of the new society that was going to end the
unsatisfactory relations share-croppers had with
their landlords spread rapidly throughout the sur-
rounding counties. Letters, crudely and cumber-
somely worded and with atrocious spelling, came to
Kenneth and often individuals came in person to ask
that he come to their counties to organize societies
there. Kenneth was elated at this sign of interest.
He had expected a great deal of opposition from the
coloured farmers. Bickering and carping criticism
there was aplenty, but most of them regarded him
as a new Moses to lead them into the promised land
of economic independence. Minor disputes over
authority in the local societies there were in abun-
dance. But none of them was hard to settle, for the
members themselves were too eager to get out of
bondage to tolerate much petty politics and selfish-
ness on the part of their officers.
- As a loyal ally Kenneth learned to rely on Jane
more and more. Often she went with him to attend
meetings and to talk to groups not yet organized.
While Kenneth talked to the men, Jane circulated

[196]


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selves.
among the women, who were subtly flattered that one
so daintily clad and well educated should spend so
much of her time and energy talking to lowly ones
like themselves.
Her mother's health had not been of the best dur.
ing the summer. That had been throughout the sum-
mer her only worry. In August her mother had
suffered an attack of paralysis, her second one.
Jane decided to remain at home instead of going to
Oberlin to resume her music. Dr. Bennett had been
dismissed and Kenneth was now treating Mrs. Phil.
lips. During her more serious illness in August,
Jane often sat on one side of her mother's bed until
late in the night while Kenneth sat on the other,
ministering to the aged woman's wants. There came
a new and stronger feeling of companionship be-
tween the two. Often Kenneth would look up sud-
denly and catch in Jane's eyes a new tenderness.
Without knowing what it meant, he felt a subtly con-
veyed encouragement in them.
He had, however, spoken no word of love to her,
preferring to bide his time until a propitious occasion
arose. He had told her that he loved her—had he
not done so, she would have known—he was content
to wait until she could decide what she wanted to do.
At times the task was hard not to tell her again and
again of his love. Often as she sat by his side and
talked of inconsequential things, he would again be
seized by that consuming impulse to sweep away all
her objections and demolish by the very violence of
his love the obstacles that held him back from possess-
.
a
ew
[197]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
ing her. He found himself more and more filled
with a wonderment that bordered on dismay as he
tried to suppress this devastating longing with less
success every time this feeling came over him. He
tried staying away from Jane. At first he had seen
her but once a week and that on Sunday evenings.
Then he began dropping by to see her on Wednes-
days. Of late his visits had numbered three and
four a week. On those nights when he was away, he
was restless and irritable. This became so notice-
able that Mamie threatened jokingly one night to go
over and beg Jane to marry Kenneth or throw him
down hard or anything that would make him less like
a bear around the house. She and Jane had become
fast friends—which pleased Kenneth not a little, as
it meant that Jane would be more frequently in the
house than otherwise would have been the case.
As for Jane, in spite of herself, she found her.
self more and more interested in Kenneth and the
things he was doing. She found herself eagerly
looking forward to the evenings when he called. She
wondered if she were entirely honest in seeing so
much of him.
Why didn't Kenneth say something now? She
felt rather annoyed at him for being so consider-
ate. With a woman's prerogative of inconsistency,
she resented his obeying so implicitly her demand
that he wait until she had made up her mind. Men
were so silly—you told them to do a thing and they
went like fools and did it. Why didn't he talk about
something else besides his old co-operative societies
[ 198 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
ne
and the Ku Klux Klan and his old hospital and what
that old Judge Stevenson had said to him that day?
Life is such a funny thing.
But Kenneth went along his way, not even suspect-
ing what was going on in Jane's mind. He was like
the majority of men—wise in their own minds but
amazingly naïve and ignorant when they left the
beaten paths of everyday affairs.
The end of the first week in September came. Bob
had completed all arrangements to leave the follow-
ing week for Cambridge, there to take his entrance
examinations, after studying for them all summer.
Kenneth had written to an old friend there who had
made the necessary negotiations. Bob was an en-
tirely new individual from the one he had been when
Kenneth had returned to Central City. His air of
moody resentment had been replaced by an eager
earnestness to begin the course he had planned for
himself. The bond had grown closer between him
and Kenneth, and many hours they spent together
discussing and planning for the years to come. Of.
ten the two brothers and Mamie, sometimes Mrs.
Harper also, sat until far in the night talking of the
future. If Mamie felt saddened by the broader and
more active life her brothers were planning which
she, as a woman, was denied, it never showed on her
face or in her voice. She might have been married
long before in fact, there had been three or four
men who wanted to marry her. None of them would
she have. Decent enough men they were. But she
was unwilling to settle down to the humdrum life of

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marriage with a man so far beneath her in intelligence,
in ideals, in education. Being a normal, warm-
hearted human being, naturally she often pictured to
herself what marriage in Central City would be like.
\But, keenly sensitive and ambitious, she shrank from
marrying the type of men available, farmers, small
merchants, and the like—she shuddered when she vis-
ualized herself bearing children to such a man to be
brought up in a place like Central City. She yearned
for love and as steadfastly put it from her. There
are thousands of tragedies—for tragedy it is—like
Mamie's in the South, and the world knows it not.
When Kenneth or Bob teased her about marrying,
she answered him with a brave and all-concealing
smile-all-concealing, that is, to masculine eyes.
Only her mother and Jane knew her secret, and
their lips were sealed in the bond which women sel-
dom, if ever, break. ...
That night Jane looked better than Kenneth had
ever seen her look before. They seldom went out
except for a short ride in his car. For there was
no place to which they could go. Central City
boasted one place of public amusement—the Idle
Hour Moving Picture Palace. And to that no Negro
could go. Once they had admitted Negroes to the
gallery. None of the better element ever went, as
they had to go through a dark and foul-smelling alley-
way to reach the entrance they had to use. The type
of Negroes whose pride permitted them to go were so
boisterous and laughed so loud that even they were
soon barred.
eva
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As usual they sat on the vine-covered porch where
a breath of cool air was more likely to be had than
in the parlour. That day he had had one of his more
frequently recurring spells when he felt that he could
not keep his promise a day longer to wait until Jane
had made up her mind. At first he had thought of
telephoning her and saying that he was ill or busy—
any old excuse to stay away. But he wanted to see
her too much for that patent evasion. He would go
over to see her but would talk of nothing but busi-
ness or co-operative societies. That's it, he would
keep in “safe” territory. But Jane had never looked
more lovely than on that particular night. Ken-
neth's heart jumped as he greeted her after she had
kept him waiting just the right length of time. He
likened her instinctively to a flame-coloured flower
of rare beauty. All of the suppressed passion surged
upward in him. He felt himself slipping. He
turned away to gain control of himself. Had he not
done so, he would have seen the swift look of disap-
pointment on her face at his restraint.
Keeping his eyes resolutely in front of him, he
talked wearily and wearisomely of the meeting he
had attended the night before, of how troublesome
and irritating Mrs. Amos had been that day with her
rheumatism, of his having at last persuaded Mrs.
Hiram Tucker to go to Atlanta to have the operation
she had so many times postponed. Jane answered
him abstractedly and in monosyllables. At last she
moved, almost with obvious meaning, to the canvas
porch swing and there rested against the pillows piled
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throne!” he shouted. “We who hold in our hands
the future of civilization have been asleep! While
we have gone about our ways, the damn niggers are
plottin' to kill us all in our beds! Right now they're
bringing into our fair city great passels of guns and
ammunition marked ‘sewin' m'chines' and 'ploughs’!
They're meetin' ev'ry night in these nigger churches
all over the county and they're plottin' an' plannin'
to kill ev'ry white man, woman an'chile in this
county and take the lan' for themselves! They're
led by a damn nigger doctor right here in Central
City named Harper! I know it's so, 'cause another
nigger doctor named Williams tol' me yestiddy
mornin' all about it and said that this nigger Harper
was leadin' this vile plot! He's been goin' all over
the county stirrin' up the damn niggers and incitin'
them to murder all of us! What’re you men goin'
to do?” he challenged in a voice that shrilled in pre-
tended rage and terror.
A deep-throated roar answered him. Cries of
“Kill the bastards!” “Lynch 'em!” "Kill every
black bastard befo' mornin!” It was the age-long
voice of the mob bent on murder—the pack in full
cry. But it was more than the voice of the mob of
the Roman Colosseum, for that ancient cry was one
of pleasure at the death of a single Christian. This
was the shout of those intent on a wild, murderous
rampage that spared neither man, woman, nor child.
“Klansmen!”
A voice like that of a bull roared until the tumult
had subsided. It was the Exalted Cyclops of the

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Central City Klan. He stood in silence until the
group of hooded figures was still.
“The noble order of the Ku Klux Klan don't han-
dle situations such as this like a mob!” The figures
stood expectantly, eagerly waiting to hear what would
come next.
“We have listened to the story told by our fellow
Klansmen. Hol' yo’se’ves ready for the call of the
Invisible Empire at any minute. We have planned
the way to en' this dastardly plot and to punish those
responsible with death!”
“That's right! Kill 'em! Lynch 'em! Burn th'
bastards!” shouted the crowd.
“That'll be done till ev'ry one is killed!” promised
the Exalted Cyclops. “But it can't be done so's it
can be laid to our noble order! Already our ene-
mies are charging us with crimes! The Fed'ral Gov'.
nment will be down on our heads!”
There were cries of “Damn the Gov’nment!” from
some of the more hot-headed. But calmer judgment
prevailed. Something was to be done, but what that
ominous "something” might be, was not revealed.
Each man was to be ready for instantaneous duty
upon call of the Klan. Immediate action was not
wise, for the Klan investigators had not completed
their work. Action must wait until that had been
done, for it was essential that not one of the plotters
should escape.
This last point was emphasized. At last the crowd
became more calm with the determination to postpone
its vengeance until it was certain of being complete.
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The place was a darkened bedroom in the home of
Roy Ewing on Georgia Avenue, and the actors in it
were four in number. Roy Ewing, owner and
manager of the Ewing General Merchandise Store,
whom Kenneth had seen but little since Ewing had
discontinued his nocturnal visits to Kenneth's office,
was one of the actors. His wife, whose face still
bore evidences of a youthful beauty that was fast
fading, was a second. A third was old Dr. Bennett,
who sat by the bed, his hair dishevelled, his face
lined with perplexity and anxiety, as he apprehen-
sively watched the fourth actor in the drama, a girl
of nineteen who was restlessly tossing in pain on the
bed. Row Ewing stood at the foot of the bed. His
wife sat on the other side uttering little snatches of
phrases of soothing sympathy which her daughter did
not hear.
Dr. Bennett was plainly worried and at a loss what
to do to relieve the torture Ewing's daughter was
so clearly experiencing. He turned to Ewing.
“Roy, to tell you the truth, it don't seem like I
can find out what's the matter with Mary. When
she had that first attack, I thought she had appendi-
citis, but she ain't got no fever to speak of, so it can't
be her appendix that's botherin' her. Looks like ť
me she's got some sort of bleedin' inside, but I can't
tell.”
Ewing and his wife looked anxiously first at their
daughter, then interrogatively and pleadingly at the
old physician as he watched the sufferer in her con-

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He waved his hand vaguely towards the bed. As he
did so, he looked with keen appraisement at Ewing
in the dim light. He seemed to be debating in his
mind whether or not he dared take a very long
chance. If the chance would not be more disastrous.
If Mary's life might not be better lost than that!
Ewing almost stopped breathing as he saw the mo-
mentary indecision in the physician's face. Mrs. Ew-
ing saw none of this by-play, for she had sunk down
on the bed, where her body was shaken with the sobs
she could not restrain.
“There's jus' one chance t' save her,” Dr. Bennett
hesitatingly began. Ewing leaned forward in his
eagerness.
"There's jus' this one hope,” Dr. Bennett re-
peated, “but I don't know if you'd be willin' to take
that chance."
“I don't give a damn what it is!” Ewing shouted
in his anxiety. “I'll take it! What is it, Doc?
I don't care what it costs! What is it?" He quiv-
ered as with a chill in his excitement—the excite-
ment of the drowning man who sees a possible res-
cuer as he is about to go down for the third time.
Mrs. Ewing had stopped crying—she seemed as
though she had forgotten to breathe. They both
waited eagerly for the older man to speak. At last
he did. He paused after each word.
“Th’only — man — I know — near enough — to
op'rate-in time-is—a—nigger-doctor-here--
named-Harper!”
“Oh, my God!” groaned Ewing as he sank to his

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knees beside the bed and buried his face in his hands.
“A nigger—seein' my Mary—operatin' on her-
Good God! I'd rather see her dead than have a nig.
ger put his hands on her! No! No! No!" He
fairly screamed the last in his fury.
"I didn't think you'd do it,” said Dr. Bennett mis-
erably. “I jus' felt I oughter tell you. He's jus'
out of school-studied in one of the bes' schools up
No'th—and in France. He might save Mary—but
I can't blame you none for not havin' him.”
While he was speaking, Ewing jumped to his feet
and paced up and down the room like a caged and
wounded tiger. On the one hand was the life of his
daughter-on the other his inherent, acquired, en-
vironmental prejudice. None but those who know
intimately the depth and passion of that prejudice as
it flourishes in the South can know what torture
what a hell—what agony Ewing was going through.
Prejudice under almost any circumstances is hard
enough to bear-in Ewing's case his very soul was
tormented at such an unheard-of thing as a Negro
operating on his daughter.
“Roy!”
He turned abruptly at the sound of his wife's voice,
having forgotten for the time everything—wife, sur-
roundings, all—as he struggled with the problem he
faced.
"Roy!” Her voice was weak because of the or-
deal through which she was passing. She ran to him,
seizing his arm and looking up at him pleadingly.

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he thought was the matter. Ewing was sent from the
room. Kenneth rapidly examined the patient—and
decided that she was having severe internal hæmor-
rhages. It looked like an acute and dangerous case.
Immediate operation seemed the only hope. And
even that hope was a slim one. He informed Dr.
Bennett of his diagnosis.
Ewing was summoned. Briefly Kenneth told him
his theory of the trouble—that the only hope was
immediate operation. Ewing faltered, hesitated,
seemed about to refuse to allow it. At that moment
a loud scream of pain was wrung from Mary's lips.
He winced as though he had been struck. He
shrugged his shoulders in assent to the opera-
tion. ...
Kenneth telephoned Mrs. Johnson, the nurse who
had helped him before, to be ready to go with him
for an operation in ten minutes. He drove rapidly
home, secured his instruments, ether, sterilizer, gown
and other equipment, bundled them into his car,
called for Mrs. Johnson, explaining briefly to her the
nature of the case as he drove as rapidly as he could
to the Ewing home.
Mary was carried downstairs and placed on the
dining-room table. Dr. Bennett agreed to give the
anästhetic. Kenneth went rapidly, yet surely, to
work. In his element now, he forgot time, place, the
unusual circumstances, and everything else. Swiftly
he began the delicate and perilous task as soon as Dr.
Bennett had sufficiently etherized the patient.
Yet, even in the stress of the moment, he could not
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THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
pain she had suffered, had sapped her strength until
all resistive power was gone. Kenneth knew that
Dr. Bennett knew this too—even in the desperate
struggle he wondered what the other would say and
do—if the girl died. He tried to shake off the fear
that seized him—fear of what would happen if it
became known among the whites that Mary Ewing
had died while a Negro was operating on her. No
mortal could have done more. Even were that known
and admitted, it would not save him, Kenneth knew.
The tense situation became too much for him.
When he should have been steadiest, the double strain
on his nerves caused his hand to slip. Blood spurted
forth. Kenneth feverishly caught the bleeding artery
with a hæmostatic and sought to repair the damage he
had done.
“Tough luck,” muttered Dr. Bennett. Kenneth
looked up at him. The older man grunted and
smiled_encouragingly. A burden seemed lifted
from Kenneth's shoulders. Mrs. Johnson wiped the
perspiration that streamed from Kenneth's face. She
seemed endowed with a sixth sense that told her his
needs almost before he was aware of them himself.
It was a strange sight. Anywhere in America.
In Georgia it was amazing beyond belief. A white
woman patient. A white anæsthetizer. A black
nurse. A black surgeon. ...
All things must come to an end. Kenneth rapidly
sewed up the incision. He bandaged the wound
tightly. She yet breathed.
Kenneth opened the door and admitted Ewing, who


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had paced the hall since the operation began. Every
minute of the hour he had been there, he had had to
fight hard to keep himself from bursting into the room
and stopping the operation. He had been restrained
by the positiveness with which he had been ejected
from the room by Kenneth—there was something in
the physician's air that had warned him without
words that he must not interfere. Something within
him told him Kenneth was right-knew what he was
doing. The colour and race of the surgeon had been
almost forgotten in the strange circumstances.
“Will she live?” he asked, his words whispered in
so hoarse a tone they could hardly be heard.
“I don't know—it'll be forty-eight hours before we
can tell—if she lives that long," answered Kenneth.
The strain had been greater than he had known.
Kenneth felt a strange weakening—lassitude gripped
his body—he felt a nausea that came with the reac-
tion after the mental ordeal. Ewing stood by the
table on which lay his child. Tears which he forgot
to wipe away stood in his eyes as he watched her
laboured breathing. Dr. Bennett put his hand on
Ewing's shoulder.
“He did all he could!” he declared, nodding at
Kenneth. There was admiration in the old doctor's
voice.
Ewing rushed off to give the news to his wife. ...
The three men carried the unconscious form to her
room. With a short “Good night” to Dr. Bennett,
Kenneth left the house with Mrs. Johnson and drove
away. ...

[217]


CHAPTER XVI
HE following day Kenneth was kept busy ar-
ranging his affairs in order to leave the follow-
ing morning for Atlanta for the operation on
Mrs. Tucker. It had been a most difficult task for
him to persuade her to have it done. He had been
at last successful when he made her realize that it
would mean either the operation or death. She
dreaded the trip to Atlanta but Kenneth refused to
perform the operation except at a hospital and there
was none nearer than Atlanta at which a Negro could
operate.
During the day he had been kept so busy that he
had not had time to go out of the coloured section
except once, and that when in the late afternoon he
drove through Lee Street to see how Mary Ewing was
faring. He had been so busy with his own thoughts
that he had paid little attention to the whites who
were standing around on the streets. He did not see
the threatening and hostile looks they gave nor did
he notice the excited whispering and muttering when
he came into their sight.
Ed Stewart had partly told the truth at the meeting
of the Klan when he said that Dr. Williams had in-
formed him of the organization Kenneth and the
others were forming. Kenneth had seen little of the

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pompous and intensely jealous physician since the
time when he had forced Dr. Williams to assist him
in the appendicitis operation on Mrs. Emma Bradley.
Kenneth had felt nothing but an amused contempt
for his fellow-practitioner, for he knew that Dr. Wil-
liams covered his deficiencies in medical knowledge
and skill with the bombastic and self-important air
he affected.
Dr. Williams, on the other hand, had never for-
given Kenneth for the incident in which Kenneth had
shown him up in a manner that injured the former's
pride far more than Kenneth had suspected. Dr.
Williams felt that the younger man had deliberately
and with malice aforethought offered a gratuitous in-
sult to him as dean of the coloured medical profession
of Central City, though that profession numbered but
two members. Kenneth's success as a physician in
Central City, having taken as he had some of the best
of Dr. Williams' own patients whom he had consid-
ered peculiarly his own, the insult plus Kenneth's
success had rankled in his breast until, being of a
petty and mean disposition, he hated the younger
man with a deep and vindictive hatred.o.o
He had not, however, intended that his conversa-
tion with Ed Stewart should assume the proportions
that it eventually did. On the day before the meet-
ing of the Klan at which Kenneth had been named as
the one responsible for the organization of the Ne-
groes, Dr. Williams had met Ed Stewart driving out
along a country road near Ashland. Williams was
returning from making a professional call in that

[219]


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neighbourhood. Stewart, a big, raw-boned, and
lanky“Cracker” or “Peck," as they are called by
Negroes in the South, was going to inspect the cotton
crops of his tenant-farmers, that he might estimate
how big the crops would be and might know accord-
ingly how large the tenants’ bills should be for sup-
plies furnished.. .
They had stopped to pass the time of day and for
Stewart to find which of the Negroes on his place was
sick. He wanted to know if that sick one was too
sick to work the crop, as the loss of even one worker
during cotton-picking time was serious, what with the
number of Negroes who had gone North. Having
gained the information, he started to question Dr.
Williams in a way that he thought was exceedingly
adroit and clever, but through which ruse the col-
oured doctor saw instantly and clearly.
“Say, Doc, you know anything 'bout these niggers
'round here holdin' these meetin’s nearly ev'ry night?
Seems t me it's mighty late for them to be holdin'
revival services and indo' camp-meetin’s?” he queried
in as casual a tone as he could manage.
An idea sprang full-grown to Williams' mind.
Kenneth Harper was getting far too popular through
the organization of his co-operative societies. Wil-
liams was shrewd enough to see that if they were as
successful as they gave promise of being, Kenneth
would be the leading Negro of the town, if not of
that entire section of Georgia. And correspondingly
he, Williams, would become less and less the promi-
nent figure he had been before Kenneth had come


[ 220 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT

rea
in
long to an eternally ordained “superior race," seldom
realize how often and how easily they are taken in
by Negroes. Williams enjoyed the look of concern
that had come to Stewart's face at his words.
“What's goin' on, Doc?” he asked in an eager tone,
from which he tried with but little success to keep the
anxiety that he felt.
“Heh, heh, heh!” laughed Williams in a throaty
chuckle. “These Negroes are figurin' on takin' some
of these landlords to court that's been cheatin' them
on their crops. Of course,” he added hastily, “that
don't need to worry you none, Mr. Stewart, but from
what I hear, there are some 'round here that the news
will worry.”
Stewart flushed, for he was conscious of a vague
feeling that Williams might have been indirectly hit-
ting at him when he had said that the court proceed-
ings wouldn't affect him. He fell back on the old
custom of flattering and praising fulsomely the Negro
from whom a white man wants information regarding
the activities of other Negroes. Williams, like ev-
ery other Negro in the South, knew what value to
put on it, but he was playing a far deeper game than
Stewart suspected.
“Doc, why ain't all these niggers good, sensible
ones like you? If all the niggers in the South were
like you, there never would be any trouble.”
“That's right, Mr. Stewart, that's right. As I was
sayin' to some of the folks out your way this mornin',
they'd better stop followin' after the fool ideas of
these coloured men who've been up No'th.”

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ook on a trouble were to school
He looked at Stewart shrewdly and appraisingly to
see if he had penetrated the subtlety of his remark.
Stewart, slow of thought, had not fully done so, it
seemed. Williams continued:
"You see, it's like this, Mr. Stewart. Folks like
you and me could live here for a hundred years
and there'd never be no trouble. There'd never be
no race problem if they was only like us. But” —
and his voice took on a doubtful and sorrowful
sound—“the most of this trouble we're havin' is
caused by fool Negroes who go up No’th to school
and run around with those coloured folks in New
York and Chicago who tell 'em how bad we po' col-
oured folks are bein' treated in the South. They
get all filled up with 'social equality ideas, and then
they come back down here and talk that stuff to these
ignorant Negroes and get them all stirred up "
Stewart was seeing more clearly what Williams
was driving at.
“I see,” he said reflectively. “I alw’ys said too
much education sp’iled niggers—that is, some nig-
gers," he added hastily for fear Williams might take
offence before he had done with him. “Co’se it
don't bother sensible ones like you, Doc.” The last
was said conciliatingly. “Let's see, mos' this trou-
ble's stahted since that other doctor's been back, ain't
it?” he asked as casually as he could.
“I ain't sayin' who's doin' it,” replied Williams as
he started the engine of his car. “But you're a good
guesser, Mr. Stewart,” he threw back over his
shoulder as he drove away. ...


[ 223 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
Stewart clucked to his horse and rode in deep
thought down the road. His mind was busy devising
schemes to circumvent the action of the societies to
take into court men like himself who had been rob-
bing Negroes. They'd lose in the local courts, he
knew, but suppose they raised enough money to take
a case to the United States Supreme Court. No, that
would never do! He'd see Parker and talk it over
with him right away! He put the whip to his horse
and drove rapidly into town. Mustn't let the damn
niggers organize, that would be hell! ..
Kenneth was going about his business on the day
following the meeting of the Klan that had been
caused by Dr. Williams' talk with Stewart, in bliss-
ful ignorance of the storm rapidly gathering about
his head. His mind was intent on a number of
things—but trouble on account of the co-operative
societies was furthest from his mind. Had he been
told there was any trouble, such news would probably
have been greeted with a laugh of unconcern. All
the white people of the South weren't scoundrels and
thieves like Stewart and Taylor and their kind!
They were but a few. Besides the poor whites, the
majority of whites would undoubtedly heartily ap-
prove his plan when it had been developed to the
point where it could be made public.
But Kenneth thought of none of those things. His
mind was too full of other events that loomed on the
horizon. First, of course, he thought of Jane. He
thought of his great good fortune in knowing a girl
like her. There was a girl for you! He thought of


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THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
the home he would build for her—he was mighty glad
his father had been in fairly comfortable circum-
stances and that he had been successful in his prac-
tice. He would be able to build a mighty nice home
for Jane. They wouldn't bother with the cheap and
flashy furniture, fumed oak or mission, to be ob-
tained in Central City. Oh, no! Soon's Mrs. Phil-
lips was better, the three of them would go to Atlanta
and buy everything they needed there. They'd have
the best-looking home in Central City, white or col-
oured! His mother and Mamie wanted him to bring
Jane into the house. He might do that ... but the
house which had seemed so comfortable before, now
seemed too ordinary to bring a girl like Jane to. ...
He'd talk that over with her to-night. ... And then
after a time there might be a little Jane ... and a
Kenneth, Jr. . . . Kenneth laughed softly to himself
as he saw Jane and himself sitting by the fire of an
evening with two little rascals playing on the
floor. . . . And later they'd go off to school. He'd
see that they got the best there was in life. ... So
his thoughts ran.
And then he thought of Roy Ewing and the opera-
tion of the night before. Must have been a mighty
terrible ordeal for them to have to call a Negro in
to operate on their daughter. Race prejudice is a
funny thing! A white man will eat food prepared
by black hands, have it served by black hands, have
his children nursed by a black nurse who most of the
time was more a mother to them than their own
mother, let his clothes be taken into a black home to
[ 225 )


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
petuously, enthusiastically—with all the glorious
dreams of youthful love. All the little things—lit-
tle, but so great when one is young and in love they
said to each other. The things they said when the
Pyramids were being built. The things they will say
a thousand years from now.
To-night there were no warning signals from Mr.
Phillips when ten o'clock came. He had been glad,
and had said so, when Kenneth asked him for Jane.
“We don't feel we're losing a daughter-we're gain-
ing a son instead!” he had said.
They talked on until there was no other sign of
life discernible in the neighbourhood, save for the
passage of a prowling cat, or the sound of the crickets
in the grass. At last he had to go. Early the next
morning he was to leave for Atlanta with Mrs.
Tucker. Three days he was to be gone. He would
return on Friday.
In October they were to be married. Mrs. Phil.
lips' health was not improving as they had hoped.
She was cheerful but she wanted Jane to be happily
married before she died. They had decided to live
at his house with his mother and Mamie. They'd
refurnish it and do over all the rooms. Later on,
when he had made lots of money, they'd build.
Mamie and Jane and Kenneth were to go to Atlanta
the latter part of September, there to buy the furni-
ture and all the other things, they would need. Mrs.
Phillips was too ill to stand the strain of the long
journey and the excitement of the shopping.
Jane tiptoed into the house so as not to wake her
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mother. She returned in a few minutes with a fluffy
white mass in her arms. It was her wedding-gown
which she was to make herself. They sat silent for
a minute at the token of what it meant.
Tears stood in Jane's eyes when he went down the
stairs. He saw them when he looked back to say the
last soft good-bye.
“Three days is an awful long time,” she said
plaintively.
Of course, there was nothing else for him to do
but go back up the steps and kiss her good-bye all
over again. ...
[ 228 )


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ment or terrible misfortune. He went out in the hall
and leaned over the balustrade, the better to find
out what was the matter.
It was Mamie and his mother. He looked puz-
zled, for he could think of nothing to make Mamie
cry that way. His mother was trying to soothe and
calm her as Mamie told her the cause of her weeping.
Bob crept down the stairs as softly as he could to
hear.
Mamie between sobs was telling her mother of
some accident that had befallen her.
“I had been—to Ewing's Store and that Jim
Archer—and Charley Allen—and two or three other
white boys—that hang around Ewing's Store—said
nasty things to me when I came out—I hurried
home they must have followed me ."
Here she broke down again while her mother
crooned softly to her, pleading with her not to cry
so hard. Mamie choked back her sobs and went on.
Bob's face became terrible to see. He hung there on
the steps almost breathless, waiting, and dreading
what he felt was coming.
“At that old field-near the railroad—they jumped
out—and grabbed me oh, my God! My God!
Why didn't they kill me? Why didn't they kill me?”
Mamie's screams were horrible to hear. “Then-oh,
God! God help me!”
For a minute Bob stood there as one frozen to the
spot. Then a blind, unreasoning fury filled him.
He ran up the stairs to Kenneth's room and got the
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revolver he knew Kenneth kept there. Without hat
or coat he ran down the stairs. Out the door and
down the street. Mamie and her mother were roused
by his action. Mamie, lying on the floor with her
head in her mother's lap, her clothes torn and bloody,
her face and body bruised, struggled to her feet.
She ran to the open door through which Bob had
disappeared.' An even greater terror, if such was
possible, was on her face.
"Bob! Bob! Come back! Come back!” she
cried in ever louder cries.
“Bob! Bob!"
But Bob was too far away to hear her.
In front of Ewing's Store there sat a group of nine
or ten men and boys. They were gathered around
one who seemed to be relating a highly interesting
and humorous story. Every few minutes there'd be
a loud laugh and a slapping of each other on the
back. Suddenly, silence. A hatless and coatless
figure was running down the street toward them. The
group opened as its members started to scatter. In
the middle of it there stood Jim Archer and Charley
Allen. The former had been telling the story.
Bob walked straight up to Jim Archer, whose face
had turned even paler than its usual pasty colour.
He turned to run but it was too late. Without say-
ing a word, his eyes burning with a deadly hatred,
Bob raised the revolver he had in his hand and fired
once—twice-into Archer's breast. Charley Allen
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THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
rushed upon Bob to overpower him. He met head-on
the two bullets that came to meet him, and fell gasp-
ing and coughing on the ground at Bob's feet.
The rest of the crowd had fled.
Without hurrying, Bob stepped into a Ford deliv.
ery truck that had been left at the curb, its engine
running. Before the crowd which with miraculous
suddenness filled the street could stop him, he drove
straight down Lee Street, turned into Oglethorpe
Avenue, and headed for the country beyond the
town. ...
Three miles out of town the Ford spluttered,
coughed, shook mightily, and stopped. Its gaso-
lene tank was empty. Shoving it into the underbrush
on the side of the road, far enough to be out of sight,
Bob ran on. If he could only get across country
as far as the railroad going North, he might be able
to get to Macon, where he could hide. When the
excitement died down, he could go on farther North.
Perhaps he could eventually reach Canada. He
fought his way through brushes, across vast fields of
cotton that seemed to have no end. Near midnight
he could go no farther. He had eaten nothing since
breakfast—he had been too excited over his packing
to eat any dinner. Bitterly he thought of the change
a few hours had brought forth. Twelve hours
before, he had been eagerly planning to leave for
school. Now, his sister ruined, he a murderer twice
over—fleeing for his life! He hoped that he had
killed both of them! It would be too ironical a
fate for them to live. . . . He thought for a moment
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for the “Crackers”! One for me! Bang! Bang!
Got another! Must reload! One-two-three
four! Nearly all gone! Five-ten-fifteen min-
utes to live! Why did they pick on Mamie?
Whyn't they take one of those girls that live in those
houses on Butler Street? That's always running
around after men? Why'd they bother a nice girl
like Mamie?
Bang! Listen at 'im howl? That's music for
you! Listen to the damn “Peck” squalling!
What's th’ matter? Looks like they've gone! Won-
der if I can make a run for it? Th’ damn cowards!
Fifty-one hundred—a thousand—five thousand-
to one! That's the way “Crackers” always fight
coloured folks! Never heard yet of one “Cracker”
fighting one Negro! Have to have thousan' to kill
one little fellow like Bob Harper!
Smoke? Can't be smoke! Yes, it is! Goin' ť
burn me up! Bang! Bang! Got one of 'em!
My God! Only one bullet left! Never take him
alive! Lynch him! Might burn him! Burned
coloured boy last month ’n Texas! Better not let
’em get him! Good-bye, everybody! Good-bye!
Good-bye! Good — Bang ....
It was some time after Bob had died before the
posse dared enter the barn which by this time was
burning rapidly. They feared the cessation of fir-
ing was only a ruse to draw them into the open. At
last, after riddling the burning structure with bullets,
a few of the more daring cautiously approached the
barn, entered, and found Bob's body. After the bul.
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let from his own gun had entered his head, killing
him instantly, his body had fallen backwards from
the box on which he had been sitting. His legs were
resting on the box, his thighs vertical, his body on
the floor and his head slightly tilted forward as it
rested against a cow-stall. His arms were wide-
spread. The empty revolver lay some ten feet away,
where he had flung it as he fell backwards. His
face was peaceful. On it was a sardonic smile as
though he laughed in death at cheating the howling
pack of the satisfaction of killing him.
The mob dragged the body hastily into the open.
The roof of the old barn was about to fall in. Be-
fore dragging it forth, they had taken no chances. A
hundred shots were fired into the dead body. Partly
in anger at being cheated of the joy of killing him
themselves. They tied it to the rear axle of a Ford.
Howling, shouting gleefully, the voice of the pack
after the kill, they drove rapidly back to town, the
dead body, riddled and torn, bumping grotesquely
over the holes in the road. ...
Back to the public square. In the open space be-
fore the Confederate Monument, wood and excelsior
had been piled. Near by stood cans of kerosene.
On the crude pyre they threw the body. Saturated
it and the wood with oil. A match applied. In the
early morning sunlight the fire leaped higher and
higher. Mingled with the flames and smoke the
exulting cries of those who had done their duty—they
had avenged and upheld white civilization. ...
The flames died down. Women, tiny boys and
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girls, old men and young stood by, a strange light on
their faces. They sniffed eagerly the odour of burn-
ing human flesh which was becoming more and more
faint.
... Into the dying flames darted a boy of twelve.
Out he came, laughing hoarsely, triumphantly ex-
hibiting a charred bone he had secured, blackened
and crisp. . . . Another rushed in. . . . Another.
... Another. . . . Here a rib. . . . There an arm-
bone. ... A louder cry. ... The skull. ...
Good boy! Johnny! ... We'll put that on the
mantelpiece at home. ... Five dollars for it,
Johnny! ... Nothin' doin'! ... Goin' to keep it
myself! ...
The show ended. The crowd dispersed. Home
to breakfast.
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hell. Ev'ry nigger out my way would go through
hell 'n' high water for him. Never seen 'em think
so much of another nigger befo’. Mos' the time
they'll come and tell me ev'rythin' that any them
other niggers doin'. This nigger Harper's got 'em
hoodooed or somethin'."
The sheriff broke into Stewart's monologue in a
complaining, reminiscent fashion:
“Don't know what's gettin' into the niggers nowa-
days. They ain't like they useter be. Take this
nigger's daddy, f'r example. Old man Harper was
as good a nigger's I ever seen. If he met you on
the street twenty times a day, he'd take off his hat
’n’ bow almos' to the groun' ev'ry time. But these
new niggers, I can't make heads nor tails of 'em.
Take that uppity nigger they burned this mornin'.
Always goin' 'round with a face on 'im like he's swal-
lowed a mess of crabapples. What if that Jim
Archer did have a little fun with the nigger's sister?
'Twon't hurt a nigger wench none. Oughter be proud
a white man wants her.”
His voice took on at the next remark a tone of
pained and outraged surprise.
“Nigger gals gettin' so nowadays they think
they're's good as white women! And what 'chu think
that old fool Judge Stev’nson said t me to-day?
Had the nerve ť sayť me that he don't blame that
nigger Bob for killin' Jim Archer!”
He demanded of his companions in an almost ludi-
crous surprise: “What's goin't come of the South
when white men like the judge say such things?
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wold. An' then the one's mos' likely to raise the
mos' fuss is Roy Ewing. He thinks a lot of that
nigger lately for some reas'n. Ain't been able ť
figger it out as yet, but he sets a heap by him." He
scratched his head in an abstracted manner. “Tol
me over tº the sto' yestiddy that this Harper's a fine
type of nigger ť have 'round Central City 'n' that we
oughter encourage other niggers to be like him.”
“Another one gettin' ol and weak-minded befo'
his time!" was Stewart's comment. "But I want ť
know if we're goin' to sit here all night talkin' 'bout
things that's goin' ť keep us from punishin' this
nigger or if we're goin' to get down to business.
Fust thing we know, we'll be 'lectin' this nigger mayer
the town!” His sarcasm was thinly veiled, if veiled
at all. Parker and Lane showed by the sudden flush
on their faces that the shot had reached its mark.
“You don't have to be so cantankerous ’bout it,
Ed.” Parker showed in his voice, as well as on his
face, that he didn't particularly care for Stewart's
brand of irony. “You know we're jus' as anxious
as you to get rid of him. But we got to be careful.
You live out in the country 'n' you don't know the
situation here in town like me 'n' Henry.”
He sat meditatively for a time. Stewart fidgeted
in his chair, and Henry Lane sat lost in thought.
Parker suddenly sat up eagerly.
“I got it!” he exclaimed. The others looked at
him inquiringly.
“We'll fix it so's we can say that Harper insulted
a white woman!”
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His companions looked slightly disappointed and
doubtful.
“How're you goin' t' do that?” asked Lane. “This
nigger, as fur's I can see, since he been back's been
stayin' out where he b’longs in the nigger section.
Only time he comes over this way’s when he comes
to the bank or the sto’ or here to th' court-house.
That's one thing I can say in his fav’r! Bein'in
France ain't sp’iled him none so fur’s white women's
concerned. If he ran around with them Frog women,
he never tried any of it 'round here."
"It ain't necessary for him to bother with white
women in Central City for us to put that on 'im,"
Parker declared defensively. “Nearly all white
folks ev’n up No’th b’lieves that ev'ry time a nigger's
lynched down this a way, its 'cause he's raped a white
woman.” His manner became triumphant. "Here's
how we'll fix it.”
The three men, although they were alone in the
dark court-house and there was none to hear, drew
their chairs together. Their heads were close for
more than ten minutes, while they talked excitedly
together. Occasionally there would be a low burst
of laughter—again an oath. At last Stewart rose,
took a paper-bound book from the desk, copied for
some time from it, and left the court-house.
The next morning each of fifteen “white, Protes-
tant, Gentile” citizens of Central City received a let-
ter. There was no writing of any sort on the envel.
ope save their names and addresses. They were of
ordinary quality such as can be purchased at five
1A
[ 242 ]


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cents a package in any cheap stationery store. In
it was a letter typed on plain paper, of a quality to
match the cheapness of the envelope. There was no
printing of any sort on the letter, nor was it addressed
other than: “Dear Sir.” It read:
Nation. Thet, to meet a situas one known to be ha
“DEAR SIR:
“You have been chosen, as one known to be loyal, brave,
and discreet, to meet a situation affecting the welfare of the
Nation, the State, and the Community. You are hereby
commanded to be present at the time and place and date
given on the enclosed card.
"Be wise! Be discreet! Discuss this with no one!
Fail not!
“THE COMMITTEE.”
There was a plain card enclosed, also of cheap and
easily obtained quality, on which was typed a date,
time, and place. ....
Mirabile dictu, each of the fifteen recipients of
this cryptic missive was a Ku Klux Klansman. ...
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--- ......
.
that would keep him engaged all afternoon, it was
decided that they should meet that evening at an
office in a building downtown in the business section.
It was with a deal of eagerness—and with some de-
gree of anxiety, for he did not know how he would
be received by Dr. Scott and the others—that Kenneth
set forth that evening for the meeting. He found
three men awaiting him in the office of John Anthony,
who was one of the three. His footsteps echoed in
ghostlike fashion as he walked down the hallway of
the deserted building. From the open window there
floated from the street below the subdued clatter of
automobiles, the cries of newsboys, the restless shuf-
fling of the leisurely crowd as it moved up and down
Peachtree Street. Kenneth sought to weigh the three,
who were, he felt, representatives of that “new
South” of which so much was heard, but signs of
whose activities he had so seldom seen. He was
seeking to find out their motives, their plans of ac-
complishing that spirit of fair play toward the Ne-
gro, to determine how far they would go towards
challenging the established order that was damning
the South intellectually, morally, economically.
Kenneth, with too-high ideals for his environment,
was almost naïve in his eager search for the great
champion he had dreamed of who would brave dan-
ger and contumely and even death itself for a newer
and brighter day for his people in the South. That
hope had been dulled somewhat by the things he had
seen since his return to Central City, for he was not
of an unreflective mind. Yet he had not seen far
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enough beneath the surface of that volcano of pas-
sion and hate and greed which is the South to realize
that the South had never produced a martyr to any
great moral cause one who had possessed sufficient
courage to oppose, regardless of consequences, any
one of the set, dogmatic beliefs of the South. True
it was that there were some who had fought in the
Civil War with firm belief that the South was right-
even though it had been shown that their idealism was
a perverted one. But even then these had moved
with the tide of sectional sentiment and not against
it.
Educated in Southern schools where the text-books
of history always exalted the leaders of the Confed-
eracy, raising Lee and Jackson and Johnston and
Gordon to heights but little lower than the heroes of
Grecian mythology, and ever tending to disparage
and revile the Union cause and its leaders, Kenneth,
like many coloured youths, had accepted the ready-
made and fallacious estimates set before him. It
was, therefore, but natural that he set his hopes for
stalwart, unafraid leadership too high and, at the
same time, failed to realize that the South had never
begotten an Abraham Lincoln, a Garrison, a Sumner,
or even a meteor-like John Brown, bursting into bril-
liance born of indignation against stupidity or igno-
rance or wrong and dying gloriously for that cause.
Kenneth's eyes had partially been opened by his
memorable talk with Judge Stevenson. Etched upon
his mind by the acid of bitter truths were the judge's
words that the boasted Anglo-Saxonism of the South
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had curdled into moral cowardice on all subjects by
the repression incident to the race problem. Never-
theless Kenneth was too inexperienced as yet in the
ways of life to comprehend the full import of the
older man's cynicism. He yet sought him who would
fulfil his ideal of a great leader who, like a latter-
day Crusader, would guide white and black together
out of the impasse in which the South seemed to be.
Kenneth thus anxiously examined the three before
him to see if by chance any one of them bore the ac-
colade which would stamp him the Moses that he
sought.
Naturally enough, his eyes first went to Dr. Scott,
as it was of him that Judge Stevenson had spoken
most favourably. Minister to one of the larger At-
lanta churches, he had spoken frequently and with
considerable vigour for Georgia in behalf of greater
kindness and fairness toward the Negro. He was
very tall. His more than ordinary height with his
attenuated and lanky slenderness gave him an almost
cadaverous appearance which the loose suit of black
mohair he wore accentuated. From beneath the folds
of a low collar there sprang a white starched-linen
bow tie, the four ends standing stiffly, each in a sepa-
rate direction, like the arms of a windmill. His
rather large head was bald on top but around the
edges ran a fringe of yellowish-white hair with curl-
ing ends that made his face appear rounder than it
was. Bushy eyebrows shaded pale blue eyes that
twinkled in unison with the ready smile which re-
vealed large yellow teeth. Into his conversation Dr.
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even threats of tarring and of death from the Ku
Klux Klan, seeking a course directed by wisdom if
not by valour.
While he was being introduced by Dr. Scott, Ken-
neth examined critically the other two men. Mr.
Anthony, who had volunteered the use of his office
for the conference, as no comment would be likely
if the four of them were seen in the office building,
was first presented.
John Anthony might well have posed as model for
a typical American business man or lawyer. Of
rotund figure, well-fed appearance, hair close-cut, his
face clean-shaven, clad in neatly tailored but undis-
tinguished clothing, he sat leaning slightly forward,
his fingers interlocked, his thumbs and forefingers
holding his cravat while his elbows rested on the
arms of his chair. He acknowledged the introduc-
tion to Kenneth with a brief "Pleased ť meetcha.”
He did not rise, nor extend his hand in greeting, but
he at once shrewdly appraised and catalogued Ken-
neth. John Anthony's interest in interracial affairs
had been first aroused by the war-time migration of
Negroes to the North. His personal fortunes had
been touched directly by this loss of labour, and
the resultant decrease in profits had caused him to in-
quire into the problem of the labourers who had
been always so plentiful. Like most Americans, and
particularly those in Southern States, he had had no
idea of, or interest in, what Negroes were forced to
endure. Though near to this problem, he had been a
living example of those in the proverb who “live so
[ 249 ]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
close to the trees, they cannot see the woods.” His
inquiry, conducted with the clear-sightedness and
energy he had acquired from long business training,
had revealed brutalities and vicious exploitation that
had amazed and sickened him. He was too shrewd
to believe that Negroes would be restrained from
leaving the South by attempts to picture Negroes
freezing to death in the North, or to try to beguile
them by transparent falsehoods to the effect that the
Southern white man is the Negro's best friend.
Though he did not voice it save to his more intimate
friends, he felt naught but contempt for the hypocrisy
of those who too late were attempting to flatter the
Negro to keep him in the South. His motives were
therefore curiously mixed in his support of efforts
toward interracial goodwill. Economic in part were
they, because retention of Negro labour meant the
continuation of his own successful business career.
Equally, almost, did they proceed from a hitherto
latent sense of moral indignation against the treat-
ment which the South had accorded to Negroes in
the past. Direct of speech, analytical of mind, he
went straight to the heart of the problem with that
same perspicacity that had won for him more than
usual success in his business of conducting one of the
South's largest department stores.
Here again did Kenneth figuratively shake his head
and decide that John Anthony was not destined to
be the Moses of the new South. He could not for
the life of him dissociate Anthony's interest in be-
half of justice from his direct financial interest in
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keeping Negroes in the South, where, with the in-
evitable working of the law of demand and supply, a
surplusage of Negro labour would mean continued
high profits for men like Anthony. Kenneth was too
young to know that the more largely a man profits
from a liberal cause, the more loyal will be his
support of that cause and the lesser likelihood of his
defection when difficulties arise.
Of the three men, Kenneth felt greatest hope in
the third—David Gordon—younger than Kenneth,
alert, capable, and with an engaging frankness of
face and of manner to which Kenneth warmed in-
stinctively. Gordon was a graduate of Harvard,
where he for the first time in his life had learned to
know coloured fellow-students as men and human be-
ings instead of as “niggers.” At first he had re-
belled strenuously, his every instinct had revolted
against dining in the same room, however large, with
a “nigger.” So indignant had he been that he had
taken it up with the president. Benign, kindly, clear-
headed, and patriarchal, the older man calmly and
dispassionately and without rancour had shown Gor-
don the injustice of his position-how unfair it was
to deny an education to a man for the sole offence of
having been born with a black skin. Before he quite
knew how it had happened, Gordon found himself
ashamed of what now was seen to be petty nastiness
on his part. So interested had he become after his
eyes were thus opened that he had made a special
study of the Negro problem. After finishing both
his college and law courses, he had returned to
[ 251 ]


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Atlanta to practise law with his father. His interest
in the race question had increased since his return.
He was now one of that liberal and intelligent few
who are most free from prejudice an emancipated
Southerner. Some inner voice told Kenneth instantly
that greatest hope of the three lay in David Gordon
—and men like him. ...
The introductions completed, Dr. Scott opened the
conversation.
“Doctor, we've heard of the society you've started
in Central City. Tell us how you're getting along.”
"You have heard of it?” asked Kenneth in sur-
prise. 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 move-
ments.”
“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 atten-
tion to the report of the Klan meeting at Central City,
though it had worried his mother and Bob consider-
ably. No more would he be perturbed by any re-
ports 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 in-
terested 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
[ 252 ]
y interested in the


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
must use discretion. How much are Negroes think-
ing about voting?”
"They think about it all the time,” replied Ken-
neth. “We know the mere casting of a ballot isn't
going to solve all our problems, but we also know
we'll never be able to do much until we do vote.”
"You must be patient—wait until the time is
ripe ” cautioned Dr. Scott.
“Patience can be a vice as well as a virtue.” It
was David Gordon who spoke.
Kenneth looked at him gratefully.
“Your race's greatest asset,” continued Dr. Scott,
addressing his remark to Kenneth, yet seeking to im-
part a gentle rebuke to Gordon, "has been its won-
derful gentleness under oppression. You must con-
tinue to be sweet-tempered and patient- "
“That's all very well to advise, but how would you
or any other white man act if you had to suffer the
things the Negro has had to suffer?” demanded Ken-
neth. “Suppose you saw your women made the
breeding-ground of every white man who desires
them, saw your men lynched and burned at the stake,
saw your race robbed and cheated, lied to and lied
about, despised, persecuted, oppressed-how would
you feel, Dr. Scott, if somebody came to you and
said: 'Be patient'?”
Kenneth poured forth his words like a burning
flood of lava-indicative of the raging fires of re-
sentment smouldering beneath. He paused, com-
pletely out of breath. Dr. Scott flushed until his face
became a dull brick-red in colour. He restrained
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lic sentiment so this liberal white opinion will become
a force in the South against the Ku Klux Klan and
lynching and all the other forms of prejudice.
That's what seems to me to be most needed.”
“Yes—yes—I agree with you, but tell us just ex-
actly how we can help you.” Anthony, in his direct
way, was impatient of theorizing. “Do you need
any money-credit- legal advice—that is, any we
can give quietly without it getting out that we gave
it?"
“Yes, there is something," answered Kenneth.
“Most of the men in our societies have been working
on shares for so many years that instead of having
any money, they owe their landlords large sums.
The big problem is credit for the things they need
until they sell their crops next fall."
Kenneth gave a detailed statement of their needs
and their plans. John Anthony took notes as he
talked and agreed to see what he could do towards
securing credit when they needed it. David Gordon
volunteered his aid as a lawyer. They rose to go.
Anthony gazed intently at Kenneth as he asked
gravely:
"Doctor, have you thought of the possibility of-er
-trouble if your motives are not understood?
That is, suppose some of the poor whites are stirred
up by the landlords and merchants you're trying to
take these coloured farmers away from-have you
figured out what might be the result?”
“Yes, I have," responded Kenneth. “I realize
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one
there might be some who'd break up our groups— "
“No-10-I mean to you personally," interjected
Anthony.
“I don't think they'll bother me," was Kenneth's
confident reply. “But if something should happen
-well, if I can feel I've perhaps pointed a way out
for my people, I can die happy. ... At any rate,
killing or running me away wouldn't kill the spirit
of revolt these coloured people have it might stir
it even higher. Not that I've any ambition for
martyrdom,” he ended with a laugh.
Kenneth spoke with no bravado, with none of the
cant of the poseur. His words, rather, were uttered
with the simplicity of the earnest seeker after truth-
the unheroic but sincere worker in a cause that is
just.
“Let's hope you'll come through,” said Anthony.
"I'm a Southerner with all the traditions and preju-
dices of the South, but I wish you luck.” He added
after a pause: "You'll need it.”
After Kenneth had gone, the three men looked at
each other questioningly.
“What do you think of him and his plan?” asked
Dr. Scott, half to himself.
It was Gordon who answered.
"It's a good scheme-if it works. I'm mighty
afraid, though, he's going to run into deep water if
his societies grow very large. And the pity of it is
that we in Atlanta can't help him if we dared."
Anthony grunted.
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“And yet the South is trying to solve the race prob-
lem and leave educated Negroes like Harper en-
tirely out of the equation. It's about time we woke
up.”
[ 259 ]


CHAPTER XX
T ARLY Friday morning Kenneth left for Central
City, before the Atlanta Constitution appeared
on the streets for sale. Soon after his train
left Macon on the way South, the engine blew out a
cylinder head. They remained there until another
could be dispatched from Macon to replace it. There
had come to his stopping-place in Atlanta, a few
minutes after he had left, a telegram which had been
sent from a town twenty miles distant from Central
City, telling him to remain in Atlanta until further
notice. Jane had paid a man liberally to drive
through the country to get the telegram off in time.
It would not have done to send such a wire from
Central City. All these things had so happened as
though the very fates themselves were in league
against Kenneth.
In total ignorance of what had happened to Mamie
and Bob and the eventful chain of happenings since
he had left Central City three days before, Kenneth
sat in the stuffy, odorous, and dirty Jim Crow car,
busied with his thoughts. A noisy and malodorous
Negro sat next to him who seemed to know some
person at every one of the thousand and one stations
at which they stopped. Kenneth sat next to the win-
dow. His companion leaned over him to stick his
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W
head out of the window to shout loud-mouthed and
good-natured greetings to his friends on the ground.
At those few stations where he knew no one, he would
ask foolish, sometimes humorous questions of those
he did not know. Kenneth stood it as long as he
could and then requested the troublesome fellow to
be less annoying. Kenneth, though vexed, was
amused at the man's complaint to another of his kind
behind him. “Humph!” he grunted. “Tha's whut
I say 'bout a dressed-up nigger—thinks he owns the
train. I paid jes’ as much,” he declared more ag.
gressively, “as he did, an' ef he don't like it, he can
git off and walk.” At this, a long laugh at his own
witty remark, but Kenneth looked out of the window
and paid no attention to him. His thoughts were
busy with other things.
Every few minutes he would feel the lump in the
lower right-hand vest-pocket with a touch that was
almost loving in its tenderness. He hoped Jane
would like the ring—it had cost a little more than
he had expected to pay or could afford, but the best
was none too good for a girl like her. He could
see Jane's eyes now when he opened the little box
and she for the first time saw the glittering facets
of the beautiful stone. He smiled in anticipation
of her joy. And then he'd put it on her finger and
she'd put her arms around his neck and he'd
feel again her warm, soft, passionate, clinging lips.
Lucky he didn't get too deeply tied up with that
girl years ago in New York. She had kissed as
though she'd had long practice at it. Too sophisti.
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last child, she used again the endearing names she
had called him when he was a babe in her arms—
endearments she had not used since.
“Mamma, I've got to! I've got to! God, if I
only can find those who killed him!” he shouted.
She, like a drowning person, clutched at the frag-
ile straw his last words implied. Her voice was al-
most a prayer.
“But you don't know, Ken, you don't know who
was in the mob!” she cried. “That Jim Archer and
Charley Allen—they're the only ones Mamie recog-
nized! And they're dead—they've paid! My little
Bob killed them! Who’re you going to get?
How're you going to find out to-night who the others
were? You can't, Ken, you can't!”.
She realized this was her only hope. If she could
only keep him in the house the rest of the night, when
morning came she was sure he would be more calm.
He would realize then how foolish and foolhardy
his intentions of the night before had been. She
pleaded-she begged—she moaned in her terror.
He tried to shake her off. He did loosen her grip
around his knees where she had clung like death
itself. As he leaned over to pry her hands loose and
was about to succeed, she grasped his arm and held
on. He tried to jerk his arm loose and rush from
the house. She was struggling now with that fierce,
grim, relentless tenacity and courage of the mother
fighting for her young. She held on. His jerks
dragged her over the floor but she was conscious
neither of the act nor the pain. She would have
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was life worth anyway? Why not end it all in one
glorious orgy of killing?
In his agonized fulmination against the whites and
in his vow of vengeance on those who had dealt him
so cruel and heart-sickening a blow, Kenneth forgot
those who had been and were true friends of the black
man—who had suffered and died that he might be
free. He forgot those who, though few in number
and largely inarticulate, were fighting for the Negro
even in the South. Kenneth's grief, however, was too
deep and the blow too crushing for him to think of
these in his hour of despair.
At length his raging subsided a little. His
mother was pleading with him with a fervour he had
never believed she possessed. Snatches of her words
penetrated his mind.
"... and who'll protect Mamie and me? ...
all alone . . . you're all we've got! ... need you
... need you now as never before ... mustn't
leave us now ... mustn't leave ..."
He sank to the floor exhausted by the fierceness of
his rage. A feeble cry came from above stairs.
“It's Mamie!” his mother whispered, frightened.
She left him lying there to rush to her other child.
Before she left she made Kenneth promise he
wouldn't go out before she returned. He lay on the
floor as in a stupor. It was his Gethsemane. He
felt as though some giant hand was twisting his very
soul until it bled. He thought of the hours Mamie
had lain in the field after the fiends had accomplished
their foul purpose on her. Bleeding, torn, rayished!
[ 272 ]


CHAPTER XXI
ENNETH lay on the floor he knew not how
long. At last he awakened to the realization
I that his telephone was ringing furiously.
Subconsciously he was aware of the fact that it had
been ringing for some time. He lay there and let
it ring. Telephone-officehouse profession—life
itself—all seemed vague and nebulous phenomena
remote from his existence far from him and as
uninteresting to him as life on Mars.
The raucous dissonance continued. “R-r-r-r-r,"
the bell seemed to scream in its existence. It was like
a mosquito in a darkened room when one wanted to
get to sleep. “Damn the telephone!” he cried
aloud. “Let the fool thing ring its head off!”...
He thought of Jane. He wondered if she would
be content to remain in Central City after the disas-
ters to Mamie and Bob. If she didn't, then they'd
part. He was going to stay there if all hell froze
over until he found who had composed the mob that
had killed Bob. Until he had wreaked the utmost
in vengeance upon them. ... But Jane would feel
just as he did. She was no coward! Hadn't she
been the one to awaken him to the asininity of his
own course in trying to keep away from the race
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they could get away from everything that'd remind
them of Georgia. No, they'd go to Philadelphia.
Suppose Mrs. Tucker's about able to take some
slight nourishment now. Good Lord, had he per-
formed the operation only yesterday morning?
That couldn't be possible! Too much has come in
between then and now. Must have operated on her
in a previous existence. And died since. Rein-
carnation? Yes, that's the word. Never thought
he'd actually experience it himself. ...
His arms and hands became tired from pressing
on his ears. His ears ached. He loosened the
pressure on them a bit. The telephone was yet ring-
ing. Lord, he moaned, the thing will drive me crazy!
Won't be able to live long enough to get those damned
scoundrels who murdered Bob. He decided to an-
swer it, curse the voice on the other end, and hang
up. He tried to get up from the floor. There was
a terrible pain in his legs. He was sore all over.
He crawled over to the desk in his office and pain-
fully pulled himself to a seat in his office chair.
He stretched his arm out to pull the telephone to him.
A sharp twinge shot through his arm and he groaned.
He caught the cord in his hands and slowly pulled
the instrument to him and placed the receiver to his
ear. At first he could not speak. He made several
ineffectual efforts. At last a faint, hoarse “Hello”
was wafted into the mouthpiece.
“Oh, Rachel, I'm so glad to hear your voice. This
is Mrs. Ewing--Mrs. Roy Ewing over on Georgia
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THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
Avenue. I've been trying to get you for half a
hour. Has your son come home from Atlanta yet?”
The voice went chattering on while Kenneth tried
to moisten his parched throat sufficiently to speak.
It seemed to him that his saliva-producing gland must
have died along with his hope of a peaceful existence
in Central City. Finally, he was able to speak. He
answered Mrs. Ewing wearily:
“This isn't Mrs. Harper, Mrs. Ewing. This is
Dr. Harper.”
“Oh, my God! Why did you come back?" she
exclaimed.
Puzzled at her tone, Kenneth abruptly answered:
“Why shouldn't I have come back?”
She laughed nervously
“Nothing-oh, nothing. But I'm awfully sorry
about what's happened.” At a disbelieving grunt
that came to her over the wire, she hastened to add:
“Really I am I am from the very bottom of my
heart!"
She went on philosophically before Kenneth could
reply.
“But everything'll come out all right, don't you
fear. Doctor, I'm so glad for one reason you're
back. Mary's had a set-back and she's in an awful
fix. Dr. Bennett can't do nothing for her. I know
it's awful hard to ask you, but can't you come over
and see what you— "
“No, damn it, no!” shouted Kenneth into the
mouthpiece. His voice mounted higher and higher
in the rage that possessed him. “No, I hope she'll
Come 0
Ter
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THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
die-I hope she'll die! And every other white beast
that's living! No! No! No! No!” he shouted as
though mad.
He started to slam the receiver down upon its
hook. The voice of Mrs. Ewing came to him in an
agonized moan and made him pause.
"Oh, Doctor, don't take it out on my po' little
Mary. I know just how you feel, but don't blame
it on her! Please, Doctor, please come over and
I'll never bother you again! If you don't come, I
jus' know she'll die!” she begged.
Kenneth's fit of passion had passed. In its stead
there came a cold, terrifying calmness that was but
another form of the raging torment and fury in his
breast. He spoke with biting directness into the
telephone:
“Mrs. Ewing, if by raising one finger I could save
the whole white race from destruction, and by not
raising it could send them all straight down to hell,
I'd die before I raised it! You've murdered my
brother, my sister's body, my mother's mind, and
my very soul! No, I know that,” he said to her
interjected remark, which he repeated. “I know you
didn't do it with your own hands! But you belong
to the race that did! And the race that's going to
pay for every murder it's committed!”
He paused for breath and then continued his
vitriolic diatribe against the white race. It was re-
lieving his brain, he found, to be able thus to vent
his spleen on a white person. He went on in the
same voice of deadly calm and precision of statement;
0
sa
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THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
"And where's that cowardly husband of yours?”
he demanded in a voice of rising fury. “Why
didn't he come and ask me to save your daughter?
No, he's like the rest of the damned cowards—makes
his wife do it, thinking I'm fool enough not to know
he's there at the telephone telling you what to say.
No, no, wait until I'm through! ... He's where?
Atlanta ? What's he doing there? Why did he
leave his daughter when he knew she might die any
minute? Oh, no! You can't feed me any bait like
that! I'm through, I tell you—I'm through listen-
ing to the lying flattery you white folks use to fool
ignorant and blind Negroes like me! What? Why
- I don't see-don't understand! Oh, well, I sup-
pose I might as well, then. Yes, I'll be over within
ten minutes. Tell Dr. Bennett to wait there until
I come. What? He's gone! All right, I'll come!
Good-bye!”
Slightly puzzled, he hung up the receiver and sat
for a minute gazing at the desk pad in front of him,
but seeing nothing. Why should Roy Ewing have
gone to Atlanta to see him? Ewing knew he'd be
back on Friday. He had told him so before leaving.
It was mighty strange for him to act that way.
His mother entered the room, awakened by the
sound of his shouting over the telephone. She spoke
to him apologetically for having left him so long.
"Mamie was so restless,” she explained, “and
when I got her quiet at last, I must have fallen asleep
sitting there by her bed.” On her face there came a
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THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
called him that. ... He drove through the darkened
streets of Central City-down Lee Street past the
deserted business houses, past the Confederate Monu-
ment, and on across that intangible, yet vivid line
that separated the élite of the whites of Central City
from the less favoured. ...
His mind intent on his own tragedy, Kenneth drove
on, guiding his car without conscious volition, me-
chanically. His conscious mind was too busy re-
volving the string of events and trying to find some
solid spot, it mattered not how small, on which he
could set mental foot. ...
e.
[ 282 ]


CHAPTER XXII
T IFTEEN men sat around a table in an office on
K Lee Street. There was above them a single
I electric-light bulb, fly-specked, without a shade
over it. At eleven o'clock they had silently crept
up the stairs after looking cautiously up and down
the deserted expanse of Lee Street to see if they were
observed. Like some silent, creeping, wolf-like deni-
zen of the forest, each had stolen as noiselessly as
possible up the stairs. The window carefully cov-
ered, no ray of light could be seen from the outside.
Though unsigned, the mysterious note each of the
fifteen had received that morning had brought them
all together promptly.
A fat man, with tiny eyes set close together, look-
ing from amazing convolutions of flesh which gave
him the appearance of a Poland-China hog just be-
fore slaughtering-time, was giving instructions to
the men as they eagerly and closely followed his
words. He occasionally emphasized his points by
pounding softly on the pine table before him with
large, over-sized fists covered profusely with red
hair. He was clad in a nondescript pair of trousers,
a reddish faded colour from much wear and the red
dust of his native hills, a shirt open at the neck and
of the same colour as the trousers, the speaker's neck
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THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
innocent of collar and tie. He was ending his
instructions:
“... Now you-all mus' r'member all I said.
You mus’n’ fail! When the accident happens”—
here he laughed softly as he emphasized the word
"accident," and was rewarded by an appreciative
titter from his audience “when the accident hap-
pens, you ain't t'breathe a word to anybody 'bout it!
Even th’ others here to-night!”
He paused impressively and allowed his eyes
slowly to traverse the group, resting upon each man
in turn a penetrating, malevolent stare. Measuring
his words carefully, he spat them out like bullets
from a Browning gun.
“Th' mos Limportant—thing—you got to r'mem-
ber is this! You're not—to repo't-back to me
or any off'cer—of the Invis'ble Empire!” He paused
again. “After—the “accident—happens!” he added.
"I reck’n that's all you need to know," he said
in dismissal. “He came back t'night from Atlanty!
We've got the newspaper fixed! Ef any of you is
arrested, I don't reck’n She'ff Parker'll hol' you
long!” he concluded with a confident laugh in which
his companion joined. ...
Though there was none to hear or see, they dis-
persed with silent and cautious movements and voices.
They crept down the unlighted stairs, hands extended,
fingers touching the walls on either side to aid them
in making as little noise as possible. As the fore-
most reached the landing at the botton, he drew back
sharply as he was about to step into the street.
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THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
'S
“Sh-h-h-h!” he cautioned the others behind him.
“Somebody's comin' lickety-split down the road in a
Ford!”
They all waited with bated breath. The leader
peered forth cautiously to see who it was stirring
about at that time of night. The others waited,
poised on the stairs above him.
Lee Street was bathed alternately in moonlight
and shadow as a vagrant moon wove its way in front
of and behind small patches of clouds. The clat-
tering car approached-came abreast the doorway-
and passed rapidly by
"It's that damn nigger himself!” he exclaimed to
the men behind him. “What'n th’hell's he doin'
out this time of night 'round here? An' headed
towards Georgy Avenue, too! It's damn funny!”
There was an outburst of excited whispering.
Various speculative surmises were offered. None
was able to offer a sensible reason for Kenneth's
nocturnal pilgrimage. One proposed that Kenneth
be followed to see where he went and why he went
there. Afar off could be heard the puttering of
the engine. And then it stopped.
"Ain't gone far,” one of them declared. They
set out to trail the automobile. Before they had
gone two blocks, they saw Kenneth down the street
as he tinkered with the engine of the car, the hood
raised. One of the wires connecting with a spark-
plug had become loosened. He quickly screwed it
tight again, started the engine, and drove off, as he
was closely watched from the shadows of trees and
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THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
sexual adventure. Their convictions were strength-
ened when the light in the lower hall which had been
shining when the door was opened to admit Kenneth
was extinguished, and another appeared in a few
minutes in the bedroom on the second floor which
faced on the streets, and the shades lowered. ...
The fat man who had been speaking in the office on
Lee Street a few minutes before abruptly ended the
conjecturing.
“ 'Tain't no use t stand here all night talkin?!”
he asserted. “We'll jus' stay here and see what's
goin' t happen! Looks damn funny ť me! Tom!
You 'n' Sam 'n' Jake go 'roun to th’ back do' an'
watch there! Bill! You 'n' Joe 'n' Henry watch
that side do’! Me 'n' the res'll stay here and watch
th' front do’! Then, when he sneaks out, we'll get
him any way he comes!”...
Within the house, Kenneth, all unaware of what
was going on outside, was listening to Mrs. Ewing
as she excitedly told him of Mary's change for the
worse, and as she explained her husband's absence.
She was so worried over her daughter's condition
that Kenneth realized she would never be able to
solve the mystery of her words over the telephone
until he had done what he could for Mary. He there-
fore asked no questions but followed her up the
stairs to Mary's room, although his brain was whirl-
ing, it seemed to him, like the blades of an electric
fan.
Mary Ewing was in a worse condition than even
her mother knew. This Kenneth realized as soon
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THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
day, she thought. I'll turn down the light so it won't
be too great a glare. She did. It never occurred to
her that Kenneth's smile could mean anything other
than that he was gaining ground in his fight for her
little girl's life. ....
Outside, the fifteen waited. ... Minutes, hours
passed. It grew cold. The strain was getting irk-
some. They watched the room where shone only
a faint light now. They pictured what was going on
in that room. It made their blood boil and grow
cold alternately. Two o'clock! They began to
grumble. “Le's go in an' get the damn nigger and
roast him alive!” some demanded. “We can't do
that!” the fat man declared. “The damned bitch'll
yell and wake up the neighbours! She, a white
woman, with her nigger lover! Can't let it get out
she consented! We'll get him outside an' say he
was unsuccessful in th’attempt!”... With that they
had to be satisfied. They grumbled, but they knew
he was right. Can't let the niggers know a white
woman willingly went to bed with a nigger! ...
That'd never do! Must preserve the reputation of
white women! ...
Kenneth still sat by Mary's bed. His eyelids felt
heavy. It was hard to keep them open. Revenge
began to lose its savour. Wasn't so sweet as it had
seemed. What's the use, he thought, of telling what
he had planned to the Ewings? They wouldn't un-
derstand. They'd never seen great actors on the
stage. All they'd seen was mushy movie actors and
silly women. Like casting pearls before swine!
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THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
am
rance
Col.
two things. First, to warn you not to come back to
Central City until things has blown over, because he'd
heard threats against you. And most of all to see
the Gov'nor!”
"See the Governor for what?” Kenneth asked.
“Why, to get him to do somethin' to protect you!”
she cried as though amazed at his ignorance in not
seeing.
“Protect me?” Kenneth echoed with a rising, ques-
tioning inflection.
“Yes, to protect you. Y' see, he knew She'ff
Parker couldn't be depended on 'cause he's in with
this gang 'round here. He knew the only chance
was through the Guy'nor.”
“But why should I need protection now?" Ken.
neth asked wonderingly. “Good God, haven't these
devils done enough to my family and me already?"
She explained patiently as though talking to a
child. Neither of them realized the unusualness of
their situation. Both had forgotten race lines, time,
circumstances, and everything else in the tenseness
of the moment.
"B'cause the Ku Kluxers are after you!" she
whispered.
“Why should they be after me? I've done noth-
ing! My Lord, I've tried in every way I could since
I've been back in this rotten place to keep away
from trouble ” he declared querulously.
"Wait a minute an' I'll tell you!” she interrupted
him. She took his arm and led him into the next
room where they would not disturb Mary. "Roy
eness
99
[ 294 ]


CHAPTER XXIII
ENNETH did not see the dark forms that
crouched like tigers in the shrubbery on either
side of the long walk that led to the gate.
But as he reached the ground, he turned just in time
to see a shadowy body hurl itself upon him. Instinc-
tively his right arm shot outwards and upwards.
His clenched fist met flush on the point of the jaw the
man who had attempted to hurl him to the ground.
His would-be assailant gave a deep grunt and fell
to the ground at Kenneth's feet.
Before he hit the ground, however, Kenneth found
himself surrounded by a cursing, howling crowd.
He lashed out blindly—hitting wherever he saw what
seemed to be a form. Madly, desperately, gloriously
he fought! For a time he was more than a match
for the fifteen that assailed him. He did not know
that they had expected to take him by surprise. The
surprise was now theirs. He heard a voice shout at
him in rage: "Sleepin' with a white woman, eh!
You dirty black bastard!” With superhuman
strength born of hatred, bitterness, and despair, he
lunged at the speaker. Almost at the same time that
his fist landed in the man's face, his foot went into his
stomach with a vengeance. He put into the blow and
[297]


THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
the kick all the repressed hatred and passion the
day's revelations had brought forth.
It seemed to him he had been fighting there for
hours, days, months! The odds fifteen to one
against him-his strength was as of the fifteen com-
bined. No Marquis of Queensberry rules here! He
knew it was a fight to the death, and he yelled aloud
for sheer joy of the combat! In the darkness his
assailants could not lay hands on him, for he was
here, there, everywhere-hitting, kicking, whirling,
ducking blows, jumping this way and that-a veri-
table dervish of the deserts in his gyrations! One
after another his opponents went down at his feet!
Windows began to be raised at the tumult. Shouts
and cries of inquiry filled the air. But still Kenneth
fought on.
At last he saw an opening. Out went his fist!
Down went the man who met it with his face! Shak-
ing off one who sought to grasp him from behind,
Kenneth stepped over the body of the one who had
just gone down before him, and, like an expert
half-back running in a broken field, darted out to the
sidewalk. Fifty-forty—thirty-twenty—ten-five
more yards and he'd be in his car and away! At
last, he reached it! Feverishly he wrenched open
the door! He started to spring in! They'd never
get him now!
A shot rang out! Another! Another! Ken-
neth's arm flew up. With a low moan he sank to the
street beneath the car. He tried to rise. He couldn't.
[ 298 ]