The Hindered Hand Part 16

"Fourth: There is a decided drift of Northern capital to the South. The greater the holdings of the North in the South, the greater the indisposition of at least that element to have conditions down here disturbed, I think. I believe that by acting now we shall receive far more sympathy from the North than we would be likely to get a few years later."

"Suppose, for the sake of progress in the discussion we concede the validity of your conclusions. Granting that the present is the time to act, what would you do?" asked Ensal.

"Let me state first of all what I would not do. I would not attempt an exodus. The white people of the South would resort to force to prevent our leaving in a ma.s.s. I would not attempt a _general_ uprising. They have absolute charge of the means of transportation and intercommunication as well as the control of the necessary equipments for waging war."

Earl now paused and looked steadily at Ensal, who awaited with almost breathless anxiety Earl's next words.

"When I was a lad I declaimed the address of Leonidas to his brave Spartan band, and the idea of a vicarious offering has ever since lain heavily on my heart.

"In Almaville here I have a picked band of five hundred men who are not afraid to die. To-night we shall creep upon yonder hill and take charge of the state capitol. When the city awakes to-morrow morning it will find itself at our mercy. We also have a force of men which will take charge of the United States government building. This will serve to make it a national question.

"When called upon to surrender, we shall issue a proclamation setting forth our grievances as a race and demanding that they be righted. Of course, what we shall call for cannot be done at once, and our surrender will be called for.

"We shall not surrender. Each one of us has solemnly sworn not to come out of the affair alive, even if we have to commit suicide. Our act will open the eyes of the American people to the gravity of this question and they will act. Once in motion I am not afraid of what they will do. I am not fearful of America awake, but of America asleep.

"Such is my plan. In brief, it is the determination of desperate men to provoke intervention.

"Look at Cuba. A handful of men stayed in the field and kept up a show of resistance until our great nation intervened. It is within the power of the Negro race to bring about intervention at any time that it is willing to pay the price. I have found the men and recruited them from the ranks of the plain people who were already ripe for action for the following reasons:

"Labor circles here are just now very bitter toward the city government because of its course toward Negro roustabouts. The white men in charge of the boats that ply the river, fed their Negro hands poorly and made the whole crew eat with spoons out of one pan. They were afforded no sleeping accommodations, being forced to sleep on the bare floor. If a piece of freight was accidentally dropped overboard the Negro who did it was forced to jump into the water after it or be clubbed to death. Some roustabouts who were forced to jump overboard to recover freight lost their lives. These things have influenced the Negroes to abhor roustabout work. But the police force, in the interest of the boatmen, pounced down upon the Negroes and forced them to do the work, and this course is practically urged by one of our leading daily newspapers. In this condition of affairs, the laboring Negro sees a sign of a return to the conditions of slavery, and he is alarmed.

"If in a city of light such as is Almaville this spirit obtains, it won't be long, they feel, before the Negro laborers of the South will be firmly in the grasp of a new form of slavery. They are also alarmed at the clamor of leading newspapers for a vagrancy law which will be invoked in times when the Negroes refrain from labor in the hope of advancing their pay. The presence in our ranks of the labor element representing the Negro ma.s.ses will give striking evidence of the effect things are having upon all cla.s.ses of Negroes, welding them together.

"Now, Ensal, you have my whole story. This is to be the most sublime affair in the whole history of our race. Honor yourself, my friend, by joining our ranks."

Earl now ceased.

"Earl," began Ensal, slowly, earnestly, "do you know the Anglo-Saxon race and particularly that brand found in the South? Provoke the pa.s.sions of that race, arouse the dormant but ever-present fear of secret plottings for a general uprising, and you will inaugurate the wholesale slaughter of innocent men, women and children. Satan hearing of what is going on, will resign his post as King of h.e.l.l, will broaden his t.i.tle and move up to sit as Emperor of the South.

"No, no, no, Earl. Dark, dark is the night, but let us not mistake the glow of the 'jack-o'-lantern' leading to a bog for the gleam of the morning star ushering in the day."

Ensal ceased speaking and the two men looked at each other in silence.

"Do you regard yourself as having finished?" asked Earl after a few seconds of silence.

"Sir," he continued, "if in this hour when I am strangled with the ashes of Bud and Foresta you feed me with a negation----" He did not finish the sentence.

"I understand you, Earl. I must offset your proposition with a better one. Foreseeing that you would demand this of me, I have prepared myself," said Ensal.

Going to his desk he procured a rather bulky doc.u.ment. Ensal turned the ma.n.u.script over and over. In it he had cast all of his soul. Upon it he was relying for the amelioration of conditions to such an extent that his race might be saved from being goaded on to an unequal and disastrous conflict. He hoped that its efficacy would be so self-evident that Earl might stay the hand that threatened the South and the nation with another awful convulsion. No wonder that his voice was charged with deep emotion as he read as follows:

_"To the People of the United States of America:_

"The Anglo-Saxon race is a race of the colder regions and there evolved those qualities, physical, mental and temperamental, which const.i.tute its greatness. A large section of the race has left the habitat and environments in which and because of which it grew to greatness, and in the southern part of the United States finds itself confronted with the problem of maintaining in warmer climes those elements of a greatness. .h.i.therto found only in the colder regions.

"The race in these warmer regions took firm hold of the doctrine of a foil, a something thrust between itself and the sapping influences of weather, sun and soil. The Negro was pressed into service as that foil. He was to stand in the open and bear the brunt of nature's hammering, while the Anglo-Saxon, under the shade of tree or on cool veranda, sought to keep pace with his brother of the more invigorating clime, counting immunity from the a.s.saults of nature and superior opportunities for reflection as factors vital to him in the unequal race that he was to run.

"Not only was this foil deemed necessary to the maintenance of the intellectual life of the South, but to its commercial well being as well; for the white man was regarded as const.i.tutionally unable to furnish the quality of physical service necessary to extract from the earth sufficient fruitage to have the South hold her own commercially.

"The wealth of the South, because of a deep seated conviction as to the absolute need of a foil for the white race in warmer climes, because of the hardiness of the Negro's frame, his docility, his habit of cheerfulness when at work, his largely uncomplaining nature, his conception that labor conditions are fixed, his individualism leading to ineptness in combining--these qualities the wealth of the South regards as ideal for the services of capital, and Negro labor is much preferred to that of chronically discontented, aspiring and combining whites.

"The capitalist influence would have the Negro treated humanely, would give him industrial, moral and religious training, and would have him enjoy the protection of the law that he might continue in the South, working in contentment and with efficiency in the lower forms of labor.

"But this element desires that the Negro play the part of the foil and accept this as mainly his mission in America. It has scant sympathy with the college professor and the political agitator that would set the race to dreaming very largely of higher things. The element, therefore, that is most desirous of retaining the Negro population and seeks to make the race satisfied with its present habitat is for the very reason leading to that course, thoroughly opposed to making a speciality of developing _all_ there is in the Negro, so that the development that this element stands for is a.s.suredly one sided.

"Opposed to the element that is half friendly to the Negro because of his superior qualities as a foil and commercial a.s.set, are the white industrial rivals of the Negro, whose animosity is whetted by their conscious inferiority in matters physical to this son of the tropics, who is more nearly at home under southern sky than are the children of the colder regions.

"The industrial rivals of the Negro, led on by those who would exploit race prejudices for their profit and those who feel that grave danger lurks in a mixed civilization, keep the baser pa.s.sions of the people so inflamed that such horrible outrages take a place that the future often seems overshadowed with a cloud dark, portentous and riftless.

"The two elements thus far mentioned, the half-friends of the capitalist cla.s.s and the rancorous industrial rivals of the Negro, are opposed to each other on the question of the Negro's leaving the South, the former opposing and the latter favoring his elimination, but they are one in insisting that the Negro must be restricted in his aspirations. The question has another complication and a third element is to be reckoned with.

"There is a vein of idealism running through our country that would hold the American people to the thought that the United States has a world wide mission. It is the dream of this cla.s.s that shackles, whether physical, political or spiritual, shall fall from every man the world around.

"This cla.s.s says to the capitalist cla.s.s of the South: 'Our ideals will suffer if we permit you to have political serfs, however well fed they may be.' To the cla.s.s that would oppress the Negro it says, 'The patient suffering and material service of him whom you buffet ent.i.tles him in his own right to a home in this country, and here of all places justice shall be his portion.' This cla.s.s has opened Northern inst.i.tutions to them, and training has produced a large and aggressive army of able young Negroes enraptured with the expressed ideals of the republic.

"When it is sought by idealists to make the position of the American Negro square with the const.i.tution, the capitalist cla.s.s of the South, which fancies that it sees the sudden loss of the foil, and the rivals of the Negro in the labor world combine to oppose the programme looking to the political uplift of the Negro. As the Negro in the groove ('in his place') has the self-interest of the capitalist cla.s.s on his side, while, aspiring to be as others are, he finds his erstwhile friends and chronic enemies forming a cordon to prevent his rise, it has been suggested that political advancement be made a secondary consideration.

"In view of the powerful forces which we find arrayed against a programme looking to the political advancement of the Negro we can understand the desire of the American people that it be made clear that the political needs of the Negro are vital to the improvement of present conditions. We shall therefore proceed to show how intimately the political question is inwrought in the whole situation.

"After the last word has been said in favor of the capitalist notion of race elevation, it is still found to contain the wonderfully fecund germ of repression. To sustain a notion from generation to generation that the Negro should be denied partic.i.p.ation in the political life of his nation necessitates an atmosphere charged with the spirit of repression, a voracious guest, whose appet.i.te calls for food other than the dainties set before him.

"The making of official life in the South independent of Negro sentiment was evidently intended to cause white men to feel free to act according to their own instincts, undeterred by calculations as to the possible effects of their course on the att.i.tude of the Negro toward them.

"With repression the order of the day, and the process of the survival of the fittest operating along this plane, that man who best exemplifies the repressive faculty will survive in the political warfare and thus will be brought to the front the element out of touch with the broadening influences of the age, whose vision is yet bounded by the narrow horizon of race.

"The administration of the government, then, inevitably falls into the hands of the less refined and a contemned race of an alien blood is handed over to them to be governed absolutely.

As might be expected under a system that picks its rougher spirits for rulers.h.i.+p, the governing force is often worse in its att.i.tude toward Negroes than are the great body of whites.

Instead therefore of the government being the guide, piloting the people to broader conceptions, the governing power often sets in motion brutalizing tendencies that eventually sweep down and affect the people.

"Local sentiment has been invoked to hold in check the wrathful outpourings of United States senators, legislatures have held in check rampant governors, and cities have cried out against the acts of legislatures imposing repressive measures not warranted by local conditions, things that signify that repression sends to the front men whose tendency is to lower rather than advance civilization.

"It is generally conceded that the drift of the Negro population of the South toward the cities is due to the lack of police protection in the rural districts. In the city policeman, then, we have an opportunity to study the output of the system of repression at its highest level. Policemen are often the most unbearable of tyrants, arresting Negroes upon the most flimsy charges, and refusing to tolerate a word of explanation. It is actually a capital offense for a Negro to run from a policeman, however trivial the charge upon which he has been arrested.

"In Almaville, which represents the South at its highest point of civilization, policemen have wantonly shot to death Negro after Negro for seeking to elude arrest.

"The following article which we reproduce from one of America's most reputable journals, will speak for itself.

"'How lightly the wanton killing of a Negro has come to be regarded in some Southern communities is brought out by an incident of the week at Memphis, which hardly needs comment. An inoffensive Negro was hawking chickens about the street, when ----, who was not in uniform at the time, jumped to the conclusion that the chickens had been stolen, and arrested the man. While he went to put on his uniform he left his prisoner in custody of a nearby grocer, rightly named ----, to whom he handed his pistol, with the offhand injunction, 'If he tries to get away from you, kill him.' ----'s a.s.sertion that the Negro made a break for liberty is disputed by the testimony of bystanders, but at all events he fired on the Negro, wounding him so severely that he died the next morning. 'Well, you got him, didn't you?' said ---- on his return. 'If I didn't, I almost,' answered ---- with a smile. The policeman's only statement in palliation of the unprovoked killing was that the deputy to whom he delegated his authority had 'taken his instructions literally.' The most shocking feature of the affair is that ---- has not been arrested, and the policeman is apparently to continue on his beat. The 'Commercial-Appeal' may well exclaim in bitterness, 'Life in this community is cheap; the life of a Negro is so valueless that it is freely taken without fear of future punishment in this world.'

"The question may be asked as to whether there are provisions for redress against police outrages. There are courts and commissions that may be appealed to, but two considerations render these inst.i.tutions of slight value to Negroes. In the first place the sentiment obtains that the evidence of a Negro is not to count as much as that of a white man. With this much the start the policeman has still another advantage. The policy of repression has fostered the idea that it is all right for a white man to commit perjury in cases where there is a contest between a white man and a Negro. Witness the manner in which election commissioners have often been chosen because of their known willingness to swear falsely as to the contents of ballot boxes.

"So, with little sentiment against perjury when a Negro is involved and the extra weight attached to the word of a white man as against that of a Negro, the wrongs of the Negro more often than otherwise go absolutely unavenged.

"Public utilities are likewise administered by white men who often maltreat Negroes. In Almaville a street car conductor was sentenced to two years in the penitentiary for the killing of an inoffensive Negro who was asking him for correct change and at whom, according to his own sworn statement, he shot 'to see him run.'

"In this same city a Negro woman was kicked off of a street car by the conductor for pulling through mistake the cord that registered fares instead of the one that signalled for the motorman to stop.