V

It was at one of these little parties, the room ringed with fat, chatting mothers whose conversation did not so absorb them that they failed to notice any action, however insignificant, that Mimi met Carl Hunter. Hilda brought him to her with the simple introduction, “Mimi, this is Carl.” He, giving her a quick glance that seemed to her to take in not only her physical self but to pry down deep into her innermost thoughts, paused a minute before speaking. When he did speak his greeting was only a cool “Hello.” Others passing stopped and the conversation in the little group became general. When she looked again Carl had gone. She did not see him again but on the way home she spoke of him to Hilda.

“I don’t think much of your friend, Hilda,” she said. “He didn’t say anything and he seems to have an awfully good opinion of himself.”

“No⁠—no, Mimi, you mustn’t say that,” Hilda quickly defended him. “That’s just his way⁠—you just wait until you know him and you’ll think differently.”

“Dear, I don’t want to hurt your feelings but from what I’ve seen I’m almost sure I don’t want to know him.”

“It’s too bad he’s going away. He told me his father’s going to let him go away and work this summer and then enter school up North next fall. Oh, dear! I don’t know what I’ll do⁠—he thinks I’m nothing but a little girl but he’s only seventeen and I’m going on fifteen.”

The despair of unrequited love in her voice⁠—and what pangs of love can be more acute, more painful, more deliriously ecstatic than those of youth?⁠—touched Mimi deeply.

“Forgive me, Hilda. I was only joking. I think Carl’s real nice and the way his hair falls down over his head is adorable.”

Hilda smiled bravely through incipient tears and her smile gave forgiveness.⁠ ⁠…

In the autumn they entered high school together and the long hours they spent together deepened the love they had for each other. Mrs. Daquin was busy with her household affairs, her friends, parties at her own home and at the houses of her friends. They settled down into a calm, routinized existence little touched by events of the outside world. They even were little affected by that other world which lived alongside them in the same city⁠—that realm known as “white.” Except in the stores or on the street cars there was but little contact, and, particularly in the latter, they sought to lessen the number of the contacts as far as possible. Here there were these two parallel existences, meeting but seldom, for Jean and his wife and Mimi soon learned that to avoid meeting was to avoid trouble or at least the possibility of trouble.

On one or two occasions they saw how easily disturbances could come. The laws of Georgia provided that in the street cars white people should sit from the front of the car towards the rear and coloured people should start occupying the rearmost seats and as their number increased they should occupy seats towards the front. One afternoon Mrs. Daquin and Mimi were returning from a shopping tour. They sat towards the middle of the car on boarding it but later several coloured people back of them alighted. The conductor, a short man with small eyes and narrow face adorned with red stubble, came to their seat and in an unpleasant, unnecessarily gruff tone demanded:

“Here, you! Move back there where you belong.”

Mrs. Daquin stared at him in amazement.

“Are you speaking to me?” she demanded.

“I ain’t talking to nobody else,” he replied. “Come on! Don’t give me no argument. Get on back there with the rest of the niggers!”

A titter went up from the staring passengers. Mrs. Daquin felt the blood rising in her face and her anger mounting.

“I’ll do nothing of the sort. I am going to stay right where I am,” she challenged, her voice shaking with anger, though she was trying hard to control it.

“You’ll move back there or I’ll put you off the car,” the conductor shouted, more angry than ever as he felt the realization coming to him that he had stirred up an argument which might not end as easily as he had supposed.

“Come on back, lady,” a voice from the rear called. “ ’Tain’t no use having no argument and he’s got the law on his side.”

This unasked-for advice only served to make Mrs. Daquin and Mimi, who remained silent but who longed to join the argument, more adamant.

“You want me to stop the car and call a cop?” her tormentor queried belligerently.

“You can do whatever you please⁠—I will not move!” was her answer.⁠ ⁠…

Muttering something about “biggity niggers,” the conductor retreated to the rear of the car, defeated.

They left the car at their corner and an obscene remark floated back to them from the discomfited conductor. Jean told Mr. Hunter of the affair and asked advice but that which he received was of slight comfort to them.

“I know just how you feel about it. It makes me mad as blue blazes, too, but what can you do about it? If it had been you or me that conductor would have used physical violence and he’d have been helped by every white man on the car. About the only thing that saved your wife and daughter was that they’re women⁠—they can get away with lots more than we can because they are women. No, Daquin, you might as well let the matter drop and forget it. Protest will do no good and you haven’t a chance in the courts.”⁠ ⁠…

On another occasion one of Jean’s associates whose skin was brown but whose wife’s was fair, assisted his own wife in boarding a car. A crowd of whites jumped down from the vehicle and pummeled him viciously before his wife could explain that she too was a Negro.⁠ ⁠…

Jean bought for their use a horse and surrey and thereafter they never rode in the cars. He was conscious that this was an ineffective compromise with principle but he was happy in that compromise in that it gave him greater peace of mind.

With such exceptions their lot was not a very difficult one. In the stores Mrs. Daquin was not allowed to try on hats or shoes or dresses before purchasing them and they frequently were forced to wait until whites who had entered after they had were served. But with time they became accustomed to these slights and particularly when they found that with but few exceptions these were accepted by their friends as the expected thing, unpleasant but inevitable. “You can get used to being hung if you’re only hung often enough,” seemed to be current philosophy, except in the cases of the younger ones.⁠ ⁠…

Beside their regular lives of work and play they found an additional outlet in various affairs at the colleges which were situated in Atlanta. There were occasional musical evenings, now and then some speaker of note came and lectured. There were baseball and football games between the teams of the local schools and a few with teams from institutions located in other cities. In the local papers they read of events going on in the outside world, some of them exciting lengthy comment and interest, others less. General rejoicing greeted the victory of Japan over Russia, the nation of smaller men being enthusiastically supported largely because they were a coloured nation. “Teddy” Roosevelt was acclaimed a great friend of the Negro despite the Brownsville affair, though to Jean it seemed much of his popularity among the coloured people in Atlanta was due to the fact that he was a Republican. The San Francisco earthquake elicited a certain degree of interest and sympathy, though, being far away, its maximum reaction usually was summed up in the remark, “Isn’t that too bad!”

Twice the world thrilled to stories that men had at last plunged through the frozen wastes of the North and come to the top of the world. And because one of them was discovered to be a liar many, many wiseacres shook their heads portentously and opined that the other one might be lying too. Among the younger men there were frequent discussions of the relative merits of a promising young Negro prizefighter named Johnson recently emerged from Texas who was achieving a considerable reputation with his fists.

One cloud that had appeared first as a tiny speck began to grow with distressing speed during the summer of 1906 and brought deep concern to the more thoughtful ones. By these, certain ominous signs had been seen all through the long hot months of the summer when nerves are frayed and tempers sharpened to razor-blade keenness by the sultry heat. A period of unemployment had caused a marked loafing of whites and Negroes followed by a long series of petty crimes. Saloons and dives and “social clubs” sprang up like mushrooms and throve. A bitter political campaign was waged, its central issue the question of disenfranchisement of Negroes and “Negro domination.” A play, The Clansmen, a distorted picture of Reconstruction filled with venom and hatred, came to Atlanta and stayed during this time of strain, and whipped into fury bitterness between white and black. Some crimes against women were reported, others were not chronicled. A man named Turnadge committed a crime terrible in detail but little was said of it. Turnadge was white. Other white men committed other crimes and the press said little of it. Twelve or more Negroes were charged with rape or attempted rape. Circulation-seeking newspapers brought out “extra” after “extra,” screaming in twelve-inch headlines, “Third Assault,” “Fourth Assault,” “Negro Attempts to Assault Mrs. Mary Chafin Near Sugar Creek Bridge,” “Angry Citizens Pursue Black Brute.” It meant little at the time that later it was to be discovered that all but two of these reports were without foundation in truth.

To most of the citizens he encountered, Jean found, the tenseness meant little. It was considered variously as a bit embarrassing, rather unfortunate, and mostly as the slightly aggravated condition of the usual state of affairs. But to him, unused to the ominous rumbling which terrified him, the situation seemed grave, very grave indeed. In the few contacts he had with white people, on his daily visits to the bank uptown, in his contacts with tradesmen and men and women on the streets, he saw with troubled eyes the glances of suspicion, of hostility, of hatred. Once on entering the bank he stood near the desk of the cashier, who had always had a smile and cheery word for Jean, whom he liked. Now he looked grimly at Jean and demanded, in what was almost a snarl: “What do you want, Daquin?”

“I came to see you about some notes, Mr. Stewart,” Jean answered, troubled, “but⁠—I wonder why you’ve changed⁠—you’re usually so pleasant and today you’re⁠—why, you’re⁠—”

“There’s reason enough, Daquin. You’ve read the papers. Why don’t you better-class Negroes do something to stop your criminals from attacking our women?”

“We’re as bitterly opposed to attacks on women, whether they’re white ones or coloured ones, as you are, Mr. Stewart. That is, we’re opposed when they really are attacks.”

“What do you mean⁠—when they are attacks?” the cashier demanded.

“Just what I say⁠—how many of these attacks reported in the papers are really attacks? They spread the story of an alleged or a reported attack all over the front page⁠—but when they found the woman was mistaken or hysterical from reading all these other wild tales, they stick it in an insignificant item on the inside, if they mention it at all. There’s trouble ahead if these inflammatory stories aren’t stopped, Mr. Stewart. And it seems to me it’s up to men like you who’ve got sense to stop them⁠—the crowd that makes up the mob isn’t going to do any thinking for itself⁠—it never does.”

“That isn’t the point, Daquin,” Stewart asserted. “You Negroes have got to stop these real attacks!”

“There are more ways than one of looking at that,” was Jean’s troubled rejoinder. “In the first place, nearly every one of these ‘attacks’ has on investigation been found to be untrue. Yet, your papers are screaming madly every day without much investigating of their stories beforehand that more and more assaults are being committed. A second thing is that it’s up to the police and the sheriff’s office to catch and put in prison any man suspected or accused of a crime whatever his colour. If one of your race kills somebody or attacks a woman, you don’t rush around saying that it’s up to the white people to catch him⁠—quite properly you say it’s up to the police. And a third thing⁠—there’ve been several attacks on coloured girls by white men of late but I haven’t seen those listed as part of the record of assaults.”

“That kind of talk won’t get you anywhere, Daquin. You’re only fooling yourself and the fact there’s a certain degree of truth in what you say only makes it the more dangerous for you to be talking that way⁠—you’d make most of these white people mad because you have done some thinking about the situation.”

Jean interrupted him with a gesture of impatience.

“Mr. Stewart, have you ever tried to look at this thing from our side of the fence?”

“No‑o‑o. I haven’t given much time to it, I reckon,” Mr. Stewart answered reflectively, his face indicating a degree of surprise that there was another side which had not occurred to him.

“Well, just let me tell you a little about it then. The son of a friend of mine, a lad of twenty or thereabouts, yesterday morning was coming out of his own father’s home, rather hurriedly as he was late for an appointment. Reaching the street, he remembered he had forgotten a package and he turned to go back when he brushed against someone behind him. As he started to apologize he saw it was a white woman. This woman was telling my wife about it and she said the boy’s face became a mask of terror, realizing as he did what would happen if she had screamed. He stood still a minute, too frightened to move, and then he turned and ran for dear life down the street. Now suppose, Mr. Stewart, that woman had been easily frightened⁠—you’d have seen in the papers that same day the report of another ‘attack.’ ”

“Yes⁠—yes⁠—I know it’s hard for you, too. But we’re sitting on a keg of dynamite and none of us can tell when some fool’s liable to set it off. We can only hope for the best,” Mr. Stewart ended piously.

Jean did not know that after he had left the bank, having forgotten the business matter which had brought him there, so engrossed had he become in his conversation that a little group of men had gone to the cashier’s desk and demanded that Mr. Stewart tell them what Jean had said. This Mr. Stewart did not do⁠—he did not know how Jean’s words and thoughts might be taken.⁠ ⁠…

At home Jean found but little more understanding. His wife, busy with her own affairs and having little contact other than with her friends and with shopkeepers who carefully concealed their feelings, scoffed at his forebodings. “You’re not used to anything like this and you’re too easily scared,” she laughed. “Mrs. Hunter tells me they have lots of situations here just as delicate and they’ve all blown over in time. Same as this one will blow over as soon as the hot weather ends.” Her air of finality in citing Mrs. Hunter as authority convinced Jean there was little need of pursuing the subject further in that direction.

Mimi was more sympathetic but she showed by her puzzled frown she did not comprehend his reasons for worrying.

“White people⁠—and coloured people⁠—you didn’t used to separate people into such definite classes before you left New Orleans, papa Jean!” she declared, somewhat confused. “After all, what real difference does it make? A difference in colour, different hair, different features, but what do those matter in the long run? Why can’t people be just people and stop all this meanness?”

“That isn’t the point right now, Mimi,” he explained. “I suppose it’s silly but I’m worried⁠—this thing’s mighty serious, and it may be you and I and the rest of us may see some pretty dark scenes. Oh, why did I ever leave New Orleans? I’d never have had all this trouble⁠—at least, it wouldn’t have been so terrifying⁠—”

“It’ll blow over,” Mimi comforted him.

“Blow over”! There was that phrase of Mrs. Hunter’s again. He was miserable. He saw his old house in Louisiana, his garden, his flowers. He could almost see his old friends, Bernard, Pierre, André. He wished he were sitting once more in the old café on Chartres Street, with his friends spending long hours in comfortable, soothing conversation, sipping their glasses of le petit gouave, that heartwarming, gently exhilarating concoction from old San Domingo. He could smell the wild odours of the tropical, luxuriant flowers, the mildly intoxicating smell of the wild orange, the honeysuckle, the roses, fragrant pines. He could close his eyes and see the delicate pink and white of the oleanders, could hear the soft-throated cries of the hucksters, many of them with huge gold earrings and brilliantly coloured dresses, their heads bound with gay headkerchiefs. “Belles des figues! Belles des figues! Pralines, pistache! Pralines, pacanes!” they called. A violent nostalgia assailed him, its accompaniment a bitter distaste for the harsh scenes of his new home.⁠ ⁠…

Long, tense days crept into anxious nights. Feverishly busy with the making of money, men and women, white and black, good citizens and Christians all and in their own minds true to their own various standards, did nothing. Along towards the middle of September a few of them began to be disturbed. Calls were sent out for mass meetings to check the wave of hatred and passion that rapidly was mounting. Somnolent, apathetic city officials began to become vaguely apprehensive. The grand jury was called to meet on the twenty-fourth. Slowly, terribly slowly, the Gargantuan creature of public opinion began to rub its eyes sleepily and grumblingly bestir itself.⁠ ⁠…

On a Saturday afternoon when September had crawled its torrid way two-thirds into October, Mrs. Daquin took her turn entertaining the Fleur-de-Lis Club. Jean closeted himself in his own room, alternately reading and taking short cat naps. He did not want to be forced to hear the rumble of chatter and gossip nor was he unaware of the shortness of his wife’s temper had he blunderingly impeded the smooth running of the carefully constructed plans for the afternoon’s pleasure. Mimi and Hilda brought him his supper, which he ate slowly as he gazed into the dusty, sere garden backing the house next door. The leaves of the corn stalks, the tomato plants, the cabbages were yellowed and dried, mute appeals for saving showers.

He must have fallen asleep, for it was night when Mimi rushed into the room and shook him until he was awake.

“Come quick, papa Jean! Mrs. Daquin is sick!” she urged.

Jean rushed downstairs. All the women had gone save Mrs. Adams, who had loosened Mrs. Daquin’s corsets and clothing.

“I think it’s indigestion,” was Mrs. Adams’ calm reply to Jean’s fearful questions. “Hilda’s telephoning for the doctor. You and Mimi help me get her upstairs.”

Jean was grateful for her cool command of the situation. They got Mrs. Daquin into bed before the doctor came. He came, examined, looked grave, then more cheerful. His orders were terse.

“Keep her quiet⁠—hot applications⁠—give this prescription every two hours⁠—this one every four hours. Afraid all the drug stores round here are closed, so you’ll have to go down town⁠—probably to Jacobs’⁠—they stay open late.”

Mimi remembered the conversation with Jean as he started to leave the house.

“Wait a minute until I get my hat. I’m going with you,” she announced. He protested, told her she should remain at home with Mrs. Daquin.

“Mrs. Adams and Hilda will stay. I’ve just asked them.”

She had returned, hat on, before he could answer. Realizing that further argument would be unavailing, he and Mimi set out for the distant drug store.⁠ ⁠…

A hot Saturday afternoon, traditionally a half-holiday, had brought into town hundreds of country people. Saloons were doing a rushing business, those labelled “For White” and those bearing signs, “For Coloured Only.” Late in the afternoon an elderly white woman had gone to a window to close the shutters. A Negro was passing on the sidewalk. Her mind inflamed with the news stories she had read, she screamed. Someone telephoned for the police. Newspapers got wind of the story, rushed “extras” on the street bearing letters five inches high, “Another Woman Assaulted.” Before the police could reach her house, the woman telephoned it was all a mistake⁠—she had only been hysterical. In the meantime, too late to be stopped, presses had begun to rumble and roar and belch forth flaming sheets of alarm, the ink smearing in its freshness. Others followed, “Second Assault,” “Third Assault,” “Fourth Assault.”

At first it was a gentle murmur of hatred. Then it began to swell. Papers were snatched eagerly from panting newsboys. Over the shoulders of each purchaser hung a group, standing on tiptoe to grasp the story of the latest outrage. The grumbling grew. Little flames of violent words shot up. They grew in number. They shot higher. They combined in volume until one great peal of implacable Negro-phobia went up like the din of a continuous thunderclap, like a pipe organist treading angrily on his foot-pedals in dissonant roaring. The entire city was as a huge boil, packed tight with putrescence. A pinprick was applied, the festering, purulent tumour burst open and flung high its venom. Spattering, smearing, befouling matter came down and sprang, like the sown dragon’s teeth, into howling, murder-bent mobs.⁠ ⁠…

Jean and Mimi had noted the little knots of angry men gathered on street corners muttering and cursing. They had hurried past these, hoping that they might safely reach the drug store and return home.

“I don’t like the looks of these men,” said Jean. “They’re in a nasty mood and it wouldn’t take much to start trouble.”

Here and there they noticed a policeman, paunchy, helmeted, swinging night sticks but doing little to disperse the rapidly growing crowds. It was with a deep sigh of relief that Jean reached the drug store. They had to wait nearly an hour while the prescriptions were being filled. Leaving the store, they found the embers had burst into flame. A huge man, shirt-sleeved and collarless, his eyes bloodshot and venomous, was perched high on a box haranguing the crowd, which swayed and eddied and shouted approval of the speaker’s remarks.

Fascinated, Jean and Mimi stood in the doorway and watched the spectacle. “Five Points,” the intersection of five heavily travelled streets, was rapidly becoming filled with a milling, motley throng. Other speakers ascended hastily improvised rostrums, the tail end of a delivery wagon, a fire hydrant, the projecting ledge of a show-window. The movement of the crowd became swifter, the blood lust was roused, the killer was eager for the victim.⁠ ⁠…

A Negro was seen walking down Marietta Street, one of the five thoroughfares focusing in Five Points, unaware apparently of the scene he was approaching. Mimi saw him and wanted to shout a warning to him. It would have been fruitless⁠—the roar was too great and her voice would have been as the falling of a single drop of water on the shore while nearby boomed the surf. It would have been almost suicidal⁠—the pack might easily have turned on them. Nevertheless she wanted to cry out to this unknown man to flee. It was too late. One man in the crowd spied him just as Mimi saw him, just as she uttered a little scream of terror. Up went the roar, “There’s a nigger now!”

Too late the Negro saw his danger. He turned to flee but before he had gone many yards the pack was upon him. Mimi saw him strike out, dodge, attempt to elude his attackers. It was useless. Down he went and a great bellow of hatred, of passion, of sadistic exultation filled his ears as he died. Mimi covered her eyes with her hands and pressed close to Jean as she saw the flashing jackknives.

She was never able to tell, even in her own thoughts, what happened to her in that terrible moment. To her before that dread day, race had been a relative matter, something that did exist but of which one was not conscious except when it was impressed upon one. The death before her very eyes of that unknown man shook from her all the apathy of the past. There flashed through her mind in letters that seared her brain the words, “I too am a Negro!”⁠ ⁠…

“Come on, Mimi, we’ve got to get out of this!”

Jean’s words made her uncover her face. From nearby Decatur Street, thoroughfare of saloons and dives, of pawnshops and rooming-houses, of cheap restaurants and tailor shops, there came the crash of breaking glass.

“They’re breaking into the pawnshops to get weapons,” was Jean’s correct conjecture. Here⁠—there everywhere the howling mobs rushed. Street cars were stopped, Negroes pulled from them, stabbed, kicked, beaten to death. Few shots were fired⁠—the quarters were too close⁠—some member of the mob might get hurt.

A shout went up that made all others seem puny. Out of a side street lurched a carriage drawn by two horses. On the box there half crouched a white man. Taut reins in left hand, in the right he held a long, winding, cruel-looking whip. In the back crouched two frightened Negroes. On and on the carriage swayed and rushed. The driver with one motion lashed the foaming horses, with almost the same sweep he swung backwards and across at the yelling men who sprang at the carriage like starving wolves at a dangling carcass.

Shouts of pain and fury from the lashed, who fell back, huge welts on their faces, mingled with the pounding of the horses’ hoofs. Above it all there came a piercing yell from the driver, an obbligato of exultation and challenge welling above the deeper-throated rumble of the crowd. Breathlessly Jean and Mimi followed the carriage as far as they could see it, a prayer in their hearts for the escape of the three. There came a subtle change in the sounds growing fainter in the distance. A note of bafflement entered the deeper tones. A final roar of disappointment told them the carriage had escaped with its human burdens, and happiness filled them.

Clutching Mimi’s hand, Jean cautiously sped from doorway to doorway as the crowd, lessened by those who had gone in pursuit of the carriage, thinned out. Across the broad expanse of Marietta Street they scurried. Once they crouched in a doorway while a crowd sped in pursuit of a crippled Negro bootblack who hopelessly sought to distance his pursuers. He fell, the mob atop him. Mimi screamed. A member of the mob heard her, turned and thrust his face into Jean’s. He snatched off Jean’s hat and peered into his face in the dim light.

In terror, Jean lapsed into French.

“Mon Dieu!” he cried, in dismay.

“ ’Scuse me, brother! I thought you were a nigger!” apologized Jean’s tormentor, handing Jean his hat.⁠ ⁠…

On they sped, down Peachtree Street, to Auburn Avenue, down Auburn Avenue to Pryor Street. There, as they started to cross, a shout welling into a roar made them draw back into the shelter of a doorway. Up Pryor Street sped a young, well-dressed Negro. Inch by inch, foot by foot, yard by yard he gained on his pursuers. One by one he left them behind until only one was near him. Here was one who ran as swiftly as the intended victim. Mimi and Jean saw the Negro glance over his shoulder. From his pocket they saw him take a pocketknife and open it. In so doing he lost a few feet. As the two racing figures were abreast the hiding-place of Jean and Mimi, the pursuer lunged forward, clutching at the shoulders of the Negro to drag him to the earth. Twisting, turning, the Negro plunged the knife to its hilt in the breast of his pursuer, who gasped, groaned and ludicrously sank to the ground. Without pausing, the Negro turned down Auburn Avenue and soon was lost in its shadows.⁠ ⁠…

The mob rushed up, gathered around the victim, peered indecisively down the street where the Negro had fled, discussed and voted against following him as the street led to the Negro section. A cry went up. Another victim had been sighted. Off it sped its death cry again in full volume. Down the street and home scurried Jean and Mimi, weak with fright and the horror of the scenes they had witnessed.⁠ ⁠…

All during Sunday and Monday the three remained at home. Reports came to them of bloody fighting in South Atlanta, of Negroes in despair fighting bravely and successfully to check the mobs, of the coming of troops. The ghastly episode ended, slowly the town returned to its normal state. To Mimi there came whenever she remembered it a chill terror that almost became unconsciousness. In the still hours of the night she would awaken from a sound sleep screaming with terror which turned on awakening into hysterical sobbing until Jean came to her and comforted her. The healing brought alone by time lessened her spasms, but many days passed before she could smile again.