"Why there are more black than white people here!" exclaimed Bennet as they were shown to their rooms in the Great Southern Hotel, after their ride from the ship.
"Not quite, but almost," answered Dr. Tansey.
"And they seem to be minding their own affairs."
"Yes," was the laconic reply.
Both men were standing at the window of their hotel watching the panorama passing before them on the street below. There were well dressed colored men passing along the street; well dressed white men and women; some ragamuffins, pedlars, persons in automobiles with Negro chauffeurs, and tip carts drawn by mules and driven by black men, winding in and out in front of automobiles and street cars. Except for the: number of black, brown, yellow and white faces, the scene might easily have been one of any large bustling northern city.
As the two men stood looking, suddenly a street car came along to the intersection of the street just as a dumpcart driven by a tall rather aged Negro and drawn by a mule, was crossing. The cart was in the middle of the street before the street car reached it. Dr. Tansey and Bennet looked for the car to halt to let the tip cart pass. What was their surprise and shock to see the motorman clang his bell and drive the car straight into the tip cart.
There was a resounding crash of breaking wood, an unearthly scream from the driver—and a thud of mule and man to the ground where the car shoved the mass along for ten or fifteen feet crunching wood, bones and flesh in one mass. Bennet turned sick. Dr. Tansey closed his eyes at the sight, then opened them again with "My God!" on his lips. As they looked the motorman dismounted from his vestibule, after backing his car off the mass, went to the scene, looked at the mule, then into the mutilated face of the driver. After discovering that he was nobody known to him he threw the hat carelessly down on the face again, mounted his car, while the conductor with the aid of bystanders, tried to pull the mass off the track. Failing in this way they left the mule in the street, backed the car to a turnout and continued on their way.
As they started away, Dr. Tansey and Bennet made for the door. Dr. Tansey turned to the young man, and almost shouted the command: "Stay here." He rushed to the street, muttering, "I never saw anything so deliberate. The brute. The brute."
When he reached the spot, he could hear the exclamation: "Too bad. Too bad." He thought they were pitying the driver, till one of the men added: "Yes, that mule's worth one hundred and forty dollars."
"Mules be damned," exclaimed Dr. Tansey. "What about the man!"
"Him?—Humph. You can get a nigger anywhere. Mules are valuable."
Dr. Tansey, his being burning with indignation bent over the prostrate form to see if the man was alive. As he knelt, from the crowd came the words: "Who's he? Who's he. Some stranger. Some nigger-loving stranger?"
Dr. Tansey stood erect, his eyes blazing, "You're a lot of brutes," he exclaimed. "Cold blooded brutes." There were menacing sounds in the crowd but no action started. Soon the animal ambulance arrived and man and beast were piled into the same vehicle to be hauled away. The foreman of the street cleaning department in that district arrived and ordered the spot sanded. Dr. Tansey went back to his room, muttering, "This is humanity. This is civilization. No attempt—not even the semblance of an attempt to arrest the man for cold blooded murder."
Dr. Tansey was still laboring under tense excitement when he returned to his room. Bennet was pacing the floor and declaiming at the brutality of what he had seen.
"Why did you want me to remain here, Doctor?"
"Shut up and don't bother me," Dr. Tansey exclaimed petulantly in his excitement.
"But I can take care of myself. I'm no child," Bennet said.
"No, but you're a hot-blooded fool youth.—I don't want to see you die yet,—before you learn a few things. The best thing you can do is to keep quiet. You're in a strange land; among strange people. Hold your head—and your tongue, till you get your bearing. Till you're acclimated." With that he sank into a chair, his attitude the picture of gloom.
The spontaneity of his nature, however, refused to allow him to remain in such a state for long. The picture began to fade from his memory. Bennet had returned to the window, and was gazing on the passing show, intently interested in the new faces of the new show unfolding before him. Finally Dr. Tansey left his chair and stood at his side.
"What a wonderful land if it was only human," he commented. "And this is an historic old city, too. Full of traditions. Full of memories—full of experiences from which could be woven many a romantic story that would thrill. All forgotten—All lost save to a few of the old families who hold aloof from the new, the modern, the bizarre and the cruel.
"Off there," he continued, pointing to the right across the tops of mercantile and other buildings, "stands St. Michael's Church, proud of its history, its traditions and its associations, venerable and venerated. Off here," indicating another direction, "is St. Phillip's, towering 200 feet in the air, its beacon shining at night, a welcome to all while at its foot, for the visitors, lie the remains of such men as Calhoun, Gadsden, Rutledge and Pickens. All men who have made the name of Charleston to stand out as the Athens of the South.
"And yet, with all its associations, and history of which to be proud, we can witness such a scene as we saw a little while ago. I wonder what the old Huguenots and Acadians would say if they could come back and see the intolerance, the bigotry and the hatred of these days! Bennet, the world's wrong! At least this part of it. The quicker you and I get out of here the better."
"I'd like to see more of this town before I go back home. Somehow I like the atmosphere of the place," Bennet offered with a wave of his hand.
"Well, I'm going to get out of here and up into the swamps where I can do my work and get away as quickly as possible. I advise you to lose no time in doing the same."
"Where and when do you plan to start?" Bennet asked.
"Armstrong told me that up near his country, along the Edisto River I'd find plenty of material for investigation and I guess I'll start for there as soon as possible."
"My nearest post office is Orangeburg. I go out into the country from there," said Bennet.
"Good, we'll go along together as far as there. Let's see. Orangeburg's on the way to Columbia," Dr. Tansey was studying his map intently. "You turn off at Branchville to the north from the main road leading to Augusta. It will be nice riding through rather picturesque country. We'll start in the morning, eh, Bennet?"
"All right. Meantime I'm going to look around this old town for a while."
"Better not go far, and let nothing disturb you.
"You know, not all southerners are barbarians such as we came into contact with today. They are human if you hit them right. The trouble is they are like a lot of northerners. Rather than make a fuss they simply shrug their shoulders and blind their eyes. There are a lot of them even in this old town. The trouble is, they've allowed themselves to be half convinced of what the evil-minded and coarser ones rant about and simply shrug their shoulders, draw about themselves the cloak of exclusiveness and let the rest of the world go by.
"You'll find that true all over the South. There are men and women, born in the South, bred in the South, who know that the South is wrong, but dislike disagreeable things, dislike trouble and bother, particularly since they derive some of the benefits of crushing an humbler people down. They fear public opinion. That's the trouble with this color question the world over. We Americans are a bunch of color cowards. Pure color cowards. And public opinion cowards. However, take your walk, look and learn but say nothing."
While Bennet was on his walk, finding many things of interest along the Battery and its immediate vicinity, studying the character of the houses and the persons he passed, Dr. Tansey was busy making arrangements for the trip up country. He stopped at several garages in attempts to negotiate for an automobile for the trip, but failed to get one to suit him till he came to Calhoun street, where there was a pretentious garage displaying a sign, "Autos for Hire." Stepping into the place he enquired:
"Where's the manager?"
One of the young Negro boys, standing in a group in the doorway pointed to an office within. Then opened the door. Just at the moment a short brown skinned man stepped out.
Dr. Tansey turned to him, "Where's the proprietor? I want to hire a rig."
"Yes, sir. What kind of a rig do you want. I'm the proprietor."
Even Dr. Tansey was surprised at the announcement. He knew many black men were in business in the South, and thriving, but hardly expected to see one in charge of such a business, and speaking such language.
"I want to go to Orangeburg, in the morning. I've a friend with me, a stranger, and I want him to see some of the country."
"All right, Sir. What time? And where shall I call for you?"
"Better call at six o'clock at the Great Southern Hotel. We want to get a start and avoid the heat."
"Yes, Sir—All right, Sir.—Who shall I call for?"
"Dr. Tansey. We'll be up and waiting for you."
"Yes, Sir."
Having selected the car and arranged the details, Dr. Tansey returned to his hotel. Bennet had returned also and the two talked for some time over their experiences and observations, before dining, and adjourning for the wide veranda of the hotel where they sat in silence listening to the discussions of those about them.
Travel where you will in the South, one characteristic of the southerner you will always find. He is curious about strangers. They make it a point to always find out, if possible who every visitor is, where he hails from and what his business is. The native Charlestonians, who visited the Great Southern were no exceptions. From the time Dr. Tansey and Bennet had registered and shown active interest in the accident early in the day, there was a constant curiosity manifested about them.
Bennet had been followed and watched as he left the hotel for his walk and Dr. Tansey had been trailed. By some ties of neighborliness born of years of mingling communities are drawn together. Where each knows the other for miles around the presence of a stranger is signalled from house to house and native to native. Such was the case upon the arrival of Bennet and Dr. Tansey. The people of Charleston as in most southern communities guard their traditions, mannerisms, hobbies and oddities religiously. If you are prepared to join with them in their beliefs and practices you are welcomed. If you differ with them and differ positively you are marked and left to complete isolation.
There were a dozen or more men grouped about the veranda when Dr. Tansey and Bennet finished their meal and joined the assembly, taking seats at one side. All turned in their seats, to watch the two men, as they walked over to a corner of the veranda and took vacant seats preparatory to viewing the promenade of those on the street a floor below. Dr. Tansey was indulging in his cigar while Bennet was silent, his mind intent on Lida and his home.
After the two men had been seated long enough for the cigar Dr. Tansey was quietly smoking to be nearly consumed, the natives who had been sitting about grew restless because of their silence On the veranda were men ranging from young to middle age, tall and wiry, for the most part, some dressed neatly and others not. They talked of every subject under the sun from farm prospects to fertilizer.
Dr. Tansey was just about to suggest retiring, having flicked his cigar stub into the street when one of his nearest neighbors turned with:
"Pretty nice town, ain't it, Stranger?"
"Very nice, what I've seen of it," offered Dr. Tansey. "You people take great pride in your city, as well you should. It has a history to be proud of."
The veranda guests were pleased. "Yes," continued the first speaker. "We're right pert proud of our town. Even of our blacks."
"They seem to be making great progress," commented Dr. Tansey. "I see they're in business and making themselves substantial citizens."
"Oh, as much as we allow. We don't plan to have them go too far. You know they out number us here."
"Yes, I recall. That's pretty true of nearly all the South, I believe," was Dr. Tansey's comment.
"Yes. That's the reason the problem looms so large to us down here. That's why you people up North don't understand it.—I can tell you're from up North by your talk."
"Yes, we are," Dr. Tansey admitted.
"As a matter of self-preservation we have to keep them in their places, even the best of them," continued his neighbor.
"What do you mean, the best of them? I thought you people held them all to be the same."
"No, there are some who own property, are educated and substantial. But we can't allow them to put on any airs, else they'd think they were white folks and get fresh."
"Then it's not so much their inferiority as it is a matter of self-preservation," suggested Dr. Tansey.
"I'd not say that," suggested another of the group. "A black man is a black man and can't be compared with a white man no matter how much money he accumulates, or how educated."
Dr. Tansey shrugged his shoulders. "I can't understand you people and your arguments," he said.
"You don't believe a Negro is the equal of a white man, do you?" he was asked.
"Since you ask me, I'll tell you. I believe in the Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence. To my mind there are only two kinds of men in this counrty. In fact, in the world—good men and bad men. Color neither makes goodness nor badness. The mere color white, per se, is not a badge of superiority, purity or goodness.
"As to whether one man is or is not the equal of another, that wholly depends on mental ability, character and the quality of man he is. A man may be white and be the most desperate and vile being in the world. He may be black, yellow or red and be the same. All depends on his environment and circumstances of existence. I think the World War fully demonstrated that."
"I don't give a damn how educated a black man is; how much money he has accumulated, how much character, as you call it, he may have, God never made a black man to be the equal of the white, and no nigger is as good as I am. We were made to preserve civilization, to further culture and to rule. And we do rule here in the South," exploded the southerner.
"I hate a Negro," he continued. "They are all brutes no matter how much education or culture they have. Under the skin they are brutes. We know the Negro down here."
Dr. Tansey shrugged his shoulders, as he replied: "I can't understand that instinct which makes a man hate a thing or animal and yet keep that animal so close to him as domestics are to your households. If I dislike a Chinaman I don't want a Chinese cook. If I dislike a black man I don't want one about me or my house. On that premise your position is faulty and your shoutings fallacious. You people are all wrong. And the sooner you find it out the better for the country. You can't always keep subdued and under your heel a people who have made the advances the blacks have even in the face of all odds.
"Besides aren't you preparing your own funerals? What a man sows that shall he also reap. No words were ever truer. Right now, even as you claim to know the Negro, you don't know him. You don't know what he's thinking. You don't know what's in his heart. You talk about civilization, culture, Christianity. You don't know the words.
"As far as I can observe, the Negro is the only real Christian. Had he not Christ-like qualities his soul would have been so embittered long before this that the whole race would have been a group of mad anarchists. Suppose they were not real Christians? Suppose for one day they all should run amuck? What would happen? Just think, of your servants, your workers developing the craze for blood, for one single unit of twenty-four hours. What a holocaust. Let me just hint—poison in your coffee or other food; dynamite in your factories or under your homes.
"Bless your God that they are a spiritual, large hearted, forgiving, patient and loving people. You're teaching the use of force by example, tantalizing by debauching their children, maddening by the bullet and torch, and driving to despair by your injustices, and feeding the fires of a volcano. Only deep spirituality, great Christianity and nobility of soul, in these people, prevents an eruption so violent that the whole world would be shaken.
"If religion means anything; if Christianity is more than a sham and cloak with you, let justice rule and righteous fairness prevail."
"You talk like some new fool minister," his neighbor sneered impatiently. "Seems to me you've learned a lot for being here so short a time," commented another. "Oh, we know how to take care of all that. Keep 'em scared of you. Keep 'em scared of you," asserted still another.
"You ought to be last persons to talk of Negroes being scared," retored Dr. Tansey. "They didn't scare in the Civil War and they didn't scare in the Spanish-American War, nor the World War. No, it's not fear that holds them in check. It's because they're living a life nearer true Christianity. Thank your stars for that. Thank your stars their leaders have them so well in hand.
"What the South ought to do: Instead of trying to keep a race down; a race on whose backs, by whose blood and sweat the South has lived and will continue to live; what the South ought to do is to strive to make better citizens out of these people. Of course, the South will never do that. The South is too bent on preserving its civilization, its caste superiority, its culture. The South owes it to the black race to give it citizenship, education, justice and right. You ought to have settlement houses, good schools, health centers and such things as are offered to the aliens from anarchistic Europe. You would thus be preserving civilization, by preserving your own safety."
"Well, you can't tell us what to do. You live miles away from the problem. We live in the midst of it."
"The problem is not a Negro problem but a white man problem. A problem to get right with God; a problem to quit making a sham of religion; a problem of changing your own attitude to one of justice, fairness and righteousness. Get right with your God and be right with your fellow man. I know this is preachy but someone has to preach it. Your ministers won't. Even our ministers in the North won't. The whole system of Christianity has been destroyed, or almost destroyed by your prejudice and misrepresentations. That's what the Negro thinks as he watches white America. Don't you think they are studying you and your professions of Christianity?—Don't be fooled. You are being weighed—America is being weighed, Christianity itself is being weighed. Every form of religion except one, the Catholic, has been spoiled. And mind you I'm not a Catholic. The bugaboo of prejudice is but a bugaboo after all and Christians ought to be above it.
"I can't," Dr. Tansey continued, "for the life of me see how it is that you people have been able to foist your beliefs and theories, and misrepresentations so thoroughly upon the rest of the world. My God, but the world is gullible, when you think of it.
"Here you people have maligned a race, distorted the truth about a race; and so painted a race as to make that race the most shunned in all the world when as a matter of fact all races are about on par. Race for race, none may be considered better than the other. It is our white civilization that has spread most of our evils. We've set the example. Every newspaper is full of criminal narrative, reports of injustices. It's a good thing our examples are imitated so little."
"We've got to, and you've got to protect our women from the brutes. You don't have that menace in the North so much as we have it down here. We're on the ground and know what we talk about," the first speaker defended while his companions nodded vigorous assent, indicating that he had scored heavily.
"That's another fallacy.—What about their women? A southerner ought to be ashamed to mention that subject. Let's see, there are about twelve million black people in this country—that is, people with Negro blood in them. I think statistics will bear me out in the statement that more than four million of that number are of mixed blood. Now who mixed that blood? It was not the black man. You left your women behind with him when you went to battle in the Civil War. You found your women safe when you returned, even though you were fighting to keep him slave and serf. No, I tell you it is a white problem. I tell you, America—and particularly that part of America south of Mason and Dixon's line, ought to be ashamed of itself. It ought to be in so contrite a mood at the wrongs perpetrated on a harmless race that they should be working tooth and nail to right that wrong, rather than steeping themselves further in wrong.
"Think, gentlemen. Here was a race brought over by force, sold into bondage by force, subjected to all manners of brutalities, by force, its blood mixed because you were the masters, and instead of seeing your wrongs you gloat in your mastery and prate of civilization. Race inferiority and race superiority! What a mockery! Oh, what's the use? I'm going to bed."
Every man on the veranda was on his feet as Dr. Tansey and Bennet who had remained quiet all this time arose. The anger in each man was growing.
"You say harsh things about a country in which you are a guest, Stranger."
"Harsh but true, gentlemen," Dr. Tansey waved his hand as he stood facing them. "Harsh but true.—Calm yourselves, gentlemen. Calm yourselves. We won't fight over it. At least I won't. You invited my opinion. I gave it."
"You evidently don't intend to stay long in this section," observed one.
"As long as I wish. There are good white men down here, who think and feel as I do. Many of them, who know the truths that you and I know. For the sake of peace they have allowed the cruel to triumph. But I tell you, gentlemen, some of these days this very class of which I speak will so arouse themselves over your depravities and brutalities,—that right and justice will triumph. Until that time let brutality have its sway. This is not the first time I've been in this section. I've long known of the brutalities and barbarities practiced down here in the name of civilization. Every day is filled with some tragedy and you know it. No one section is free. But, hell! what's the use? Come on, Bennet, let's go to bed. Good-night, gentlemen."
Dr. Tansey and Bennet strode past the group and into the lobby of the hotel to the elevator and to their room. Dr. Tansey fully expected to be set upon before he left the veranda and was surprised when not attacked. He was surprised at his own vehemence and outburst, as he considered it afterward.