Walker Taylor said, “George will be around to collect money from each of you for the Businessmen’s Committee. We have certain debts. He estimates we will need to raise about thirty thousand dollars. Encourage your colleagues to be generous.”

They nodded and murmured. Things were getting accomplished. They’d already seen what they were getting for their money.

Beery said, “Solly Fishblate keeps sniffing around.”

“Absolutely not,” Walker Taylor said.

“What do I tell him?”

“Tell him he had his chance. He’s permanently retired from politics.”

“He’ll keep his people from—”

“The people we need are sitting in this room. The people we need are on the Businessmen’s Committee. We’re trying to form a government, not a mob.”

Fennell said, “What’s the difference?”

“The difference is law” Walker Taylor said, his voice too big for the sacristy. “The difference is order. The difference is that we must be able to feel morally proud when it’s over. We must be able to answer with a clear conscience those who will judge our actions a hundred years from now.”

Fennell said, “Like I said, what’s the difference?”

Chapter Nine

The race question, which might be possibly soluble without great trouble were all negroes all negro, becomes a sociological problem of awful possibility when we consider that miscegenation has made and is making inroads into the Caucasian race in this country to an extent little realized by the masses of people.

C H A P T E R   N I N E

Saturday, October 15

THE WORD WAS OUT: no Negroes need apply.

The White Government Union had appointed a Labor Bureau to find jobs for white men only. All employers had to hire through the bureau or face the consequences. Hugh MacRae, the Businessmen’s Committee, and the Wilmington Light Infantry stood behind the bureau with all their guns and law.

On the street corners of Brooklyn, boys passed out handbills. “Mind your jobs, Negro workingmen,” the handbills said in part. “Stay out of politics. Don’t vote, or else.”

Or else what? Alex Manly wondered. How far would they go? Frank Manly said they’d go as far as they had to: guns, shooting, vigilantes in the streets. Alex wasn’t convinced—he’d heard the rhetoric before. If they meant to act, they wouldn’t be talking so much. They were clearly bluffing. This wasn’t the era of the Ku Klux Klan, with midnight rides and lynchings at every country crossroads. This was a new day. Alex Manly had watched it come in. He’d written words that had coaxed it along. He was the daily voice of a whole people who had been silent far too long. It was a station worth guarding.