She had to get out of there, back to her rooms.

“Perhaps we’ll meet again, Gray Ellen,” he said. How did he know her first name, and what right had he to be so familiar?

“I doubt it,” she said.

He kept smiling. “You got to be where you live,” he said gently. “It’s a small town.”

Yes, she thought, heading for the air—and getting smaller every minute. Behind her, she could hear laughter and the shuffling of feet, then the careful shutting of a heavy door.

The Reverend Ivanhoe Grant and his ten companions crowded into John Norwood’s office. Norwood was an alderman, a member of the school board, and one of the twenty most influential Negroes in town. He hobnobbed with Dr. Silas Wright, mayor, Benjamin Keith, the importer, and Sheriff George Z. French—all white men. They trusted his advice. He sat on the executive committee of the Republican party.

Norwood held up a copy of the Daily Record. His coat was off, his tie was undone, hanging in two limp ribbons from his unbuttoned celluloid collar. His shirtsleeves were rolled up on his thin forearms. “What in the hell does Manly think he’s doing?” Norwood was angry. For years, he’d worked to bring the races together. Much of the time, that had meant compromising, giving up on little things to win bigger things.

“Telling the truth, brother,” Preacher Grant said.

“You’re not from around here.”

“I was born here,” Grant said. “I have only come back.”

“Well, I never heard of your people. Heard all about you in Tennessee, though.”

Grant smiled and bowed his head. “The Lord’s will be done.”

“The Lord’s will shot down five black workingmen.” It had been the familiar pattern: a rabble-rousing speech by a white man, an indignant meeting of blacks, more speeches and threats. All just talk until Grant showed up and goaded a few young men into action. Then in came the local thugs and the sheriffs deputies to quell the “Negro uprising.”

Grant sat on the edge of Norwood’s desk. He opened his hands like wings and softly flapped them in the air. “There is change in the air.”

“That what brought you back—the smell of trouble?”

Grant’s hands fluttered, his voice took on an incantatory tone. “Can you feel the change in the air, brothers? Can you feel it?”

They murmured assent. They didn’t sound too sure.

“The time has come for the New Jerusalem.”

“Amen,” somebody said softly.

“Oh, don’t get started,” Norwood said.

“The time has come for the black man to walk in the sunlight with his head held high.”

“Amen,” said several in unison.