“Or,” Martha said cheerfully, “you might become a red cap and carry baggage, like most of our people that finish graduate school.”

“Not a chance. The Ph.D.‘s that get taken on as red caps have to speak at least seven languages, and I speak only three.”

Then Drexel Greenshaw walked in on them. “Heard about the firing at Wargate’s?” said Ash.

Drexel was pontifical. “Naturally, but I’m not as worried as you young people. I’ve seen too many set-backs for our race. And you must ask yourselves if this really is as unfortunate as some say. Remember that the folks who are being let out are mostly these new colored fieldhands that have just come up from the Southern backwoods—lot of ignorant, rude, money-wasting hicks—typical immigrants, I’d call ‘em. All the old-timers, like Al Woolcape and me, have suffered a lot from having the white folks think we’re like those cattle. Oh, I’m sorry for them, but they better go back South, where they belong.”

“I’m an immigrant, too,” Ash pointed out.

“You’re different. You belong.”

“To what? I’d like to find out!”

Drexel expanded, “The white folks are only too glad to have colored gentlemen like you and me working for ‘em. Mr. Tartan says to me, ‘Mister Greenshaw, I don’t know how we could ever run the Feesoly Room and satisfy our high-class clienteel without you.’ ‘I try to do my best,’ I says to him, and he says, ‘I know you do, and we appreciate it.’

“Why, I figure some of my best friends are white folks. Mind you, I’m no Uncle Tom. They got to treat me dignified. You young people don’t understand white psychology. If you make yourself valuable to ‘em, they’ll treat you more than square, and if they been getting kind of prejudiced against us, it’s the fault of the black trash. Why, years ago here, we all got along real nice with the whites. My girls were brought up to play with real nice white kids, and when I went to church, I was treated like any other communicant. But the white folks are disgusted with these rug-cutters and slick-chicks that try to act like they’re the same as white folks. All the whites ask of us is humility, and that’s one of the best Bible virtues, ain’t it?”

They did not listen; they had heard it all from Drexel Greenshaw before. They were fond of the erect old man, the father of their friend Cynthia Woolcape; the gentlemen’s gentlemen’s gentleman, the Southern colonels’ Southern sergeant.

* * * * *

That week a Negro veteran was lynched in the Deep South.

From the Mississippi Delta to the Howard Law School to the clubs of Harlem ran a shudder and a mutter, “Next time it could be me,” and dark Communist and Fundamentalist were united as they looked quickly back on the streets at night. Ash Davis as despairingly as Sugar Gowse, Drexel Greenshaw and Dr. Darius Melody along with Hack Riley, heard the horror within hours after it had happened, and they cried “How long, O Lord?” and not meekly. And a Negro named Neil Kingsblood looked at his wife in honest terror and shivered, “It could be us and here and now.”