IV

Matthew Fisher, alias Max Disher, joined the Easter Sunday crowds, twirling his malacca stick and ogling the pretty flappers who passed giggling in their Spring finery. For nearly three months he had idled around the Georgia capital hoping to catch a glimpse of the beautiful girl who on New Year’s Eve had told him “I never dance with niggers.” He had searched diligently in almost every stratum of Atlanta society, but he had failed to find her. There were hundreds of tall, beautiful, blonde maidens in the city; to seek a particular one whose name one did not know was somewhat akin to hunting for a Russian Jew in the Bronx or a particular Italian gunman in Chicago.

For three months he had dreamed of this girl, carefully perused the society columns of the local newspapers on the chance that her picture might appear in them. He was like most men who have been repulsed by a pretty girl, his desire for her grew stronger and stronger.

He was not finding life as a white man the rosy existence he had anticipated. He was forced to conclude that it was pretty dull and that he was bored. As a boy he had been taught to look up to white folks as just a little less than gods; now he found them little different from the Negroes, except that they were uniformly less courteous and less interesting.

Often when the desire for the happy-go-lucky, jovial good-fellowship of the Negroes came upon him strongly, he would go down to Auburn Avenue and stroll around the vicinity, looking at the dark folk and listening to their conversation and banter. But no one down there wanted him around. He was a white man and thus suspect. Only the black women who ran the “Call Houses” on the hill wanted his company. There was nothing left for him except the hard, materialistic, grasping, ill-bred society of the whites. Sometimes a slight feeling of regret that he had left his people forever would cross his mind, but it fled before the painful memories of past experiences in this, his home town.

The unreasoning and illogical color prejudice of most of the people with whom he was forced to associate, infuriated him. He often laughed cynically when some coarse, ignorant white man voiced his opinion concerning the inferior mentality and morality of the Negroes. He was moving in white society now and he could compare it with the society he had known as a Negro in Atlanta and Harlem. What a letdown it was from the good breeding, sophistication, refinement and gentle cynicism to which he had become accustomed as a popular young man about town in New York’s Black Belt. He was not able to articulate this feeling but he was conscious of the reaction nevertheless.

For a week, now, he had been thinking seriously of going to work. His thousand dollars had dwindled to less than a hundred. He would have to find some source of income and yet the young white men with whom he talked about work all complained that it was very scarce. Being white, he finally concluded, was no Open Sesame to employment for he sought work in banks and insurance offices without success.

During his period of idleness and soft living, he had followed the news and opinion in the local daily press and confessed himself surprised at the antagonistic attitude of the newspapers toward Black-No-More, Incorporated. From the vantage point of having formerly been a Negro, he was able to see how the newspapers were fanning the color prejudice of the white people. Business men, he found, were also bitterly opposed to Dr. Crookman and his efforts to bring about chromatic democracy in the nation.

The attitude of these people puzzled him. Was not Black-No-More getting rid of the Negroes upon whom all of the blame was placed for the backwardness of the South? Then he recalled what a Negro street speaker had said one night on the corner of 138th Street and Seventh Avenue in New York: that unorganized labor meant cheap labor; that the guarantee of cheap labor was an effective means of luring new industries into the South; that so long as the ignorant white masses could be kept thinking of the menace of the Negro to Caucasian race purity and political control, they would give little thought to labor organization. It suddenly dawned upon Matthew Fisher that this Black-No-More treatment was more of a menace to white business than to white labor. And not long afterward he became aware of the moneymaking possibilities involved in the present situation.

How could he work it? He was not known and he belonged to no organization. Here was a veritable gold mine but how could he reach the ore? He scratched his head over the problem but could think of no solution. Who would be interested in it that he could trust?

He was pondering this question the Monday after Easter while breakfasting in an armchair restaurant when he noticed an advertisement in a newspaper lying in the next chair. He read it and then reread it:

The Knights of Nordica

Want 10,000 Atlanta White Men and Women to Join in the Fight for White Race Integrity.

Imperial Klonklave Tonight

The racial integrity of the Caucasian Race is being threatened by the activities of a scientific black Beelzebub in New York

Let us Unite Now Before It Is

Too Late!

Come to Nordica Hall Tonight
Admission Free.

Here, Matthew figured, was just what he had been looking for. Probably he could get in with this fellow Givens. He finished his cup of coffee, lit a cigar and paying his check, strolled out into the sunshine of Peachtree Street.

He took the trolley out to Nordica Hall. It was a big, unpainted barn-like edifice, with a suite of offices in front and a huge auditorium in the rear. A new oil cloth sign reading “The Knights of Nordica” was stretched across the front of the building.

Matthew paused for a moment and sized up the edifice. Givens must have some money, he thought, to keep up such a large place. Might not be a bad idea to get a little dope on him before going inside.

“This fellow Givens is a pretty big guy around here, ain’t he?” he asked the young man at the soda fountain across the street.

“Yessah, he’s one o’ th’ bigges’ men in this heah town. Used to be a big somethin’ or other in th’ old Ku Klux Klan ’fore it died. Now he’s stahtin’ this heah Knights o’ Nordica.”

“He must have pretty good jack,” suggested Matthew.

“He oughtta have,” answered the soda jerker. “My paw tells me he was close to th’ money when he was in th’ Klan.”

Here, thought Matthew, was just the place for him. He paid for his soda and walked across the street to the door marked “Office.” He felt a slight tremor of uneasiness as he turned the knob and entered. Despite his white skin he still possessed the fear of the Klan and kindred organizations possessed by most Negroes.

A rather pretty young stenographer asked him his business as he walked into the ante room. Better be bold, he thought. This was probably the best chance he would have to keep from working, and his funds were getting lower and lower.

“Please tell Rev. Givens, the Imperial Grand Wizard, that Mr. Matthew Fisher of the New York Anthropological Society is very anxious to have about a half-hour’s conversation with him relative to his new venture.” Matthew spoke in an impressive, businesslike manner, rocked back on his heels and looked profound.

“Yassah,” almost whispered the awed young lady, “I’ll tell him.” She withdrew into an inner office and Matthew chuckled softly to himself. He wondered if he could impress this old fakir as easily as he had the girl.

Rev. Henry Givens, Imperial Grand Wizard of the Knights of Nordica, was a short, wizened, almost-bald, bull-voiced, ignorant ex-evangelist, who had come originally from the hilly country north of Atlanta. He had helped in the organization of the Ku Klux Klan following the Great War and had worked with a zeal only equalled by his thankfulness to God for escaping from the precarious existence of an itinerant saver of souls.

Not only had the Rev. Givens toiled diligently to increase the prestige, power and membership of the defunct Ku Klux Klan, but he had also been a very hard worker in withdrawing as much money from its treasury as possible. He convinced himself, as did the other officers, that this stealing was not stealing at all but merely appropriation of rightful reward for his valuable services. When the morons finally tired of supporting the show and the stream of ten-dollar memberships declined to a trickle, Givens had been able to retire gracefully and live on the interest of his money.

Then, when the newspapers began to recount the activities of Black-No-More, Incorporated, he saw a vision of work to be done, and founded the Knights of Nordica. So far there were only a hundred members but he had high hopes for the future. Tonight, he felt would tell the story. The prospect of a full treasury to dip into again made his little gray eyes twinkle and the palms of his skinny hands itch.

The stenographer interrupted him to announce the newcomer.

“Hum‑n!” said Givens, half to himself. “New York Anthropological Society, eh? This feller must know somethin’. Might be able to use him in this business.⁠ ⁠… All right, show him in!”

The two men shook hands and swiftly appraised each other. Givens waved Matthew to a chair.

“How can I serve you, Mr. Fisher?” he began in sepulchral tone dripping with unction.

“It is rather,” countered Matthew in his best salesman’s croon, “how I can serve you and your valuable organization. As an anthropologist, I have, of course, been long interested in the work with which you have been identified. It has always seemed to me that there was no question in American life more important than that of preserving the integrity of the white race. We all know what has been the fate of those nations that have permitted their blood to be polluted with that of inferior breeds.” (He had read some argument like that in a Sunday supplement not long before, which was the extent of his knowledge of anthropology.) “This latest menace of Black-No-More is the most formidable the white people of America have had to face since the founding of the Republic. As a resident of New York City, I am aware, of course, of the extent of the activities of this Negro Crookman and his two associates. Already thousands of blacks have passed over into the white race. Not satisfied with operating in New York City, they have opened their sanitariums in twenty other cities from Coast to Coast. They open a new one almost every day. In their literature and advertisements in the darky newspapers they boast that they are now turning four thousand Negroes white every day.” He knitted his blond eyebrows. “You see how great the menace is? At this rate there will not be a Negro in the country in ten years, for you must remember that the rate is increasing every day as new sanitariums are opened. Don’t you see that something must be done about this immediately? Don’t you see that Congress must be aroused; that these places must be closed?” The young man glared with belligerent indignation.

Rev. Givens saw. He nodded his head as Matthew, now glorying in his newly-discovered eloquence made point after point, and concluded that this pale, dapper young fellow, with his ready tongue, his sincerity, his scientific training and knowledge of the situation ought to prove a valuable asset to the Knights of Nordica.

“I tried to interest some agencies in New York,” Matthew continued, “but they are all blind to this menace and to their duty. Then someone told me of you and your valuable work, and I decided to come down here and have a talk with you. I had intended to suggest the organization of some such militant secret order as you have started, but since you’ve already seen the necessity for it, I want to hasten to offer my services as a scientific man and one familiar with the facts and able to present them to your members.”

“I should be very glad,” boomed Givens, “very happy, indeed, Brother Fisher, to have you join us. We need you. I believe you can help us a great deal. Would you, er⁠—ah, be interested in coming out to the mass meeting this evening? It would help us tremendously to get members if you would be willing to get up and tell the audience what you have just related about the progress of this iniquitous nigger corporation in New York.”

Matthew pretended to think over the matter for a moment or two and then agreed. If he made a hit at the initial meeting, he would be sure to get on the staff. Once there he could go after the larger game. Unlike Givens, he had no belief in the racial integrity nonsense nor any confidence in the white masses whom he thought were destined to flock to the Knights of Nordica. On the contrary he despised and hated them. He had the average Negro’s justifiable fear of the poor whites and only planned to use them as a stepladder to the real money.

When Matthew left, Givens congratulated himself upon the fact that he had been able to attract such talent to the organization in its very infancy. His ideas must be sound, he concluded, if scientists from New York were impressed by them. He reached over, pulled the dictionary stand toward him and opened the big book at A.

“Lemme see, now,” he muttered aloud. “Anthropology. Better git that word straight ’fore I go talkin’ too much about it.⁠ ⁠… Humn! Humn!⁠ ⁠… That boy must know a hull lot.” He read over the definition of the word twice without understanding it, closed the dictionary, pushed it away from him, and then cutting off a large chew of tobacco from his plug, he leaned back in his swivel chair to rest after the unaccustomed mental exertion.

Matthew went gaily back to his hotel. “Man alive!” he chortled to himself. “What a lucky break! Can’t keep old Max down long.⁠ ⁠… Will I speak to ’em? Well, I won’t stay quiet!” He felt so delighted over the prospect of getting close to some real money that he treated himself to an expensive dinner and a twenty-five-cent cigar. Afterward he inquired further about old man Givens from the house detective, a native Atlantan.

“Oh, he’s well heeled⁠—the old crook!” remarked the detective. “Damnify could ever understand how such ignorant people get a-hold of th’ money; but there y’are. Owns as pretty a home as you can find around these parts an’ damn ’f he ain’t stahtin’ a new racket.”

“Do you think he’ll make anything out of it?” inquired Matthew, innocently.

“Say, Brother, you mus’ be a stranger in these parts. These damn, ignorant crackers will fall fer anything fer a while. They ain’t had no Klan here fer goin’ on three years. Leastwise it ain’t been functionin’.” The old fellow chuckled and spat a stream of tobacco juice into a nearby cuspidor. Matthew sauntered away. Yes, the pickings ought to be good.

Equally enthusiastic was the Imperial Grand Wizard when he came home to dinner that night. He entered the house humming one of his favorite hymns and his wife looked up from the evening paper with surprise on her face. The Rev. Givens was usually something of a grouch but tonight he was as happy as a pickpocket at a country fair.

“What’s th’ mattah with you?” she inquired, sniffing suspiciously.

“Oh, Honey,” he gurgled, “I think this here Knights of Nordica is going over big; going over big! My fame is spreading. Only today I had a long talk with a famous anthropologist from New York and he’s going to address our mass meeting tonight.”

“Whut’s an anthropologist?” asked Mrs. Givens, wrinkling her seamy brow.

“Oh-er, well, he’s one of these here scientists what knows all about this here business what’s going on up there in New York where them niggers is turning each other white,” explained Rev. Givens hastily but firmly. “He’s a mighty smaht feller and I want you and Helen to come out and hear him.”

“B’lieve Ah will,” declared Mrs. Givens, “if this heah rheumatism’ll le’ me foh a while. Doan know ’bout Helen, though. Evah since that gal went away tuh school she ain’t bin int’rested in nuthin’ upliftin’!”

Mrs. Givens spoke in a grieved tone and heaved her narrow chest in a deep sigh. She didn’t like all this newfangled foolishness of these young folks. They were getting away from God, that’s what they were, and she didn’t like it. Mrs. Givens was a Christian. There was no doubt about it because she freely admitted it to everybody, with or without provocation. Of course she often took the name of the Creator in vain when she got to quarreling with Henry; she had the reputation among her friends of not always stating the exact truth; she hated Negroes; her spouse had made bitter and profane comment concerning her virginity on their wedding night; and as head of the ladies’ auxiliary of the defunct Klan she had copied her husband’s financial methods; but that she was a devout Christian no one doubted. She believed the Bible from cover to cover, except what it said about people with money, and she read it every evening aloud, greatly to the annoyance of the Imperial Grand Wizard and his modern and comely daughter.

Mrs. Givens had probably once been beautiful but the wear and tear of a long life as the better half of an itinerant evangelist was apparent. Her once flaming red hair was turning gray and roan-like, her hatchet face was a crisscross of wrinkles and lines, she was round-shouldered, hollow-chested, walked with a stoop and her long, bony, white hands looked like claws. She alternately dipped snuff and smoked an evil-smelling clay pipe, except when there was company at the house. At such times Helen would insist her mother “act like civilized people.”

Helen was twenty and quite confident that she herself was civilized. Whether she was or not, she was certainly beautiful. Indeed, she was such a beauty that many of the friends of the family insisted that she must have been adopted. Taller than either of her parents, she was stately, erect, well proportioned, slender, vivid and knew how to wear her clothes. In only one way did she resemble her parents and that was in things intellectual. Any form of mental effort, she complained, made her head ache, and so her parents had always let her have her way about studying.

At the age of eleven she had been taken from the third grade in public school and sent to an exclusive seminary for the double purpose of gaining social prestige and concealing her mental incapacity. At sixteen when her instructors had about despaired of her, they were overjoyed by the decision of her father to send the girl to a “finishing school” in the North. The “finishing school” about finished what intelligence Helen possessed; but she came forth, four years later, more beautiful, with a better knowledge of how to dress and how to act in exclusive society, enough superficialities to enable her to get by in the “best” circles and a great deal of that shallow facetiousness that passes for sophistication in American upper-class life. A winter in Manhattan had rounded out her education. Now she was back home, thoroughly ashamed of her grotesque parents, and, like the other girls of her set, anxious to get a husband who at the same time was handsome, intelligent, educated, refined and rolling in wealth. As she was ignorant of the fact that no such man existed, she looked confidently forward into the future.

“I don’t care to go down there among all those gross people,” she informed her father at the dinner table when he broached the subject of the meeting. “They’re so crude and elemental, don’t you know,” she explained, arching her narrow eyebrows.

“The common people are the salt of the earth,” boomed Rev. Givens. “If it hadn’t been for the common people we wouldn’t have been able to get this home and send you off to school. You make me sick with all your modern ideas. You’d do a lot better if you’d try to be more like your Ma.”

Both Mrs. Givens and Helen looked quickly at him to see if he was smiling. He wasn’t.

“Why don’tcha go, Helen?” pleaded Mrs. Givens. “Yo fathah sez this heah man f’m N’Yawk is uh⁠—uh scientist or somethin’ an’ knows a whole lot about things. Yuh might l’arn somethin’. Ah’d go mys’f if ’twasn’t fo mah rheumatism.” She sighed in self-pity and finished gnawing a drumstick.

Helen’s curiosity was aroused and although she didn’t like the idea of sitting among a lot of mill hands, she was anxious to see and hear this reputedly brilliant young man from the great metropolis where not long before she had lost both her provincialism and chastity.

“Oh, all right,” she assented with mock reluctance. “I’ll go.”

The Knights of Nordica’s flag-draped auditorium slowly filled. It was a bare, cavernous structure, with sawdust on the floor, a big platform at one end, row after row of folding wooden chairs and illuminated by large, white lights hanging from the rafters. On the platform was a row of five chairs, the center one being high-backed and gilded. On the lectern downstage was a bulky bible. A huge American flag was stretched across the rear wall.

The audience was composed of the lower stratum of white working people: hard-faced, lantern-jawed, dull-eyed adult children, seeking like all humanity for something permanent in the eternal flux of life. The young girls in their cheap finery with circus makeup on their faces; the young men, aged before their time by child labor and a violent environment; the middle-aged folk with their shiny, shabby garb and beaten countenances; all ready and eager to be organized for any purpose except improvement of their intellects and standard of living.

Rev. Givens opened the meeting with a prayer “for the success, O God, of this thy work, to protect the sisters and wives and daughters of these, thy people, from the filthy pollution of an alien race.”

A choir of assorted types of individuals sang “Onward Christian Soldiers” earnestly, vociferously and badly.

They were about to file off the platform when the song leader, a big, beefy, jovial mountain of a man, leaped upon the stage and restrained them.

“Wait a minute, folks, wait a minute,” he commanded. Then turning to the assemblage: “Now people let’s put some pep into this. We wanna all be happy and get in th’ right spirit for this heah meetin’. Ah’m gonna ask the choir to sing th’ first and last verses ovah ag’in, and when they come to th’ chorus, Ah wantcha to all join in. Doan be ’fraid. Jesus wouldn’t be ’fraid to sing ‘Onward Christian Soldiers,’ now would he? Come on, then. All right, choir, you staht; an’ when Ah wave mah han’ you’all join in on that theah chorus.”

They obediently followed his directions while he marched up and down the platform, red-faced and roaring and waving his arms in time. When the last note had died away, he dismissed the choir and stepping to the edge of the stage he leaned far out over the audience and barked at them again.

“Come on, now, folks! Yuh caint slow up on Jesus now. He won’t be satisfied with jus’ one ole measly song. Yuh gotta let ’im know that yuh love ’im; that y’re happy an’ contented; that yuh ain’t got no troubles an’ ain’t gonna have any. Come on, now. Le’s sing that ole favorite what yo’all like so well: ‘Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag and Smile, Smile, Smile.’ ” He bellowed and they followed him. Again the vast hall shook with sound. He made them rise and grasp each other by the hand until the song ended.

Matthew, who sat on the platform alongside old man Givens viewed the spectacle with amusement mingled with amazement. He was amused because of the similarity of this meeting to the religious orgies of the more ignorant Negroes and amazed that earlier in the evening he should have felt any qualms about lecturing to these folks on anthropology, a subject with which neither he nor his hearers were acquainted. He quickly saw that these people would believe anything that was shouted at them loudly and convincingly enough. He knew what would fetch their applause and bring in their memberships and he intended to repeat it over and over.

The Imperial Grand Wizard spent a half-hour introducing the speaker of the evening, dwelt upon his supposed scholastic attainments, but took pains to inform them that, despite Matthew’s vast knowledge, he still believed in the Word of God, the sanctity of womanhood and the purity of the white race.

For an hour Matthew told them at the top of his voice what they believed: i.e., that a white skin was a sure indication of the possession of superior intellectual and moral qualities; that all Negroes were inferior to them; that God had intended for the United States to be a white man’s country and that with His help they could keep it so; that their sons and brothers might inadvertently marry Negresses or, worse, their sisters and daughters might marry Negroes, if Black-No-More, Incorporated, was permitted to continue its dangerous activities.

For an hour he spoke, interrupted at intervals by enthusiastic gales of applause, and as he spoke his eye wandered over the females in the audience, noting the comeliest ones. As he wound up with a spirited appeal for eager soldiers to join the Knights of Nordica at five dollars per head and the half-dozen “planted” emissaries led the march of suckers to the platform, he noted for the first time a girl who sat in the front row and gazed up at him raptly.

She was a titian blonde, well-dressed, beautiful and strangely familiar. As he retired amid thunderous applause to make way for Rev. Givens and the money collectors, he wondered where he had seen her before. He studied her from his seat.

Suddenly he knew. It was she! The girl who had spurned him; the girl he had sought so long; the girl he wanted more than anything in the world! Strange that she should be here. He had always thought of her as a refined, educated and wealthy lady, far above associating with such people as these. He was in a fever to meet her, some way, before she got out of his sight again, and yet he felt just a little disappointed to find her here.

He could hardly wait until Givens seated himself again before questioning him as to the girl’s identity. As the beefy song leader led the roaring of the popular closing hymn, he leaned toward the Imperial Grand Wizard and shouted: “Who is that tall golden-haired girl sitting in the front row? Do you know her?”

Rev. Givens looked out over the audience, craning his skinny neck and blinking his eyes. Then he saw the girl, sitting within twenty feet of him.

“You mean that girl sitting right in front, there?” he asked, pointing.

“Yes, that one,” said Matthew, impatiently.

“Heh! Heh! Heh!” chuckled the Wizard, rubbing his stubbly chin. “Why that there’s my daughter, Helen. Like to meet her?”

Matthew could hardly believe his ears. Givens’s daughter! Incredible! What a coincidence! What luck! Would he like to meet her? He leaned over and shouted “Yes.”