Iola Leroy by Frances E.W. Harper
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Frances E.W. Harper >> Iola Leroy
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The morning she entered on her work he called his employes together, and
told them that Miss Iola had colored blood in her veins, but that he was
going to employ her and give her a desk. If any one objected to working
with her, he or she could step to the cashier's desk and receive what
was due. Not a man remonstrated, not a woman demurred; and Iola at last
found a place in the great army of bread-winners, which the traditions
of her blood could not affect.
"How did you succeed?" asked Mrs. Cloten of her husband, when he
returned to dinner.
"Admirably! 'Everything is lovely and the goose hangs high.' I gave my
employes to understand that they could leave if they did not wish to
work with Miss Leroy. Not one of them left, or showed any disposition
to rebel."
"I am very glad," said Mrs. Cloten. "I am ashamed of the way she has been
treated in our city, when seeking to do her share in the world's work. I
am glad that you were brave enough to face this cruel prejudice, and
give her a situation."
"Well, my dear, do not make me a hero for a single act. I am grateful
for the care Miss Leroy gave our Daisy. Money can buy services, but it
cannot purchase tender, loving sympathy. I was also determined to let my
employes know that I, not they, commanded my business. So, do not crown
me a hero until I have won a niche in the temple of fame. In dealing
with Southern prejudice against the negro, we Northerners could do it
with better grace if we divested ourselves of our own. We irritate the
South by our criticisms, and, while I confess that there is much that is
reprehensible in their treatment of colored people, yet if our Northern
civilization is higher than theirs we should 'criticise by creation.' We
should stamp ourselves on the South, and not let the South stamp itself
on us. When we have learned to treat men according to the complexion of
their souls, and not the color of their skins, we will have given our
best contribution towards the solution of the negro problem."
"I feel, my dear," said Mrs. Cloten, "that what you have done is a right
step in the right direction, and I hope that other merchants will do the
same. We have numbers of business men, rich enough to afford themselves
the luxury of a good conscience."
CHAPTER XXV.
AN OLD FRIEND.
"Good-morning, Miss Leroy," said a cheery voice in tones of glad
surprise, and, intercepting her path, Dr. Gresham stood before Iola,
smiling, and reaching out his hand.
"Why, Dr. Gresham, is this you?" said Iola, lifting her eyes to that
well-remembered face. "It has been several years since we met. How have
you been all this time, and where?"
"I have been sick, and am just now recovering from malaria and nervous
prostration. I am attending a medical convention in this city, and hope
that I shall have the pleasure of seeing you again."
Iola hesitated, and then replied: "I should be pleased to have you
call."
"It would give me great pleasure. Where shall I call?"
"My home is 1006 South Street, but I am only at home in the evenings."
They walked together a short distance till they reached Mr. Cloten's
store; then, bidding the doctor good morning, Iola left him repeating to
himself the words of his favorite poet:--
"Thou art too lovely and precious a gem
To be bound to their burdens and sullied by them."
No one noticed the deep flush on Iola's face as she entered the store,
nor the subdued, quiet manner with which she applied herself to her
tasks. She was living over again the past, with its tender, sad, and
thrilling reminiscences.
In the evening Dr. Gresham called on Iola. She met him with a pleasant
welcome. Dr. Gresham gazed upon her with unfeigned admiration, and
thought that the years, instead of detracting from, had only
intensified, her loveliness. He had thought her very beautiful in the
hospital, in her gray dress and white collar, with her glorious wealth
of hair drawn over her ears. But now, when he saw her with that hair
artistically arranged, and her finely-proportioned form arrayed in a
dark crimson dress, relieved by a shimmer of lace and a bow of white
ribbon at her throat, he thought her superbly handsome. The lines which
care had written upon her young face had faded away. There was no
undertone of sorrow in her voice as she stood up before him in the calm
loveliness of her ripened womanhood, radiant in beauty and gifted in
intellect. Time and failing health had left their traces upon Dr.
Gresham. His step was less bounding, his cheek a trifle paler, his
manner somewhat graver than it was when he had parted from Iola in the
hospital, but his meeting with her had thrilled his heart with
unexpected pleasure. Hopes and sentiments which long had slept awoke at
the touch of her hand and the tones of her voice, and Dr. Gresham found
himself turning to the past, with its sad memories and disappointed
hopes. No other face had displaced her image in his mind; no other love
had woven itself around every tendril of his soul. His heart and hand
were just as free as they were the hour they had parted.
"To see you again," said Dr. Gresham, "is a great and unexpected
pleasure."
"You had not forgotten me, then?" said Iola, smiling.
"Forget you! I would just as soon forget my own existence. I do not
think that time will ever efface the impressions of those days in which
we met so often. When last we met you were intending to search for your
mother. Have you been successful?"
"More than successful," said Iola, with a joyous ring in her voice. "I
have found my mother, brother, grandmother, and uncle, and, except my
brother, we are all living together, and we are so happy. Excuse me a
few minutes," she said, and left the room. Iola soon returned, bringing
with her her mother and grandmother.
"These," said Iola, introducing her mother and grandmother, "are the
once-severed branches of our family; and this gentleman you have seen
before," continued Iola, as Robert entered the room.
Dr. Gresham looked scrutinizingly at him and said: "Your face looks
familiar, but I saw so many faces at the hospital that I cannot just now
recall your name."
"Doctor," said Robert Johnson, "I was one of your last patients, and I
was with Tom Anderson when he died."
"Oh, yes," replied Dr. Gresham; "it all comes back to me. You were
wounded at the battle of Five Forks, were you not?"
"Yes," said Robert.
"I saw you when you were recovering. You told me that you thought you
had a clue to your lost relatives, from whom you had been so long
separated. How have you succeeded?"
"Admirably! I have been fortunate in finding my mother, my sister, and
her children."
"Ah, indeed! I am delighted to hear it. Where are they?"
"They are right here. This is my mother," said Robert, bending fondly
over her, as she returned his recognition with an expression of intense
satisfaction; "and this," he continued, "is my sister, and Miss Leroy is
my niece."
"Is it possible? I am very glad to hear it. It has been said that every
cloud has its silver lining, and the silver lining of our war cloud is
the redemption of a race and the reunion of severed hearts. War is a
dreadful thing; but worse than the war was the slavery which preceded
it."
"Slavery," said Iola, "was a fearful cancer eating into the nation's
heart, sapping its vitality, and undermining its life."
"And war," said Dr. Gresham, "was the dreadful surgery by which the
disease was eradicated. The cancer has been removed, but for years to
come I fear that we will have to deal with the effects of the disease.
But I believe that we have vitality enough to outgrow those effects."
"I think, Doctor," said Iola, "that there is but one remedy by which our
nation can recover from the evil entailed upon her by slavery."
"What is that?" asked Robert.
"A fuller comprehension of the claims of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and
their application to our national life."
"Yes," said Robert; "while politicians are stumbling on the barren
mountains of fretful controversy and asking what shall we do with the
negro? I hold that Jesus answered that question nearly two thousand
years ago when he said, 'Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you,
do ye even so to them.'"
"Yes," said Dr. Gresham; "the application of that rule in dealing with
the negro would solve the whole problem."
"Slavery," said Mrs. Leroy, "is dead, but the spirit which animated it
still lives; and I think that a reckless disregard for human life is
more the outgrowth of slavery than any actual hatred of the negro."
"The problem of the nation," continued Dr. Gresham, "is not what men
will do with the negro, but what will they do with the reckless, lawless
white men who murder, lynch and burn their fellow-citizens. To me these
lynchings and burnings are perfectly alarming. Both races have reacted
on each other--men fettered the slave and cramped their own souls;
denied him knowledge, and darkened their spiritual insight; subdued him
to the pliancy of submission, and in their turn became the thralls of
public opinion. The negro came here from the heathenism of Africa; but
the young colonies could not take into their early civilization a stream
of barbaric blood without being affected by its influence and the negro,
poor and despised as he is, has laid his hands on our Southern
civilization and helped mould its character."
"Yes," said Mrs. Leroy; "the colored nurse could not nestle her master's
child in her arms, hold up his baby footsteps on their floors, and walk
with him through the impressible and formative period of his young life
without leaving upon him the impress of her hand."
"I am glad," said Robert, "for the whole nation's sake, that slavery
has been destroyed."
"And our work," said Dr. Gresham, "is to build over the desolations of
the past a better and brighter future. The great distinction between
savagery and civilization is the creation and maintenance of law.
A people cannot habitually trample on law and justice without
retrograding toward barbarism. But I am hopeful that time will bring us
changes for the better; that, as we get farther away from the war, we
will outgrow the animosities and prejudices engendered by slavery. The
short-sightedness of our fathers linked the negro's destiny to ours. We
are feeling the friction of the ligatures which bind us together, but I
hope that the time will speedily come when the best members of both
races will unite for the maintenance of law and order and the progress
and prosperity of the country, and that the intelligence and virtue of
the South will be strong to grapple effectually with its ignorance and
vice."
"I hope that time will speedily come," said Marie. "My son is in the
South, and I am always anxious for his safety. He is not only a teacher,
but a leading young man in the community where he lives."
"Yes," said Robert, "and when I see the splendid work he is doing in the
South, I am glad that, instead of trying to pass for a white man, he has
cast his lot with us."
"But," answered Dr. Gresham, "he would possess advantages as a white man
which he could not if he were known to be colored."
"Doctor," said Iola, decidedly, "he has greater advantages as a colored
man."
"I do not understand you," said Dr. Gresham, looking somewhat puzzled.
"Doctor," continued Iola, "I do not think life's highest advantages are
those that we can see with our eyes or grasp with our hands. To whom
to-day is the world most indebted--to its millionaires or to its
martyrs?"
"Taking it from the ideal standpoint," replied the doctor, "I should say
its martyrs."
"To be," continued Iola, "the leader of a race to higher planes of
thought and action, to teach men clearer views of life and duty, and to
inspire their souls with loftier aims, is a far greater privilege than
it is to open the gates of material prosperity and fill every home with
sensuous enjoyment."
"And I," said Mrs. Leroy, her face aglow with fervid feeling, "would
rather--ten thousand times rather--see Harry the friend and helper of
the poor and ignorant than the companion of men who, under the cover of
night, mask their faces and ride the country on lawless raids."
"Dr. Gresham," said Robert, "we ought to be the leading nation of the
earth, whose influence and example should give light to the world."
"Not simply," said Iola, "a nation building up a great material
prosperity, founding magnificent cities, grasping the commerce of the
world, or excelling in literature, art, and science, but a nation
wearing sobriety as a crown and righteousness as the girdle of her
loins."
Dr. Gresham gazed admiringly upon Iola. A glow of enthusiasm overspread
her beautiful, expressive face. There was a rapt and far-off look in her
eye, as if she were looking beyond the present pain to a brighter
future for the race with which she was identified, and felt the
grandeur of a divine commission to labor for its uplifting.
As Dr. Gresham was parting with Robert, he said: "This meeting has been
a very unexpected pleasure. I have spent a delightful evening. I only
regret that I had not others to share it with me. A doctor from the
South, a regular Bourbon, is stopping at the hotel. I wish he could have
been here to-night. Come down to the Concordia, Mr. Johnson, to-morrow
night. If you know any colored man who is a strong champion of equal
rights, bring him along. Good-night. I shall look for you," said the
doctor, as he left the door.
When Robert returned to the parlor he said to Iola: "Dr. Gresham has
invited me to come to his hotel to-morrow night, and to bring some
wide-awake colored man with me. There is a Southerner whom he wishes me
to meet. I suppose he wants to discuss the negro problem, as they call
it. He wants some one who can do justice to the subject. I wonder whom I
can take with me?"
"I will tell you who, I think, will be a capital one to take with you,
and I believe he would go," said Iola.
"Who?" asked Robert.
"Rev. Carmicle, your pastor."
"He is just the one," said Robert, "courteous in his manner and very
scholarly in his attainments. He is a man whom if everybody hated him no
one could despise him."
CHAPTER XXVI.
OPEN QUESTIONS.
In the evening Robert and Rev. Carmicle called on Dr. Gresham, and found
Dr. Latrobe, the Southerner, and a young doctor by the name of Latimer,
already there. Dr. Gresham introduced Dr. Latrobe, but it was a new
experience to receive colored men socially. His wits, however, did not
forsake him, and he received the introduction and survived it.
"Permit me, now," said Dr. Gresham, "to introduce you to my friend, Dr.
Latimer, who is attending our convention. He expects to go South and
labor among the colored people. Don't you think that there is a large
field of usefulness before him?"
"Yes," replied Dr. Latrobe, "if he will let politics alone."
"And why let politics alone?" asked Dr. Gresham.
"Because," replied Dr. Latrobe, "we Southerners will never submit to
negro supremacy. We will never abandon our Caucasian civilization to an
inferior race."
"Have you any reason," inquired Rev. Carmicle, "to dread that a race
which has behind it the heathenism of Africa and the slavery of America,
with its inheritance of ignorance and poverty, will be able, in less
than one generation, to domineer over a race which has behind it ages of
dominion, freedom, education, and Christianity?"
A slight shade of vexation and astonishment passed over the face of Dr.
Latrobe. He hesitated a moment, then replied:--
"I am not afraid of the negro as he stands alone, but what I dread is
that in some closely-contested election ambitious men will use him to
hold the balance of power and make him an element of danger. He is
ignorant, poor, and clannish, and they may impact him as their policy
would direct."
"Any more," asked Robert, "than the leaders of the Rebellion did the
ignorant, poor whites during our late conflict?"
"Ignorance, poverty, and clannishness," said Dr. Gresham, "are more
social than racial conditions, which may be outgrown."
"And I think," said Rev. Carmicle, "that we are outgrowing them as fast
as any other people would have done under the same conditions."
"The negro," replied Dr. Latrobe, "always has been and always will be an
element of discord in our country."
"What, then, is your remedy?" asked Dr. Gresham.
"I would eliminate him from the politics of the country."
"As disfranchisement is a punishment for crime, is it just to punish a
man before he transgresses the law?" asked Dr. Gresham.
"If," said Dr. Latimer, "the negro is ignorant, poor, and clannish, let
us remember that in part of our land it was once a crime to teach him to
read. If he is poor, for ages he was forced to bend to unrequited toil.
If he is clannish, society has segregated him to himself."
"And even," said Robert, "has given him a negro pew in your churches
and a negro seat at your communion table."
"Wisely, or unwisely," said Dr. Gresham, "the Government has put the
ballot in his hands. It is better to teach him to use that ballot aright
than to intimidate him by violence or vitiate his vote by fraud."
"To-day," said Dr. Latimer, "the negro is not plotting in beer-saloons
against the peace and order of society. His fingers are not dripping
with dynamite, neither is he spitting upon your flag, nor flaunting the
red banner of anarchy in your face."
"Power," said Dr. Gresham, "naturally gravitates into the strongest
hands. The class who have the best brain and most wealth can strike with
the heaviest hand. I have too much faith in the inherent power of the
white race to dread the competition of any other people under heaven."
"I think you Northerners fail to do us justice," said Dr. Latrobe. "The
men into whose hands you put the ballot were our slaves, and we would
rather die than submit to them. Look at the carpet-bag governments the
wicked policy of the Government inflicted upon us. It was only done to
humiliate us."
"Oh, no!" said Dr. Gresham, flushing, and rising to his feet. "We had no
other alternative than putting the ballot in their hands."
"I will not deny," said Rev. Carmicle, "that we have made woeful
mistakes, but with our antecedents it would have been miraculous if we
had never committed any mistakes or made any blunders."
"They were allies in war," continued Dr. Gresham, "and I am sorry that
we have not done more to protect them in peace."
"Protect them in peace!" said Robert, bitterly. "What protection does
the colored man receive from the hands of the Government? I know of no
civilized country outside of America where men are still burned for real
or supposed crimes."
"Johnson," said Dr. Gresham, compassionately, "it is impossible to have
a policeman at the back of each colored man's chair, and a squad of
soldiers at each crossroad, to detect with certainty, and punish with
celerity, each invasion of his rights. We tried provisional governments
and found them a failure. It seemed like leaving our former allies to be
mocked with the name of freedom and tortured with the essence of
slavery. The ballot is our weapon of defense, and we gave it to them for
theirs."
"And there," said Dr. Latrobe, emphatically, "is where you signally
failed. We are numerically stronger in Congress to-day than when we went
out. You made the law, but the administration of it is in our hands, and
we are a unit."
"But, Doctor," said Rev. Carmicle, "you cannot willfully deprive the
negro of a single right as a citizen without sending demoralization
through your own ranks."
"I think," said Dr. Latrobe, "that we are right in suppressing the
negro's vote. This is a white man's government, and a white man's
country. We own nineteen-twentieths of the land, and have about the same
ratio of intelligence. I am a white man, and, right or wrong, I go with
my race."
"But, Doctor," said Rev. Carmicle, "there are rights more sacred than
the rights of property and superior intelligence."
"What are they?" asked Dr. Latrobe.
"The rights of life and liberty," replied Rev. Carmicle.
"That is true," said Dr. Gresham; "and your Southern civilization will
be inferior until you shall have placed protection to those rights at
its base, not in theory but in fact."
"But, Dr. Gresham, we have to live with these people, and the North is
constantly irritating us by its criticisms."
"The world," said Dr. Gresham, "is fast becoming a vast whispering
gallery, and lips once sealed can now state their own grievances and
appeal to the conscience of the nation, and, as long as a sense of
justice and mercy retains a hold upon the heart of our nation, you
cannot practice violence and injustice without rousing a spirit of
remonstrance. And if it were not so I would be ashamed of my country and
of my race."
"You speak," said Dr. Latrobe, "as if we had wronged the negro by
enslaving him and being unwilling to share citizenship with him. I think
that slavery has been of incalculable value to the negro. It has lifted
him out of barbarism and fetich worship, given him a language of
civilization, and introduced him to the world's best religion. Think
what he was in Africa and what he is in America!"
"The negro," said Dr. Gresham, thoughtfully, "is not the only branch of
the human race which has been low down in the scale of civilization and
freedom, and which has outgrown the measure of his chains. Slavery,
polygamy, and human sacrifices have been practiced among Europeans in
by-gone days; and when Tyndall tells us that out of savages unable to
count to the number of their fingers and speaking only a language of
nouns and verbs, arise at length our Newtons and Shakspeares, I do not
see that the negro could not have learned our language and received our
religion without the intervention of ages of slavery."
"If," said Rev. Carmicle, "Mohammedanism, with its imperfect creed, is
successful in gathering large numbers of negroes beneath the Crescent,
could not a legitimate commerce and the teachings of a pure Christianity
have done as much to plant the standard of the Cross over the ramparts
of sin and idolatry in Africa? Surely we cannot concede that the light
of the Crescent is greater than the glory of the Cross, that there is
less constraining power in the Christ of Calvary than in the Prophet of
Arabia? I do not think that I underrate the difficulties in your way
when I say that you young men are holding in your hands golden
opportunities which it would be madness and folly to throw away. It is
your grand opportunity to help build up a new South, not on the shifting
sands of policy and expediency, but on the broad basis of equal justice
and universal freedom. Do this and you will be blessed, and will make
your life a blessing."
After Robert and Rev. Carmicle had left the hotel, Drs. Latimer,
Gresham, and Latrobe sat silent and thoughtful awhile, when Dr. Gresham
broke the silence by asking Dr. Latrobe how he had enjoyed the evening.
"Very pleasantly," he replied. "I was quite interested in that parson.
Where was he educated?"
"In Oxford, I believe. I was pleased to hear him say that he had no
white blood in his veins."
"I should think not," replied Dr. Latrobe, "from his looks. But one
swallow does not make a summer. It is the exceptions which prove the
rule."
"Don't you think," asked Dr. Gresham, "that we have been too hasty in
our judgment of the negro? He has come handicapped into life, and is now
on trial before the world. But it is not fair to subject him to the same
tests that you would a white man. I believe that there are possibilities
of growth in the race which we have never comprehended."
"The negro," said Dr. Latrobe, "is perfectly comprehensible to me. The
only way to get along with him is to let him know his place, and make
him keep it."
"I think," replied Dr. Gresham, "every man's place is the one he is best
fitted for."
"Why," asked Dr. Latimer, "should any place be assigned to the negro
more than to the French, Irish, or German?"
"Oh," replied Dr. Latrobe, "they are all Caucasians."
"Well," said Dr. Gresham, "is all excellence summed up in that branch of
the human race?"
"I think," said Dr. Latrobe, proudly, "that we belong to the highest
race on earth and the negro to the lowest."
"And yet," said Dr. Latimer, "you have consorted with them till you have
bleached their faces to the whiteness of your own. Your children nestle
in their bosoms; they are around you as body servants, and yet if one of
them should attempt to associate with you your bitterest scorn and
indignation would be visited upon them."
"I think," said Dr. Latrobe, "that feeling grows out of our Anglo-Saxon
regard for the marriage relation. These white negroes are of
illegitimate origin, and we would scorn to share our social life with
them. Their blood is tainted."
"Who tainted it?" asked Dr. Latimer, bitterly. "You give absolution to
the fathers, and visit the misfortunes of the mothers upon the
children."
"But, Doctor, what kind of society would we have if we put down the bars
and admitted everybody to social equality?"
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