"Most all people in America have theories as to the best solution of the
race problem, but my mother fancied that she had the one solution. She
felt that the mixed bloods who could pass for whites ought to organize
and cultivate unswerving devotion to the Negro race. According to her
plan the mixed bloods thus taught should be sent into the life of the
white people to work quietly year after year to break down the Southern
white man's idea of the Negro's rights. She felt that the mixed bloods
should lay hold of every center of power that could be reached. She set
for herself the task of controlling the pulpit, the social circle and
the politics of Almaville and eventually of the whole South and the
nation. O she had grand, wild dreams! If she had succeeded in her
efforts to utilize members of her own family, she had planned to
organize the mixed bloods of the nation and effect an organization
composed of cultured men and women that could readily pass for white,
who were to shake the Southern system to its very foundation. With this
general end in view, she had her son trained for the ministry. This son
became an eloquent preacher. My mother through a forged recommendation,
which, however, the son did not know to be forged, had him chosen as
pastor of a leading church in this city.
"My mother had a strange power over most people and a peculiar power
over my brother. He did not at all relish his peculiar situation, but my
mother insisted that he was but obeying the scriptural injunction to
preach the gospel to every creature. The minister in question was none
other than the universally esteemed Rev. Percy G. Marshall, who now
rests in a highly honored grave in your most exclusive cemetery, from
which Negroes are barred as visitors."
There was a marked sensation in the court room at this announcement
concerning the racial affinity of the Rev. Percy G. Marshall.
"I visited my brother clandestinely; often he and I sorrowed together.
On the night of the murder, which you all remember, and preceding that
sad event, closely veiled I visited him at his study. When we were
through talking I arose to go and opened the door. 'Kiss your brother.
We may not meet again,' said he sadly. Neglecting to close the door I
stepped up to him and kissed him. When I turned to go out I saw that Gus
Martin, whom Leroy Crutcher, as I afterwards found out, had set to
watching me, had seen us kiss each other. I hurried on home embarrassed
that I could not explain the situation to him. When on the next day I
read of my brother's death, I immediately guessed all. That is how I had
the key to bringing Gus Martin to terms. When he found out his awful
mistake he was willing to surrender.
"So resulted my mother's plans for the mastery of your Southern pulpit."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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