The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921Various
History
The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921
Various
African Americans -- Periodicals
The feelings expressed in the drama, though elemental, are uttered in
the terms of modernity. The structure of the drama is modern, and yet
there is something in the figure and movement of Rachel herself which
reminds the present writer of Antigone. We do not see Antigone before
the hour when she has chosen to meet the doom that man's law has
decreed should she perform the task that human love and religious
faith have enjoined upon her. Antigone goes to the death of her body
declaring that in the Infinite there is a longer time for love than
there is on earth.
But we do see Rachel before the ultimate choice has come to her. She
is a gay and happy girl. The drama proceeds to the hour when she too
must choose between the issues of earthly love and those which reach
into eternity. She learns from her mother, Mrs. Loving, that ten years
before, they all lived in the South and her father and her half
brother were lynched. Briefly summarized, this is Mrs. Loving's story.
As a young widow with a boy seven years old, she had married an
educated man of color. She was a person of color herself. Mr. Loving
owned and edited a paper in which he wrote on behalf of the people of
color. A Negro innocent of all crime was murdered by a mob in that
region. Mr. Loving denounced the murder and the murderers in his
paper. He received an anonymous letter apparently written by an
educated person, threatening him with death, if he did not retract
what he had said. In the next issue of his paper he published an
equally stern arraignment of the lynchers and their crime.
That night a dozen masked men broke into his house. Mr. Loving had a
revolver. He defended his life and his home. Mrs. Loving tried to
close her eyes. She could not. She saw all that happened in her
bedroom. Four of the masked assailants fell. "They did not move any
more ... after a little while." Then she saw her husband dragged out
of the room. Her older boy, George, tried to help his stepfather. He
was dragged out also. She went to the bedside of her two younger
children. They were asleep. Rachel was smiling. The mother knelt down
and covered her ears. When at last she let herself listen, she heard
only the tapping of the branch of a pine tree against the side of the
house. She did not know at first that it was _the tree_.
She fled with her two little children to the North. Those children had
never before this day of revelation known how their father had died.
The shadow of white cruelty to the body and souls of black folks had
darkened somewhat over their lives in the North, but still they had
been frolicsome and loving young creatures. Now they begin to realize
the full significance of "race prejudice."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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