He then poured forth in terms of romantic extravagance the tale of the Ku-Klux-Klan, and how it had saved American civilization. He referred me, by way of proof, to the statue of General Forrest, right here in Memphis, who had been Grand Titan, or Grand Dragon, or I know not what, of the said organization, and whom British soldiers, General French and General Wolseley, had declared to have been the greatest military genius that ever lived.
To all this I was no unwilling listener; yet my time was limited, and now and then I sought to return to the prime object of my visit. In vain! He literally button-holed me, held me by the lapel of my coat, while he informed me that there was not an honest woman, in any sense of the word, among the whole negro race, and that the coloured population was ravaged by every sort of vice and disease. Had it been possible to take his assurances literally, one must have concluded that the race problem must quickly solve itself by the extinction of the negro. And he frankly looked forward to that consummation. “Our vagrancy laws are going to be a bitter pill for them. You see”—here he sketched a diagram to assist my understanding—“a nigger can’t come here to the front-door of my house and ring the bell; but he can go round to the back door”—a line represented his tortuous course—“and I tell you he does. Every household supports at least four or five niggers. Now the vagrancy laws are going to drive that class of niggers to the North, and the Yankee ain’t goin’ to stand his ways. We’re a long-sufferin’ people here in the South.”
As for Mr. Du Bois’s book, it was evident that, even if he had it, he was not going to sell it to me. I left the shop with two books: one was “The Clansman,” by Thomas Dixon, jun., a melodramatic romance of the Ku-Klux-Klan; the other a pseudo-scientific onslaught on the negro race—a brutal and disgusting volume.
An hour or two later I was sitting in the consulting-room or “office” of a coloured physician—Dr. Oberman, let me call him. [Sidenote: A Doctor’s Story.]His real name was that of a we ll-known Southern family, and I remarked upon the fact, expecting to hear that he had been born a slave in that family. In a sense this was the case; but his story was a strange one, and he told it with frank simplicity.