Even though Mr. Dalton gave millions of dollars for Negro education, he would rent houses to Negroes only in this prescribed area, this corner of the city tumbling down from rot.

We black and they white. They got things and we ain’t. They do things and we can’t. It’s just like living in jail. Half the time I feel like I’m on the outside of the world peeping in through a knothole in the fence….”

Anger quickened in him: an old feeling that Bessie had often described to him when she had come from long hours of hot toil in the white folks’ kitchens, a feeling of being forever commanded by others so much that thinking and feeling for one’s self was impossible. Not only had he lived where they told him to live, not only had he done what they

Maybe all of the black men and women were talking about him this morning; maybe they were hating him for having brought this attack upon them.

knew that the moment he allowed what his life meant to enter fully into his consciousness, he would either kill himself or someone else. So he denied himself and acted tough.

Then they guffawed, partly at themselves and partly at the vast white world that sprawled and towered in the sun before them.

“When he talks, does he wave his hands around a lot, like he’s been around a lot of Jews?”

Fear and hate and guilt are the keynotes of this drama!

Crime for a Negro was only when he harmed whites, took white lives, or injured white property.