Dark Days: A Tale of Love Along the Color Line

By Dewey Roscoe Jones II

Dewey Roscoe Jones was a pioneering African American journalist. While working for the Chicago Defender, the most widely read black newspaper in the United States, he edited a book review column and a poetry column whose contributors included Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Frank Marshall Davis, and Gwendolyn Brooks. Jones personally wrote about fifty reviews, becoming Black Chicagos premier literary critic and commentator on the Harlem Renaissance. Frequently disappointed by the novels emanating from New York, he endeavored to create his own masterwork of fiction. Dark Days is the fruit of his labors.

Ishmael, the novels protagonist, comes to age in Oklahoma, a wild territory where former slaves and their offspring vie with former plantation owners and their offspring to make a new life. Theirs is a common legacy of frontier violence and frontier dreams, born in the aftermath of the Civil War, forcible removal of Native Americans, and the 1889 Land Rush. Black Ishmael loves white Denise, and their interlocked fates are the center of the tale. Ishmaels turbulent journey follows Joness own path from Muskogee to Chicago to the trenches of war-torn France.

Dark Days was completed midway between 1930 publication of Langston Hughess novel Not Without Laughter and Richard Wrights Native Son in 1940. That chronology situates it in the closing days of Harlems Renaissance and on the cusp of Black Chicagos creative flowering. By recovering his fathers novel, Dewey Roscoe Jones II has performed a service to all readers interested in the trajectory of African American creative expression in the early twentieth century.

Richard A. Courage, Professor of English, Westchester Community College/SUNY; co-author of The Muse in Bronzeville: African American Creative Expression in Chicago, 1932-1950.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781475987515

Dewey Roscoe Jones II

The author, Dewey Roscoe Jones, received a BA degree in Journalism form the University of Michigan in 1922. He settled in Chicago and started working for the Chicago Defender, a Black owned and operated newspaper with national circulation. At the Defender he managed a column on Poetry, called Lights and Shadows; he wrote numerous book reviews, and published regular columns on current events and was promoted to City Editor. In 1931 he matriculated at Columbia University and received a MA in journalism in 1932 while continuing to write fo the Chicago Defender. He returned to Chicago and became the Managing Editor. While he printed excerpts form the Novel in his weekly column Pointed Paragraphs in 1935, he did not publish the complete work. He met an untimely death in 1939 without having published the complete Novel. His widow and son preserved the manuscript . His son, Dewey Roscoe Jones II, has completed and edited the maunscript and added an introduction to the book. Dewey Roscoe Jones II received a BA in Liberal Arts from the Unirsity of Chicago, an MA in Spanish Language and Literature from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and a Juris Doctor degree from the Chicago Kent College of Law .

Book preview

PART I

Muskogee, Oklahoma

Circa 1900

CHAPTER 1

Black Boy—White Girl—Fateful Meeting

Ishmael was 6 years old when he realized that he was black, and that being black he was not like other people. Before this discovery he had completely ignored the great law of the Southland that there must be separate places for black and white people. In his childish, boisterous way, Ishmael, the youngest of seven children of the Dade family, had gone about picking on the poor white children in the Oil Mill district where he lived. Being sassy to white folks gave him a peculiar delight as well as furnishing moments of furtive hilarity for his sisters and brothers.

One day Ishmael was coming through the alley that led toward Fondulac from Emporia streets. He was happy in possession of one of the slop pails his brothers had allowed him to carry. The bucket, loaded to the brim with swill taken from the garbage cans along the alley, dragged him almost to the ground, but he was joyful and he sang loudly and lustily.

It wasn’t often that Ishmael was allowed to follow the older boys on their regular morning trips for slop for the hogs. Little boys is too much trouble, they usually answered when he asked to go along. But today it was different and so Ishmael was happy.

Stumbling along half a block behind the older boys, Ishmael was making the alley ring with his singing. Then he heard something else. It was a voice from a rear window of one of the mansions along 14th Street. It was also singing, but the words had a taunting ring to them. Ishmael placed his pail carefully at his feet, and gave himself up to contemplation of the words and the person who uttered them.

Nigger, nigger, never die, black hair and shiny eye—

I wanda do she mean ‘at fo’ me? Ishmael asked himself quietly. His chubby face took on serious aspect and his eyes began a systematic search for the owner of the voice. Impulsively he clenched his fist. I bet her betta not lemme git my han’s on her. Come hollerin’ at me like dat.

Pretty soon he saw her. She was about his own age, or perhaps a year younger. All Ishmael noticed at first were some yellow curls hanging out of the window of the largest house along the street. Then he saw back of these curls a freckled face and a pair of light colored eyes. Old cat-eye, Ishmael muttered to himself as he looked at her.

And the girl continued, this time assuring herself that Ishmael saw her:

Nigger, nigger, never die-black face and shiny eye, Crooked nose and crooked toes, And that’s the way the nigger grows.

Dat ol’ fool betta lemme ‘lone, cause I ain’t studyin’ her nohow.

But he stood and looked at her, and his expression was one of frustration. He wanted to get at this yellow-haired girl, but he didn’t know how to go about it. Suddenly he had a bright idea. Without giving himself time to think twice, he stooped and picked a large knucklebone from among many other bones in his garbage pail. Taking accurate aim at the window, Ishmael let fly the bone and swung around to run.

Hold on there a minute, you young imp, and Ishmael found himself being held in the firm grip of a tall white man. Instinctively he tried to pull away from the man, whining all the time: I ain’t done nothin’. I ain’t done nothin’!

Oh, yes you did do something, you little black bastard. The man was dragging Ishmael back toward the house, shaking him vigorously by the collar all the while. I’ll show you to be gaping at white girls and throwing things at them.

Lifting Ishmael from the ground, the man held him at arm’s length and then dropped him in a heap. The little black boy struggled to his feet and, whimpering loudly, started backing away from the man who, by this time, was gasping for breath. He watched Ishmael with an amused twinkle in his eyes, and seemed about to turn toward the gate when he saw the bucket of garbage. As an afterthought, he raised the pail and dumped its contents over the boy just as he was about to run. The weight of the garbage and the surprise at having received this shower bore Ishmael again to the ground where, with the back of his hands he wiped the mess out of his eyes.

Through the muck he saw the man standing there, leaning against the alley gate and laughing uproariously. Beside him stood the girl of the yellow curls. She was convulsed with laughter, and she clapped her hands to her knees and gave forth silvery ripples of music as she gazed at the little boy in blue sitting on the ground. As Ishmael looked at the pair, he remembered a picture on a Sunday school card that reminded him strangely of the man. I knows who him is, Ishmael thought aloud. Him’s de bad man I done see at de Sunday school.

Then, remembering what he was doing and where he was, he picked himself up slowly and started out of the alley. Not once did he turn to look at the strangely assorted pair by the gate. His pail he left where the man had thrown it.

At Fondulac Street he waited patiently while a street car took on two passengers, then proceeded on over l4th Street down to the M. 0. & G. tracks. He had been near these tracks often when his brothers were stealing coal from cars on the sidings, but he had never ceased being fascinated watching the trains whiz by. Today he was not thinking of trains. He was thinking of a white man and a white girl. He was wondering, in his child’s way, the words the man had uttered.

Color of skin had never meant anything to him before. In his brief career he had played with whites and blacks alike down in his Oil Mill district, and none had ever taken the trouble to question him or challenge him for it. He had, however, come to look upon white men as bosses and, somewhere in the deep recesses of his consciousness, he had come to fear them. One reason for this was that he had noticed that, at the mill where his father worked, everyone took off his hat when the white man came around and any white man who came around was a boss man.

But here was a different situation. He knew he had done wrong in throwing at the house—his mother would have whipped him for that—but he didn’t understand why the man had mentioned the girl’s race. Whut’at old white man mean come tellin’ me not to look at a white girl? he asked himself petulantly. I bet it wuzent none o’ his gal nohow.

Arrived at the track, he seated himself on the ground at the foot of the embankment, and leaned back against a fence-post. I doan min’ doah, he didn’t hurt me none.

Ishmael was a peculiar child. His mother, who helped maintain the family budget by cooking for the white folks over on the other side of Fondulac, had often discussed her youngest son with Solomon Dade. Seem lak he ain’t lak other younguns, she had complained one day to her husband. Some time I specks he ain’t right bright in de haid.

But this was not what was worrying Ishmael at this moment as he lolled against the post and scanned the tracks for an approaching train. His mind, for some reason, would not forget the white man and the little girl who laughed at him. She sho’ was a ugly white girl, he said to himself.

Today was Saturday and as Ishmael was too young to be of much assistance in helping with the regular chores, he was allowed to run around pretty much at will. Nobody except the mother worried about him when he was not at home, and Tressie Dade was away herself too much to make much of an impression on the children. She had to be at work early in the morning, and rarely returned home until well after dark.

An Oklahoma day in March is unlike March in any other section of the country. You can get up in the morning to the tune of birds and young frogs. Balmy air and blue skies—peaceful and inviting—greet you. At noon the sun’s rays have driven you to seek the shade of your house. And yet, before dusk, on many days, the trees and telephone wires are weighted down with ice, and you are listening anxiously for the long, melancholy call of the coal man that you may relight the fires you had thought unnecessary.

It was this kind of day that Ishmael had selected to ponder over the situation which had come to him in the form of a problem. A lazy haze was rising from the valley over the tracks, and the little chap, seated on the other side, gazed sleepily at these skies through this haze. Through the blue, he saw approaching him a buggy drawn by two horses. He saw a man and a girl seated side by side, chatting gaily. He couldn’t understand it.

Doggone, heah come ‘at old white man agin, he said, petulantly.

I sho hopes he ain’t gonna th’ow no mo’ slop on me. As he gazed, they passed overhead and disappeared in a cloud. Ishmael was sleepy, but he didn’t want to sleep—he wanted to think. He tried hard to keep his mind focussed on the girl and the man and on what each had said to him. Finally he gave it up, and, curling his little chubby self up around the post against which he was leaning, drifted off into slumberland.

CHAPTER 2

Black Family

There are hundreds of towns like Muskogee, towns distinguished by the fact that there is nothing distinctive about them. Muskogee, situated in the eastern section of the box-like State of Oklahoma, begins at the Katy station, where the M. K. & T. trains come in, and ends at Agency hill, several miles farther West. Fondulac Street, running an irregular course from the tracks to the western boundary line, tried to separate the quality white folks from the Negroes, but it couldn’t entirely succeed because in some sections the quality Negroes happen also to get south of Fondulac, but for the most part, they are confined to the North boundary, to Reeves Addition and to the Tamaroa Street district which has its beginning and ending among dark people of Muskogee.

At the East end of Fondulac and to the North of it is the Oil Mill district in which are located the cotton gins and the oil refineries that offer a livelihood to a great number of people, black and white. In this district is complete equality. What few white families live here, work with Negroes at the mills, and allow their children to run up and down the unpaved streets with little black boys and girls in free companionship. The parents, like the blacks of the neighborhood, are either too tired to bother about the supremacy of their race, or just don’t care. In the heart of this territory, living in the squalor and poverty befitting the Dades—mama, papa, two girls and five boys. Mrs. Dade, known throughout the district as Tressie, is a characteristic southern Mammy. Born a slave, she remembered when her mother was tied to a barrel, whipped unmercifully, and screamed out in pain when salt was poured into the open wounds made by the lash. She remembered this, and took unholy delight in telling about it. With her bottom lip puffed out with snuff, Skeetin’ garret, she called it, she would declare:

I disremembers th’ date, but it musta been round ’bout six o’clock dat even’ when the boss tuk an’ whipped my mammy till she wuz bloody. ‘Nen he drapped salt in the holes he made.

Tressie Dade was of more than average weight. Short, plump, she had a tendency to wobble as she walked. She was an excellent cook, a fast worker, and as fast a talker. There was, however, one point on which she was reticent and that was her children. Unless approached on the subject of the younguns, she never volunteered any information about them. It was the talk of the community, however, that Tressie would fight at the drop of the hat about her children.

On the Saturday, upon which Ishmael accompanied his brothers to the alley for slop, Tressie came home early from work. She had managed to get her baking done for Sunday, and was allowed a few extra hours to get her children cleaned up for their regular Saturday afternoon jaunt to the White Front grocery store to pay the week’s bill, and receive the never-failing box of animal crackers always ready for them.

All the way home, she had thought of Ishmael, and wondered what he was doing since she had not seen him before leaving for work in the morning. She scanned the yards along Mill Street as she walked, and watched the crowds of children playing here and there for her youngest son who, although only six year’s old, was more than she could understand. As she entered the gate and started along the cinder path leading to the four-room house she called home, and which was considered elegant for that section of town, she began to call her children.

Allie-e, you Pa-u-el she screamed, allowing the last letter of each name to run the scale—Yall come here.

A few minutes later, Paul, 14, scampered out from under the house with his cap filled with eggs. He was a tall, keen-faced chap of dark brown complexion and curly black hair. What yall want, ma? he asked, proceeding to look at each of the eggs, holding it up so that the sun would shine through it.

Where’s yore brother, Ish? asked Tressie. Seems like yall caint never do nothin’ I asts you to. You know good ‘n well I told you to keep Ish with you—where is he? . . . ., she almost screamed.

I don’ know, stammered Paul, I lef’ him in the alley wid a bucket o’ slop.

I knowed it, I knowed it, screamed the woman. No wonder de boy ain’t got no sense. Yall leave him to run around town jes lak he ain’t got no home. Git out fum here and don’t come back till you find him! Here’s a storm comin, and Ish maybe lost or run over or something. As she talked, she raised her hands and lowered them as if in lamentation. The basket of food she had brought with her from the white folks rode up and down her arm like a swinging ferry.

In the meantime, the storm, which had threatened since early afternoon, came with unprecedented fury. First a gentle rain started, then a strong wind whipped the spray into a white sheet. The wind, veering around to the North, drove the temperature down from it’s balmy reign, and, suddenly Muskogee was in the grip of winter again. The trees were laden with ice and glittered like beautiful artificial decorations in a shop window at Christmas time.

Long before the storm had struck, Paul had decided that the best thing for him to do was to get in out of the threatening weather, and let Ishmael find his way home the best he could. He knew his little brother was not lost because he had had the same experience with him on other occasions, and although his mother always sent him out to find the baby of the family, he had never found it necessary to look for him seriously. As a matter of fact, he enjoyed these missions as they usually gave him the opportunity to make visits in the neighborhood that he would not have received under ordinary circumstances. He was always kept too busy, so he thought. And so, having managed to get out of his mother’s sight, he had promptly ducked in a yard of a white family down on Mill Street, and had proceeded to make himself at home.

In the meantime, the rain had awakened Ishmael from a sound sleep in which he dreamed of the white man and the girl with the yellow hair. His first thought, upon opening his eyes, was that the man had again drenched him in garbage. It required but a few seconds, however, to arouse him to the fact that it was raining and that he was cold and wet. At first, he looked about himself, bewildered—his first impulse was to cry—to shout at the top of his voice. He was more than a mile from home and in a territory that was not any too familiar to him.

The Missouri, Oklahoma and Gulf railway branch line runs East and West through Muskogee. By following this track East from Fourteenth Street, Ishmael knew he would eventually come to Mill Street about a block North of where he lived. He scampered under the barbed wire, and was climbing the embankment to the tracks when he heard a long, shrill whistle, notifying him that a train was coming. He couldn’t see half a block before him