Free In Search of Bisco by Erskine Caldwell Page B

abandoned land.
    Now, a century and a half later, Demopolis is just another Alabama town of less than ten thousand people with an equal number of white Protestants of Anglo-Saxon origin and third- and fourth-generation descendants of Guinea slaves. Ironically, all of them, both white and Negro, are dominated by the antithesis of democracy—the lingering traditions of plantation slavery and white supremacy.
    Since the only remaining evidence of the French colonists’ idealistic effort is a place name—The People’s City—it would not be unlikely if that too were obliterated. The possibility is that some of the white citizens, perturbed by the implication of the town’s name when translated from Greek into English, will successfully petition to have it changed from Demopolis to Wallaceville.
    There were several people seated at tables in the roadside restaurant and eating a native noonday dinner of fried pork chops, black-eyed peas, cole slaw, and chitterling cornbread. And of course drinking the traditional year-around Deep South beverage—iced tea and sugar. On the wall, draped with a battle-size Confederate flag, there was a large framed placard in colorful show-card lettering. A black mourning band had been fastened to the gilded frame.
WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO SEAT OUR PATRONS OR DENY SERVICE TO ANYONE. ANY PERSON CREATING A DISTURBANCE ON THESE PREMISES AFTER BEING DENIED SERVICE WILL BE PROSECUTED.
    The ingratiating, fiftyish, florid-faced real estate salesman had finished eating his noonday dinner and a quick smile of concern came over him as he glanced at the elaborately-framed and flag-draped memento on the wall. He was one of the civic leaders of Demopolis. He had acquired that distinction by being a member of several businessmen’s clubs, chairman of a white citizens’ committee, a bank director, a Methodist, and by belonging to the country club and a fraternal lodge.
    Such an impressive list of memberships and activities is just about average for a white citizen having the distinction of being known as a prominent civic booster in a Deep South town the size of Demopolis or a city as large as Birmingham. Doctors and lawyers rarely have the inclination to devote themselves to such a variety of activities, but merchants, bankers, and salesmen know that they have a better opportunity to make money if they become aggressive civic boosters.
    It’s a sad thing about that sign up there on the wall, he said. But law or no law, and even if what it says can’t be enforced like it used to, it’s worth preserving just like the Confederate flag. Maybe it won’t keep blacks from coming in here, but it’ll keep them reminded of who’s still boss in this part of the South.
    I’ll tell you what the whole trouble is. It’s all because people in the rest of the country just don’t understand the racial situation down here. They’re ignorant about it and we’ve got to educate them by showing them how to manage it. People up North think the blacks ought to be treated like anybody else and they criticize us for the way we handle them. They’ll learn some day that we know more about it than they do.
    What they don’t understand up North is that niggers—or Negroes, as they say it—haven’t gone through evolution as far as white people. They’re still primitive—just like wild Indians used to be. They just don’t have the intelligence we’ve got and it’s going to take time for their brains to grow bigger so they can go through their cycle of evolution like we’ve already done.
    We’re letting them get educated now, but that’s only a start. It’ll be three or four generations from now before their brains are fully developed like a white man’s. That’s why it don’t make sense to claim they ought to be paired with a white man when it comes to voting and living in the same part of town and everything else they say they want to do. It’ll be another hundred years before they can complete their evolution