Peter Siner had known all along that the unread whites of Hooker's Bend
--and that included nearly every white person in the village--considered
black men as simple animals; but he had supposed that the more thoughtful
men, of whom Captain Renfrew was a type, at least admitted the Afro-
American to the common brotherhood of humanity. But they did not.
As Peter sat staring into the darkness the whole effect of the
dehumanizing of the black folk of the South began to unfold itself
before his imagination. It explained to him the tragedies of his race,
their sufferings at the hand of mob violence; the casualness, even the
levity with which black men were murdered: the chronic dishonesty with
which negroes were treated: the constant enactment of adverse
legislation against them; the cynical use of negro women. They were all
vermin, animals; they were one with the sheep and the swine; a little
nearer the human in form, perhaps, and, oddly enough, one that could be
bred to a human being, as testified a multitude of brown and yellow and
cream-colored folk, but all marching away, as the Captain had so
passionately said, marching away, their forms hidden from human
intercourse under a shroud of black, an endless procession marching
away, God knew whither! And yet they were the South's own flesh and
blood.
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