refinements of life, are being swallowed up in this monster, the Machine, we are creating which is slowly but surely making us mere automatons, dancing like marionettes when the machine pulls the strings and bids us prance. I know you’re thinking I sound like a masculine Cassandra—but some day, perhaps long after I’m gone, maybe you’ll think back to this day and agree with me.”
To Mimi most of this was rather baffling—she was glad that Jean obviously did not expect her to answer. It was true that she had been fascinated by the song they had heard, she loved the colourfulness of the life she saw around her and she had noticed that in her few contacts with white people she had felt a certain chill that she was not aware of when with her own people.
“Her own people.” The phrase interested her. In New Orleans she had thought all people were hers—that only individuals mattered. But here there were sharp, unchanging lines which seemed to matter with extraordinary power. This one was white—that one black. Even though the “white” one was swarthy while the “black” one might be as fair as the whitest of the white.
And within the circle of those who were called Negroes she found duplications of the lines between the two major groups. She in the few days she had been in Atlanta had heard enough to know there were churches attended in the main only by coloured people who were mulattoes or quadroons, others only by those whose complexions were quite dark. At Mrs. Hunter’s the uniform lightness of skin had impressed itself upon her. And when she had sought to make overtures to Mrs. Plummer’s girl, Iwilla ( Mrs. Plummer had told Mrs. Daquin proudly her daughter had a Biblical name—it was taken from the verse, “I will arise and go unto my Father”), Mrs. Plummer had called her child into the house and Mimi had heard her being scolded: “How many times I got to tell you to leave these yaller children alone? First thing you know, you’ll be coming home saying some of them’s called you ‘black.’ ”