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By Root 5052 0

hours by rail, not too near, but not too far to keep him from going back Sunday evening as his business dictated. The change of air would do everyone good. Grandfather’s doctor, who had submitted him to the latest orthopedic procedure for broken hips, a metallic pin implanted like an internal splint, advised them that he should be on his crutches or in his chair as much as possible, bed rest comprising the greatest danger for one his age. The boy would have to leave school a few weeks early but was so adept at his studies that this was not considered a serious disadvantage. The house would not be closed with the covering up of furniture and shutting off of rooms this required, but maintained with the staff for those periods in which Father would have to be in New Rochelle. The housekeeper would stay with Mother at the shore. She was a stolid, conscientious Negro woman who would provide, in addition, the obvious and erroneous explanation for the presence of a brown child in their party.

Thus armed with a plan of action the family prepared for their departure. They maintained a good cheer that became almost hysterical as the situation grew in its ugliness. The new Police Chief, a retired inspector from the New York City Department of Homicide, proposed lines of investigation that were ominous. His first day on the job he told reporters that the explosive used on Municipal Station No. 2 was very sophisticated, a combination of gun cotton and fulminate of mercury that could only have been concocted by someone who knew his stuff, which Coalhouse Walker, a piano player, did not. He asked where the Negro got the money for the car he used or for the assistance of a gang of colored men all armed and all presumably motivated by hard cash. He has to pay his cohorts. He has expenses. Where does he get his money? Where does he stay between his mad raids on this gentle city? I know a half-dozen Reds I would love to have in detention here. I bet I would get some of my answers.

These remarks, which were widely disseminated, had in their suggestion of a conspiracy of radicals the worst possible effect on an already agitated townspeople. Militia patrolled the streets. There were several instances of abuse of Negroes who were seen out of their neighborhoods. There was a rash of false alarms from fireboxes all over the city, each bringing out engines with police guards and a convoy of reporters in cars. Reporters were everywhere, and along with the troopers and the highly visible police in their wagons, produced in the community a painfully swollen sense of itself. The churches on Sunday mornings had never known such crowds. The hospital emergency room reported a higher than usual number of household accident victims. People were burning themselves, cutting themselves, tripping on rugs and falling down flights of stairs. Several men were brought in with gun wounds inflicted in the cleaning and handling of old weapons.

Meanwhile the press seemed to be ahead of the authorities in dealing with the specifics of Coalhouse’s letters. Probably for the pictures it would make they agitated for several editions to raise the Model T from Firehouse Pond. This was finally done. A crane was moved to the site and the automobile was brought up like a monstrous artifact, mud dripping from its tires, water and slime pouring out of its hood. It was swung over to the bank and deposited on the ground for everyone to see.

But now the authorities were embarrassed. The Ford stood as tangible proof of the black man’s grievance. Waterlogged and wrecked, it offended the sensibilities of anyone who respected machines and valued what they could do. After its picture was published people began to come to see it in such numbers that the police had to cordon off the area. Feeling that they had compromised themselves the Mayor and the Board of Aldermen issued a new series of condemnations of the colored madman and said that to negotiate with him in any way at all, to face him with less than an implacable demand that he surrender himself, would be to invite every renegade