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Negro,” he said coldly. “I am twenty-five years old. My name is Gideon Cowles, and I was born in this city. I was graduated from the university here four years ago. With honors.” He paused. “I work in the kitchen of the best hotel as a part-time cook and full-time dishwasher.”
     
    The room waited. He could feel peace and alertness about him, and a listening. “Oh yes,” he said, and tried to laugh. “They call you ‘the Man who Listens’. It is engraved over the door. Splendid. I am glad you are listening. No one ever listened to me before, not even in the orphan asylum where I was brought up. Not even a clergyman. I hope you are not offended — if you are a clergyman. I know how busy you all are; there aren’t enough of you. Sometimes I wonder if that isn’t the trouble with the world. There are not enough clergymen.” He bent his head and considered this with a kind of wonder.
     
    “But then,” he said in a thinking voice, “who wants to be a clergyman these days? You are poorly paid; you are held in low esteem; you have no influence and no money. You don’t know any powerful politicians. You go through the streets of your parish, calling to your flocks — who do not listen. Forgive me; I come of a poetic race. Did you know that Negroes are naturally poetic? Indeed they are.
     
    “You clergymen call at the gates, and no one opens them for you. You cry in your pulpits, and they yawn. You speak of the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man, and they nod, and go home to hate their neighbor. You go up and down, and no one hears your footsteps. Many of you are desperately poor — as Christ was poor — and no one cares. You stand at your altars and look at empty pews. You are a voice in the wilderness, and you may as well be voiceless. You offer Communion with your God, and the lips that take it are profane. You sing the Psalms of David, and the women think of the Sunday dinner and the men of baseball. The children wiggle and are restless; there is television waiting. There is a whole, evil, boisterous world outside your churches, ringing with bells and pounding with horns, and shattering with drums and whining with wheels, and shouting with silly bouncing voices. What effect has your voice against all these? No more than a bird’s call.
     
    “What do your people want? They want everything. Except you. And your God. You are despised and rejected among men.”
     
    He put his hands over his eyes. “As I am despised and rejected among men.”
     
    The silence waited. The young man sighed and dropped his slender dark hands on his knees. “My own people laugh at me. The university graduates among us are sour and disgruntled. Do you blame them? They have no place to go with their degrees. Except to the meanest work. What nice house will shelter them? What intelligent white man will welcome them and drink and eat with them? Many of them become Communists, out of bitterness, because the Communists lie to them and assure them that in the coming Soviet world they will be equal. Equal to what, to whom? We are the despised and the rejected. We know what liars men are.
     
    “Do you know what it means to be despised and rejected, turned away, laughed at, cursed, hated? Did any man ever treat you like this — as I have been treated? Did you ever feel a blow or see a look of disgust? Did you ever hear catcalls and jeers? Did any man say your people were less than animals? Were you ever driven away or refused food or shelter? Did you ever cry to your God, asking why He had forsaken you?”
     
    Gideon stood up and cried aloud, striking his hands together in the utmost despair.
     
    “Did you ever feel your own blood on your face and in your hands? Worse, did you ever feel your heart bleed helplessly? Did you look for one single accepting face? I tell you, I can’t live any longer!”
     
    The silence hovered over him, and the light, like a presence of pity and love and understanding. He began to cry