of the annual SATURDAY EVENING QUILL, the
story chronicled the growing enchantment and
rapid disillusion that an Englishman experienced
while visiting the South.
The Honorable Hugh Stanhope Wiltshire is
visiting a southern plantation where he is the guest
of a senator and his daughter Betty. Wiltshire is
quite taken by the charm and hospitality of his
hosts. He has fallen in love with Betty and plans to
propose. While in the South, however, Wiltshire
also is increasingly struck by the fact that the re-
gion has “such ugly black pages in [its] history.”
Wiltshire’s dismay is linked to the evidence of
racial mixing and the production of illegitimate
children of color. He has an eye-opening conversa-
tion with one of the older women of color, and she
tells him quite frankly about the entrenched prac-
tice of rape and intimidation that perpetuates the
sexual oppression of African-American women by
white men. She also tells him that most white
southerners have, unbeknownst to them, a signifi-
cant African-American heritage. “Dey’s moah
black blood in dem dan yuh could shake a stick
at,” she says emphatically.
The story begins to climax when word of an
impending lynching reaches the manor. Wiltshire
accompanies the senator, who is quite cavalier
about the lawlessness that has been unleashed and
the likelihood that an innocent man may be de-
nied a rightful trial and murdered by a mob. Wilt-
shire looks on in horror as the lynching proceeds;
his distress is intensified even more, however,
when he spies Betty cheering on the bloodthirsty
mob. He immediately departs the scene and blocks
out the sound of Betty’s calls to him. He is deeply
affected by the awful events and, in order to sur-
vive the moment, steels himself against all that has
enchanted him there. He “folded his arms. His ears
were closed to the South, and his eyes were sick of
its warmth and beauty, and his soul shrunk within
him,” reports the narrator.
Schalk’s short story was part of a consistent ef-
fort by Harlem Renaissance writers to document
the horrors and effects of LYNCHING. The social
critique in “Flower of the South” is intensified fur-
ther by the use of an outside observer who is sys-
tematically shorn of his romantic illusions about
the United States and driven to reject, rather than
tolerate, the racial injustice.
“Fog”John Matheus(1925)
A short story by JOHNMATHEUSthat won first
prize in the 1925 short story contest sponsored by
OPPORTUNITY,the official publication of the NA-
TIONALURBANLEAGUE.
Published during his tenure as a professor of
the Romance languages at what is now West Vir-
ginia State College, the story focused on a pur-
poseful fog and its transformative effect on
society. The primary action involves a group of
travelers who are forced to occupy close quarters
on a train that slows to a near halt because of the
thick fog that comes down upon it. The fog be-
comes a powerful social antidote. It is so thick
and “impenetrable” that it prevents people from
“recognizing their neighbor ten feet ahead,
whether he be Jew or Gentile, Negro or Pole,
Slav, Croatian, Italian, or one hundred per cent
American.” Aboard the train, however, passen-
gers still are able to focus on their ethnic, racial,
social, and religious differences. They make snide
remarks about each other, allow their prejudices
to govern where they will sit, and generally ex-
hibit less than fraternal behavior.
The crowd of passengers is stunned into kind-
ness and sympathy when the train begins to
plunge off a bridge. Many are forced into reveries
about their lives and loved ones as they prepare
for what seems to be an imminent death in the
river below. They are spared however, when it ap-
pears that the bridge has not given way entirely.
On the banks of the river, even the most xeno-
phobic of passengers becomes humane. The men
and women begin to reach out to each other,
earnestly helping to calm frightened women and
children, and to honor the faith of people with
whom they believed they had nothing in common.
The story ends as the narrator reports calmly that
the “dense, tenacious, stealthy, chilling fog” con-
tinued to make its way across the landscape but
that “from the hearts and minds of some rough,
unlettered men another fog had begun to lift.”
“Fog” is a subtle critique of the unnatural sen-
timents that continued to divide American society
throughout the Harlem Renaissance period.
Matheus uses this short story to expose the kinds
of attitudes that can be transformed and the more
accommodating, unified American nation that is
within reach.170 “Fog”