Ring Shout

by P. Djèlí Clark

With all the flag-waving and cavorting, you might forget they was monsters.

You see, the Second Klan was birthed on November 25 back in 1915. What we call D-Day, or Devil’s Night—when William Joseph Simmons, a regular old witch, and fifteen others met up on Stone Mountain east of Atlanta. Stories say they read from a conjuring book inked in blood on human skin. Can’t vouch for that. But it was them that called up the monsters we call Ku Kluxes. And it all started with this damned movie. The Birth of a Nation comes from a book. Two books really—The Clansman and The Leopard’s Spots, by a man named Thomas Dixon.

They say God is good all the time. Seem he also likes irony.

Buckrah devils what she calls Ku Kluxes. Fool buckrah she reserves for Klans who ain’t turned. She very particular about us not killing them who still human. Say every sinner got a chance to get right.

“When I was small, white folk rioted because Jack Johnson outboxed a white man on the Fourth of July. They hunted Negroes from New York to Omaha. Slit a colored man’s throat on a streetcar, just for saying who won the fight.

“White folk earn something from that hate. Might not be wages. But knowing we on the bottom and they set above us—just as good, maybe better.”

“Imagining a thing don’t make it so.

Me, I say let Negroes hoard up money like white folk been doing; let us get a few Rockefellers and Carnegies.

“Reason and law don’t mean much when white folk want their way.”

That’s science talk for how Klan folk turn Ku Klux. Molly says it’s like an infection, or a parasite. And it feed on hate. She says chemicals in the body change up when you hate strong. When the infection meets that hate, it starts growing until it’s powerful enough to turn the person Ku Klux. Ask me, it’s plain evil them Klans let in, eating them up until they hollow inside. Leave behind bone-white demons who don’t remember they was men.

“That movie, what you call a spell, I believe, works to induce hate on a mass scale,” Molly says. “Like how a lynching riles individuals into a mob.”

“There were two brothers, Truth and Lie. One day they get to playing, throwing cutlasses up into the air. Them cutlasses come down and fast as can be—swish!—chop each of their faces clean off! Truth bend down, searching for his face. But with no eyes, he can’t see. Lie, he sneaky. He snatch up Truth’s face and run off! Zip! Now Lie go around wearing Truth’s face, fooling everybody he meet.” She stops stitching to fix me with stern eyes. “The enemy, they are the Lie. Plain and simple. The Lie running around pretending to be Truth.”

“Harmonious union?” I gesture at the Klan posters and whatnot. “That what you call this ode to the great white race?” “Don’t mind that. We need you to let us in, to merge you to our great collective.” His gaze wanders over the shop’s patrons. “They was just the most willing. So easy to devour from the inside, body and soul. Always have been.” A spike of anger hits me. “That why you have them go around killing us?” “Oh, we might point them in a direction we need, but that hate they got in them is their own doing. You see, Maryse, we don’t care about what skin you got or religion. Far as we concerned, you all just meat.”

“Girl, every choice we make is a new tomorrow. Whole worlds waiting to be born.”

“Devil wouldn’t be the devil if he didn’t know how to tempt.

“As you know, we specialize in that thing you call hate. To your kind, it’s just a feeling. A bit of rage behind the eyes that can drive you to commit all sorts of beautiful violence. But for us, those feelings are a power of their own. We feed on it. Treasure it as life.” He turns to the gathered Klans. “Look at all that delightful hate. We didn’t put it there, was always growing inside. Just gave it a nudge to help it blossom.

“You see, the hate they give is senseless. They already got power. Yet they hate those over who they got control, who don’t really pose a threat to them. Their fears aren’t real—just insecurities and inadequacies. Deep down they know that. Makes their hate like … watered-down whiskey. Now your people!” His eyes light up, and he steps closer. “Y’all got a good reason to hate. All the wrongs been done to you and yours? A people who been whipped and beaten, hunted and hounded, suffered so grievously at their hands. You have every reason to despise them. To loathe them for centuries of depravations. That hate would be so pure, so sure and righteous—so strong!”

all of us, colored folk everywhere, who carry our wounds with us, sometimes open for all to see, but always so much more buried and hidden deep. I remember the songs that come with all those visions. Songs full of hurt. Songs of sadness and tears. Songs pulsing with pain. A righteous anger and cry for justice. But not hate. They ain’t the same thing. Never was. These monsters want to pervert that. Turn it to their own ends. Because that’s what they do. Twist you all up so that you forget yourself. Make you into something like them.

“There is no early or late with us,” he answers. “Just a matter of time.”

“I’m glad you taking time to rest. But I’m afraid there’s evil afoot.” I sigh, returning to my mint julep. Naturally. Always evil a-footing.

Who says all the fantasies with sword-wielding heroes and heroines have to be in Middle Earth, Westeros, or even our dreams of Africa past—“copper