“I sent the men out for more provisions. They’re loading them on the buses as we speak.”
“And the other two rooms are ready?”
Jeremiah nodded, his nut-brown face peppered in perspiration. “We’ll play it smooth, Gabriel. If
we have to pull out with just a handful of women or none at all, that’s what we’ll do.”
Making this frantic effort to take these beautiful women away was going to be met with serious, if
not deadly, opposition by the men who considered them their property. But he gave Jeremiah’s broad
back a reassuring pat and said, “This shouldn’t take long.”
“Thirty minutes and we need to be on the road,” Jeremiah warned as he marched away.
Gabriel took a moment to mull that over, then turned from the window to face the audience and
said, “I have called you here tonight to offer you an opportunity that will change your life.” He took
a good look at the women in attendance. “You have studied the history and economic materials with
my wife for several months, so you know the basic tenets of my plans.”
The men shifted uncomfortably as Gabriel spoke about things their women had been privy to, but
they had not.
“You have even learned about the evils of The Negro Project.”
“What’s your problem with it?” Ben asked, getting to his feet, his freckled face pulled into a scowl.
“The poorer Negroes are breeding like weeds. Why shouldn’t they be limited?”
“‘Breeding like weeds?’” Gabriel repeated the burly man’s statement. “Wasn’t that the plan all
along? More babies so there would be more workers, more slaves, more of our women to rape. Now
that we have served our purpose, given our life’s blood to this country—building cities, inventing
things that have increased their wealth—they have no use for us.” His gaze swept over as many of
the women as possible. “So they come up with a Birth Control Project to get rid of the undesirables
within their own people, and then throw Margaret Sanger’s Negro Project on us to do the same.”
In Gabriel’s estimation, everyone should have been alarmed when their leaders, doctors, nurses
and elite were too uninformed to realize The Negro Project’s sinister design. The plan all along
was to wipe out Negroes and the underclass of Whites by sterilizing the women and killing the
undesirables off slowly.
Gabriel waited a moment to let his words sink in. He would not let tonight become a rehashing
of old arguments about the plight of his people. “Ladies, in the time you spent with my wife, you
learned things that support what I will say tonight. And it must have been compelling information,
or you wouldn’t be here.”
He made his way down from the podium. “This society continually refuses to acknowledge our
rights as human beings. And we shouldn’t have to beg anyone to recognize our humanity.” Gabriel
walked to Jean. As he spoke, he allowed his fingertips to glide over the smooth honey skin of her bare
arms—a caress so gentle in its delivery, so sensual in its light touch, that some of the women released
a soft collective sigh. “I submit that all of us do not need to be integrated into their society. I have
a better way…a way that will bring us wealth and power that has been unheard of before this day.”
“But don’t we want them to accept us?” one man shouted from the back of the room.
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