Rose Johnson was a real black negress but she had been brought up
quite like their own child by white folks.
Rose laughed when she was happy but she had not the wide, abandoned
laughter that makes the warm broad glow of negro sunshine. Rose was
never joyous with the earth-born, boundless joy of negroes. Hers was
just ordinary, any sort of woman laughter.
Rose Johnson was careless and was lazy, but she had been brought up by
white folks and she needed decent comfort. Her white training had
only made for habits, not for nature. Rose had the simple, promiscuous
immorality of the black people.
Rose Johnson and Melanctha Herbert like many of the twos with women
were a curious pair to be such friends.
Melanctha Herbert was a graceful, pale yellow, intelligent, attractive
negress. She had not been raised like Rose by white folks but then she
had been half made with real white blood.
She and Rose Johnson were both of the better sort of negroes, there,
in Bridgepoint.
"No, I ain't no common nigger," said Rose Johnson, "for I was raised
by white folks, and Melanctha she is so bright and learned so much
in school, she ain't no common nigger either, though she ain't got no
husband to be married to like I am to Sam Johnson."
Why did the subtle, intelligent, attractive, half white girl Melanctha
Herbert love and do for and demean herself in service to this coarse,
decent, sullen, ordinary, black childish Rose, and why was this
unmoral, promiscuous, shiftless Rose married, and that's not so common
either, to a good man of the negroes, while Melanctha with her white
blood and attraction and her desire for a right position had not yet
been really married.
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