So they all agreed that pa and I should go to Atlanta ahead, and
organize the political processions, and, say, we had such a time that
the circus came near never getting out of the town alive. We overdid the
thing, so they wanted to lynch me, and pa wanted to help.
The way it was was this way: Pa was to organize the white men for Bryan,
and I was to organize the negroes for Roosevelt, and we went to work and
bought 600 Chinese lanterns, and pa stored his half of the lanterns in a
barn on the circus lot and I stored mine in another barn owned by a
negro that I gave five dollars to be my assistant, with a promise that
he should have a job traveling with the show, to milk the sacred cow. I
told this negro what the program was, and that I wanted 200 negroes who
had an ambition to be politicians, and hold office, and I would not only
pass them into the show free, but see that they got a permanent office.
What we had got to do, I said, was to stampede the white procession,
that would be led by pa, and the way to do it was for every negro in my
party to skirmish around in the woods and find a hornet's nest, and
bring it to our barn, and fit it into one of the Chinese lanterns, and
fix a candle on top of the nest, while the hornets were asleep.
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