Imperium in Imperio

Belton returns to his home in Winchester after graduation. He revisits areas of his childhood, including the school where he pranked Mr. Leonard at graduation. He considers how he was punished for his prank by what happened with the sock at his college graduation. The narrator notes how Belton no longer has any interest in revenge.

Belton goes to Richmond, where he becomes a teacher and meets the beautiful, intelligent Antoinette Nermal. They fall in love, but Belton is too unsure of himself to tell her, even after walking home from school together each day. Finally, at a party, the guests play a kissing game, and Belton and Antoinette choose each other. That night, they confess their love for each other.

Belton wants to marry Antoinette, but his income as a teacher is too low. He decides to start a newspaper, regularly attacking election fraud. However, one of these articles is reprinted in The Temps and gains the attention of white politicians, who have Belton fired from his teaching position for “vigorously attacking Southern Institutions” (45).

Without a job, Belton decides to campaign for Republicans in the next election. Even though they lose, Belton’s work makes it closer than it had ever been before, which causes the Republican postmaster to give him a job as a stamping clerk with a higher income. A year later, he has enough money to marry Antoinette. The narrator notes that their marriage “was the most notable social event that had ever been known among the colored people of Richmond” (46).

One year after his marriage, a Republican that the postmaster supports is up for nomination for Congress. However, he is prejudiced against Black people, so Belton supports another candidate. When Belton’s candidate wins, Belton once again loses his job.

Belton is unable to secure a job. Even with an education, white people will not employ him, and Black people do not have positions of power in employment to hire him. He begins finding more and more men like him—those who went to university and are unable to find employment after graduating. This situation breeds a feeling of contempt and anger toward the country, and they begin to question the idea of their “freedom” and the idea of “liberty” in the US. Instead of joining them, however, Belton fears the future if the entire educated class of Black people hate the country. He decides to investigate how white people view Black people.

Belton leaves Richmond but returns disguised as a woman so that he can become a nurse in the home of a wealthy white family. However, he realizes that the white family, and the white community as a whole don’t think about Black people rising up. They instead believe that Black people are still easy to control, and they have nothing to fear from them. Belton stays at this job for a few months and repeatedly rebuffs the advances of wealthy white men, who offer him trips and money if he will sleep with them. Eventually, they begin to question whether he is a woman, forcing Belton to “return” to Richmond as Belton.

Through his poverty, Antoinette continues to support Belton. However, when she gives birth to a boy, his skin is very light, despite the dark color of Belton’s skin. He “madly” flees his wife and returns to his mother’s home in Winchester to sleep in his old loft from childhood. Although he deeply loves Antoinette, he decides he cannot forgive her and “buries” her in his heart. Instead, he decides that he will devote his life to helping Black people overcome the barriers they face.

Shortly thereafter, a law is passed in Louisiana that prevents white people from teaching in Black schools. As a result, the white president of a school in Louisiana loses his job, and Stowe University recommends Belton. He moves to Cadeville to take the position.

En route to the college, Belton experiences intense racism. First, although there is no law forbidding sitting in the first-class carriage, he is thrown from a train. Then, while waiting for food at a diner, he is yelled at by the owner for sitting to eat, so he refuses to pay for his food. Belton is arrested for refusing to pay, held in jail overnight, and fined five dollars and told to leave the town.

Belton finally arrives in Cadeville, where he is well-received by the Black population. He decides to build an industrial department for the school and travels around the area for funding. He employs a Black architect and Black masons to do the work, but they are stopped by the white mason’s union. Through it all, Belton decides it is best to just “observe and wait” (52). As the next election nears, he also stresses to the students the importance of voting but is accosted by one of their parents. The man informs him of the voting history of the area, where Black men used to “dominate” politically and even armed themselves to keep control. They even kill people who try to bring ballots to the Black population. As a result, the man informs Belton that they “stay in [their] fields all day long on election day and scarcely know what is going on” (53). He also informs Belton of a group that seeks out men who try to vote, even torturing and murdering one man who had gone to New Orleans to vote. Belton stops pushing politics in Cadeville.

A few years later, Belton invites a white minister from Monroe to deliver a graduation speech at the university. The man is impressed with Belton’s work and invites him to his church in Monroe. However, when Belton goes there, he sits in the white section of the church and tries to help a white woman find the correct hymn. He is banned from the church and escapes lynching only because it is Sunday. Dr. Zackland, a man who saw Belton on the train to Louisiana, becomes obsessed with the idea of having Belton’s dead body to study because he claims it is the finest Black body he has ever seen. Zackland reports the incident at the church to the postmaster and the local racist groups, offering a keg of whiskey in return for Belton’s undamaged body.

Belton is taken by the mob and ordered to be hanged the following day. He is hanged from a tree and shot in the back of the head; however, because he did not hang for long, and the bullet did not hit him in the brain, he is taken from the tree unconscious. While waiting to be examined by Dr. Zackland, Belton regains consciousness and kills him with a knife. He flees and decides he must tell the governor what happened, but the governor tells him that his only option is to turn himself in and await trial.

At the trial, the courtroom dismisses his entire account, interested only in his murder of Dr. Zackland, which they attribute to “robbery.” The narrator notes that the jury was able to walk around freely to converse with the public instead of being secluded, the postmaster himself was the foreman, and the entire family that Belton was staying with was also on trial as accomplices. The family and Belton are convicted and sentenced to be hanged.

Meanwhile, Bernard hears of the trial and uses the influence of a Democratic Senator to intervene. An appeal is made to the Supreme Court, where Bernard argues for Belton’s case and gives “the speech of his life and added to his fame as an orator” (57). Ultimately, the decision of the lower court is overturned, and Belton is found innocent at a new trial.