With Black Radicals in Chicago
Wright, Richard
This spring Harper & Row will he publishing a manuscript by the distinguished black American novelist Richard Wright, which forms a continuation of his autobiography, Black Boy. This hook,...
...He was banished from the Soviet Union," I said...
...160 Ross was shaken and ashamed...
...He was organically capable of only the most elementary reactions...
...Then why was he suspicious of me...
...Was I mad...
...I now wanted to give time to writing the book of biographical sketches I had planned...
...Ed Green is the representative of the International Labor Defense for the South Side...
...Naively I thought that he himself would make a good model for a biographical sketch...
...How far did you go in school...
...His existence both gladdened and frightened me...
...You must act...
...He had not sat down and when Ross's wife offered him a chair, he did not hear her...
...And I began to realize why so few sensitive Negroes had had the gall to come as close to them as I had...
...Did they think I was gathering material for the police...
...What does he think I am...
...I decided to use him in my series of biographical sketches...
...The Communist party fraction in the John Reed Club instructed me to ask my party cell—or "unit," as it was called—to assign me to full duty in the work of the club...
...I did not know that the notes I was taking of Ross's life were being discussed by the local Communist leaders, that my motives were already being questioned...
...During the following days I learned through discreet questioning that I had seemed a fantastic element to the black Communists...
...Comrade, you don't understand," he said in an annoyed tone...
...He called Ross into a rear room...
...I thought I knew these people, but evidently I did not...
...I wanted to take issue with their attitude, but caution urged me to talk it over with others first...
...Or were these people mad...
...The party has a way of testing people...
...I felt dizzy...
...Welcome, comrade," he said, grinning...
...I had read how these forgotten folk had been encouraged to keep their old cultures, to see in their ancient customs meanings and satisfactions as deep as those contained in supposedly superior ways of living...
...I wanted to make the lives of these men known through the images already accepted as the common coin of communication...
...They felt that all questions had been answered, and anyone who asked new ones or tried to answer old ones was dangerous...
...It's all right, comrade," he said...
...Good God...
...Didn't Lenin read bourgeois books...
...Of all the developments in the Soviet Union, the method by which scores of backward peoples had been led to unity on a national scale was what had enthralled me...
...There were no concrete charges that they could bring against me...
...I did the best I could," I said uneasily, "I realize that writing is not basic or important...
...Well," I stammered, trying not to reveal my ignorance of politics, for I had not followed the details of Trotksy's fight against the Communist party of the Soviet Union, "it seems that after a decision had been made, he broke that decision by organizing against the party...
...Yes...
...You'll have to prove your revolutionary loyalty...
...I felt that it simply did not apply to me...
...He's a member of the Central Committee," Ross said...
...I've seen him...
...In a few minutes Ed Green returned, stared at me wordlessly, then marched out...
...Well, talk...
...That's a primitive way to measure sincerity," I gasped...
...Who suggested this to you...
...he asked...
...I left the meeting baffled...
...I dismissed the warning about the Soviet Union's trouble with intellectuals...
...He's wondering what you're doing with this material," Ross said finally...
...Then what was the meaning of the warning I had received from the black Communist...
...I talked to Ross for hours, explaining what I was about, cautioning him not to relate anything that he did not want to divulge...
...q M...
...He talks like a book," one of the Negro comrades had said...
...I asked Ross...
...then, surely, my intentions would merit their confidence...
...His was a long and militant record in the Communist party...
...They just did not know anything and did not want to learn anything...
...But that was not the last time I was to hear the phrase: "Comrade, you don't understand...
...That seemed to soothe him for a moment...
...He knew how to die better than he knew how to live...
...I would communicate the meaning of their lives to people whom they could not reach...
...n my party work I met a Negro Communist, Ross, who was under indictment for "inciting to riot...
...I don't know," he said, looking directly at me...
...and no doubt my rash words did not help any...
...Yet we had more doubt in our hearts of each other than of the men who had cast the mold of our lives...
...At last, I thought, I would reveal dramas of hope, fear, love, and hate that existed in these humble people...
...My life had prepared me for this...
...Intellectuals don't fit well into the party, Wright," he said solemnly...
...You talk like a man lost in a fantasy...
...That's proof of revolutionary loyalty...
...he asked me...
...I had read with awe how the Communists had sent phonetic experts into the vast regions of Russia to listen to the stammering dialects of peoples oppressed for centuries by the czars...
...What will I have proven...
...Stalin's book showed how diverse minorities could be welded into unity, and I regarded it as a most politically sensitive volume that revealed a new way of looking upon lost and beaten peoples...
...We're glad to have a writer in the party...
...indeed, the very opposite had been true...
...I had made a serious report and now I heard giggles...
...He said nothing...
...I knew I could...
...I taught myself...
...I would make these lives merge with the lives of the mass of mankind...
...I asked...
...I asked...
...What was the meaning of his questions...
...I was glad that he was militant, but I was frightened when I pondered upon what he could do with his militancy...
...I grew angry...
...And, if he doubted me, whom could he ever trust...
...No...
...His manner was so rough that I did not urge him...
...But I'm not an intellectual," I protested...
...I'm not much of a writer," I said...
...I'm after the things that made you a Communist," I said...
...His head was bandaged...
...Don't you think I can read Trotsky and not be influenced to follow him...
...I was introduced to him and he nodded stiffly...
...This hook, entitled American Hunger— copyright 1944 by Richard Wright, copyright © 1977 by Ellen Wright--was actually written as part of Wright's autobiography, but for various reasons it was not printed together with Black Boy...
...Look," I asked, "if you found me reading Trotsky, what would that mean to you...
...He shook his head...
...You talk like a man who went further than that," he said...
...Why ask me...
...You seem convinced that I'm easily confused," I said...
...Yet deep down I feared their militant ignorance...
...What're you going to do with these notes...
...I was shocked to hear that I, who had been only to grammar school, had been classified as an intellectual...
...You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to," I said...
...I demanded...
...I was instructed to give my unit a report of my activities, writing, organizing, speaking...
...Reading bourgeois books can only confuse you, comrade," he said, returning the book...
...The unit organizer, who had been dallying with his pencil, looked up...
...I looked at him...
...Aw, Ed Green's just supercautious," he mumbled...
...I sweep the street for a living...
...That's not the way to do it," he said...
...The only people he could move to believe in him were those who shared his own world of fear, and all the world that lay beyond his terribly restricted vision was enemy ground...
...I mean, revolutionary organizations...
...Why do you ask...
...Why would I lie to you about my education...
...Ross was typical of the effective street agitator...
...He was trying to hide the fear in his face...
...I was speechless...
...Oh, he's always like that," Ross said uneasily...
...EDS...
...My zeal made me forget these rebuffs, for I was sure that an atmosphere of trust would be created as soon as I had explained my project to them...
...And that was enough to condemn me forever as bourgeois...
...You're standing on a sidewalk in Chicago...
...Some of the more intelligent ones were striving to keep deadpan faces...
...What's his stand on minorities...
...What's happening here...
...I sweep the streets for a living...
...I had made the first total emotional commitment of my life when I read how the phonetic experts had given these tongueless people a language, newspapers, institutions...
...What kind of work do you do...
...The irony of it was that I, who had all but to steal books to read, had been branded as an intellectual by the one group that claimed it was dedicated to educating the oppressed and informing them with a vision of life...
...I agreed to do this and wrote a report...
...he asked...
...At these meetings members pay their dues, are given party tasks, are instructed in the party's interpretation of world events...
...I talked with white Communists about my experiences with black Communists, and I could not make them understand what I was talking about...
...I groped in the noon sun...
...The comrade looked at it and shook his head...
...I had read widely in revolutionary literature, had observed many Communists, white and black, and had learned to know the daily hazards they faced and the sacrifices they made...
...I don't react to them," I said...
...Do you know what you're saying...
...I did not know Negro Communists as well as I wanted to, and when, on many occasions, I had sought to question them about their feelings, their work, and their actions, they had been reticent...
...I understand," I said...
...He was agreeable...
...I felt that if I could get his story I would make known some of the difficulties inherent in the adjustment of a folk people to an urban environment...
...I worked with the Republicans once," I said...
...His tone was more patronizing than that of a southern white man...
...he asked...
...I asked...
...I've shown it to no one yet...
...We are pleased to print here a portion of the book and thank Wright's publisher for allowing us to do so...
...Are there some books reserved for some people to read, while others cannot read them...
...He did not answer...
...You see, Dick," Ross's wife said, "Ross's under an indictment...
...American Hunger deals mainity with Wright's experience in Chicago during the 1930s— poverty, social dislocation, and involvement with the Communist movement...
...You're not in Russia...
...You know," he said, his voice dropping to a low, confidential tone, "many comrades go wrong by reading the books of the bourgeoisie...
...The thing just did not make sense...
...Words lost their usual meanings...
...I asked...
...I had not been aware of holding wrong ideas...
...If I was an intellectual, then what was a Negro doctor, lawyer, teacher...
...I'm not interested," he snapped...
...I would reclaim his disordered days and cast them into a form that people could grasp, see, understand, and accept...
...but, once one is a Communist, one does not have to be guilty of wrongdoing to attract the attention of the police...
...He made a prediction about my future that frightened me...
...I had embraced their aims with the freest impluse I had ever known...
...Ross explained my project to him, and as Ross talked I could see Ed Green's face darken...
...How do you react to police...
...I asked...
...But you're not Lenin," he shot at me...
...Suppose I'm nuts after that...
...White Communists had idealized all Negroes to the extent that they did not see the same Negroes I saw...
...General opposition to the party's policies," he said...
...Both of us were hungry...
...Self-consciously we went on with the work, but something was gone out of it...
...I stared...
...I've met him...
...For what...
...I don't know," he said, looking off...
...The doorbell rang and Ross's wife admitted a black Communist, one Ed Green...
...Word spread in the Communist party that I was taking notes on the life of Ross and strange things began to happen...
...You've heard of Trotsky, haven't you...
...The more I learned of the Negro Communists the more I found that they were not vicious, that they had no intention to hurt...
...Distrustful but aggressive, he was a bundle of the weaknesses and virtues of a man struggling blindly between two societies, of a man living on the margin of a culture...
...But why does he act like that...
...What was I after...
...It's interesting," I said...
...What was an intellectual...
...What kind of people were these...
...There was a long silence...
...they could have taken the gun away from me and shot me with it, but they did not know what to do with ideas...
...How could I make them understand what I was trying to do...
...Minutes passed...
...What is this...
...I had never heard the word used in the sense in which it was applied to me...
...Do you know why...
...His trial was pending and he was organizing support in his behalf...
...It had been Stalin's The National and Colonial Question that had captured my interest...
...Attitudes underwent quick and startling transformations...
...Through the grammar grades...
...159 Why was it that I was a suspected man because I wanted to reveal the vast physical and spiritual ravages of Negro life, the profundity latent in these rejected people, the dramas as old as man and the sun and the mountains and the seas that were transpiring in the poverty of black America...
...Ross," I asked, "do you trust me...
...I had not read any of Trotsky's works...
...He wanted to know if Ross has given you anything that could be used against him in court...
...On one occasion I was asked to show a book that I carried under my arm...
...Do you know what happened to him...
...I don't read Trotsky...
...I would make his life more intelligible to others than it was to himself...
...I discovered that it was not wise to be seen reading books that were not endorsed by the Communist party...
...I had just been assigned by the relief system to sweep the streets for $13 a week...
...What do you mean...
...He invited me to his home, introduced me to his Jewish wife, his young son, his friends...
...There was no answer...
...Both of us depended upon public charity to eat and for a place to sleep...
...The Soviet Union has had to shoot a lot of intellectuals," he said...
...That's what I'm trying to do through writing...
...They were simply afraid of that which was not familiar...
...I had thought they might say I would have to be investigated...
...I approached Ross and explained my plan...
...But, given time, I think I can make a contribution...
...I asked...
...But the seed of doubt had already been planted...
...Some are expelled," he hinted gravely...
...I began to feel an emotional isolation that I had not known in the depths of the hate-ridden South...
...You have no need to read Trotsky," he said...
...You lost people...
...I looked about...
...I sat feeling that I was guilty of something...
...To whom have you shown this material...
...The party in the Soviet Union had trouble with people like that...
...Yes...
...Most of them drop out of their own accord," he said...
...I learned, to my dismay, that the black Communists in my unit had commented upon my shined shoes, my clean shirt, and the tie I had worn...
...I had to win the confidence of people who had been misled so often that they were afraid of anybody who differed from themselves...
...I wanted to voice the words in them that they could not say, to be a witness for their living...
...I found that when I talked to them in abstract terms, my ideas were not understood...
...During the last rears of his life Richard Wright was a contributing editor of Dissent...
...We know you can, comrade," the black organizer said...
...It's his duty to keep track of the people he's trying to defend...
...Did you notice that he was injured...
...I'm explaining...
...And I had exclaimed to myself how different this was from the way in which Negroes were sneered at in America...
...I've read books...
...Nothing treasonable transpires at these meetings...
...I learned afterwards that my answer had not been satisfactory, had not been couched in the acceptable phrases of bitter, anti-Trotsky denunciation...
...Who does he think he is...
...he asked...
...There was more smothered laughter...
...The time came for me to make my report and I took out my notes and told them how I had come to join the party, what 156 few stray items I had published, what my duties were in the John Reed Club...
...A unit, membership in which is obligatory for all Communists, is the party's basic form of organization...
...I'm not suggesting anything," he said...
...Well, I'm not dropping out," I said...
...What're you asking the party members...
...That doesn't make any difference," he said...
...We two black men sat in the same room looking at each other in fear...
...I had thought that they might refuse me on the grounds that I was not politically advanced...
...The meeting started...
...Then I was surprised to catch a twitching smile on the lips of a Negro woman...
...There was silence...
...His fear-haunted life made him suspicious of everything that did not look as he looked, that did not act as he acted, that did not talk as he talked, that did not feel as he felt...
...But I'm not opposing anything in the party...
...And when I tried to explain, I always, it seemed, said the wrong things...
...he asked...
...Had I said something funny...
...Can I write then...
...He was tall, taciturn, soldierly, square-shouldered...
...But they had simply laughed...
...That ended the conversation...
...What's the matter...
...It's a practical way," he said...
...An invisible wall was building slowly 157 between me and the people with whom I had cast my lot...
...It was arranged that I was to visit Ross each morning and take notes for two hours...
...I wanted to make them know that they had allies, that more people than they knew, and in ways they did not understand, were their friends, and that I was their friend...
...Simple motives took on sinister colors...
...I went to my first unit meeting—which was held in the Black Belt of the South Side—and introduced myself to the Negro organizer...
...I hope to weave them into stories," I said...
...Comrade, you do not understand," he said...
...Why do they leave, since you insist upon calling me an intellectual...
...A quiet black Communist came to my home one night and called me out to the street to speak to me in private...
...I finished and waited for comment...
...They were more fearful of my ideas than they would have been had I held a gun on them...
...You know about Ross's indictment...
...Yes...
...Above all, my manner of speech had seemed an alien thing to them...
...Ideas turned into their opposites while you were talking to a person you thought you knew...
...I sat one morning in Ross's home with his wife and child...
...I'd like to interview you next," I said...
...Yet there it was .. . Ed Green was afterwards killed in action while fighting for the Spanish Loyalists...
...Well, I would show them that all men who wrote books were not their enemies...
...Do you mean that I must get whacked over the head by cops to prove that I'm sincere...
...About their lives in general...
...The giggling became general...
...How...
...It was for counterrevolutionary activity," he snapped impatiently...
...What's wrong...
...they wanted to know...
...Unit meetings are held on certain nights which are kept secret for fear of police raids...
...I was scribbling furiously upon my yellow sheets of paper...
...The Negro woman lifted her head and looked at the organizer...
...Oh, yes," he said uneasily...
...Southern born, he had migrated north and his life reflected the crude hopes and frustrations of the peasant in the city...
...And they were wondering if I were in league with the police...
...Then the woman broke into unrestrained laughter, bending forward and burying her face in her hands...
...Yes...
...he asked, referring to a local, militant Negro Communist...
...I asked...
...1, the chary cynic, the man who had felt that no idea on earth was worthy of self-sacrifice, had publicly identified myself with them, and now their suspicion of me hit me with a terrific impact, froze me within...
...It's estimated that only 13 percent of them remain in the party...
...About twenty Negroes were gathered...
...Look, suppose a cop whacks me over the head and I suffer a brain concussion...
...I was doubted by those who shared more of my life than any others could possibly share of it...
...I had thought they might place me on probation...
...I exclaimed...
...158 "Do you know Evans...
...What was the danger in showing the kinship between the sufferings of the Negro and the sufferings of other people...
...The problem I faced seemed a much simpler one...
...he asked...
...Nobody...
...he asked bluntly...
...I could not doubt the sincerity of Ed Green...
...The organizer smothered a smile...
...But you have to prove yourself...
...He, too, had been captured by suspicion...
...I cried and banged my fist on the table...
...The word "writer" was enough to make a black Chicago Communist feel that the man to whom the word applied had gone wrong...
...What do you mean...
...He got that wound from the police in a demonstration," he explained...
...I've never been bothered by them...
...I asked...
...But I've never read Trotsky...
...And the more I tried to explain my ideas the more they, too, began to suspect that I was somehow dreadfully wrong...
...Most of the comrades sat with bowed heads...
...What're you reading this for...
...I thought of it myself...
...Were you ever a member of any other political group...
...We've kept records of the trouble we've had with intellectuals in the past...
...We're glad to have a writer with us...
Vol. 24 • April 1977 • No. 2
