American Hunger (9 page)

Later I learned what had happened: the writers of the club had decided to “use” me to oust the painters, who were party members, from the leadership of the club. Without my knowledge and consent, they confronted the members of the party with a Negro, knowing that it would be difficult for Communists to refuse to vote for a man representing the largest single racial minority in the nation, inasmuch as Negro equality was one of the main tenets of Communism.

Though I was not a Communist, cynical rivalry had put me in charge of one of the party’s leading cultural organizations. At once I offered my resignation, but the members would not hear of it. I could not determine if they were acting sincerely. I was afraid that the defeated secretary, being white, would resent losing to a Negro, but his conduct showed nothing but friendliness.

As the club’s leader, I soon learned the nature of the fight. The Communists had secretly organized a “fraction” in the club; that is, a small portion of the club’s members were secret members of the Communist party. They would meet outside of the club, decide what policies the club should follow; and when they put forth their proposals in open meetings, the sheer strength of their arguments usually persuaded nonparty members to vote with them. The crux of the fight was that the nonparty members resented the excessive demands made upon the club by the local
party authorities through the fraction. For example, the fraction demanded that the
Daily Worker
and the
New Masses,
official periodicals of the Communist party, be put on sale at all meetings. The nonparty group declared that this would limit the club’s membership to those who already believed in Communism.

The demands of the local party authorities for money, speakers, and poster painters were so great that the publication of
Left Front
was in danger. Many young writers had joined the club because of their hope of publishing in
Left Front,
and when the Communist party sent word through the fraction that the magazine should be dissolved, the writers rejected the decision, an act which was interpreted as hostility toward party authority.

I pleaded with the party members for a more liberal program for the club. Feelings waxed violent and bitter. Then the showdown came. I was informed that if I wanted to continue as secretary of the club I would have to join the Communist party. I stated that I favored a policy that allowed for the development of writers and artists. My policy was accepted. I signed the membership card.

As the club’s leader, I strove to keep the quarrels within limits by striking a series of compromises: for example, the sale of the
Daily Worker
was withdrawn, but the sale of the
New Masses
was continued. My position was in the “middle"; the fraction urged me to collect money from the members for the Communist party, and the members urged me to fight for the continuance of
Left Front,
which had been branded as “useless” by the Communist party. Trying to please everybody, I pleased nobody. The club’s energies were sapped by internal strife. Bills piled up. Rent fell past due. I wanted the club to continue at all hazards; my feelings were intensely personal. The club was my first contact with the modern world. I had lived so utterly isolated a life that the club filled for me a need that could not be imagined by the white members who were becoming disgusted with it, whose normal
living had given them what I was so desperately trying to get.

One night a Jewish chap appeared at one of our meetings and introduced himself as Comrade Young of Detroit. He told us that he was a member of the Communist party, a member of the Detroit John Reed Club, that he planned to make his home in Chicago. He was a short, friendly, black-haired, well-read fellow with hanging lips and bulging eyes. Shy of forces to execute the demands of the Communist party, we welcomed him. But I could not make out Young’s personality; whenever I asked him a simple question, he looked off and stammered a confused answer. I decided to send his references to the Communist party for checking and forthwith named him for membership in the club. He’s okay, I thought. Just a queer artist …

After the meeting Comrade Young confronted me with a problem. He had no money, he said, and asked if he could sleep temporarily on the club’s premises. Believing him loyal, I gave him permission. Straightway Young became one of the most ardent members of our organization, admired by all. His paintings—which I did not understand—impressed our best artists. No report about Young had come from the Communist party, but since Young seemed a conscientious worker, I did not think the omission serious in any case.

At a meeting one night Young asked that his name be placed upon the agenda; when his time came to speak, he rose and launched into one of the most violent and bitter political attacks upon Swann, one of our best young artists, in the club’s history. We were aghast. Young accused Swann of being a traitor to the workers, an opportunist, a collaborator with the police, and an adherent of Trotsky. Naturally most of the club’s members assumed that Young, a member of the party, was voicing the ideas of the party. Surprised and baffled, I moved that Young’s statement be referred to the executive committee for decision. Swann rightfully protested; he declared that he had been attacked in public and would answer in public.

It was voted that Swann should have the floor. He refuted Young’s wild charges, but the majority of the club’s members were bewildered, did not know whether to believe him or not. We all liked Swann, did not believe him guilty of any misconduct; but we did not want to offend the party. A verbal battle ensued. Finally the members who had been silent in deference to the party rose and demanded of me that the foolish charges against Swann be withdrawn. Again I moved that the matter be referred to the executive committee, and again my proposal was voted down. The membership had now begun to distrust the party’s motives. They were afraid to let an executive committee, the majority of whom were party members, pass upon the charges made by party member Young.

Three meetings were consumed in bitter debate. Between meetings we urged Young to tell us who had given him the authority to castigate Swann, and Young hinted darkly that he was acting under the orders of either the Central Committee of the Communist party or the Communist International. And we were naturally impressed. Who were we to question the decisions of political bodies so highly placed? I sympathized with Swann, but was afraid to say a word in his behalf for fear that I, too, would be charged.

A delegation of members asked me if I had anything to do with Young’s charges. I was so hurt and humiliated that I disavowed all relations with Young. Determined to end the farce, I cornered Young and demanded to know who had given him authority.

“I’ve been asked to rid the club of traitors,” he said.

“But Swann isn’t a traitor,” I said.

“We must have a purge,” he said, his eyes bulging, his face quivering with passion.

I admitted his great revolutionary fervor, but I felt that his zeal was a trifle excessive. The situation became worse. A delegation of members informed me that if the charges against Swann were not withdrawn, they would resign in a body. I was frantic. I wrote
to the Communist party to ask why orders had been issued to punish Swann, and a reply came back that no such orders had been issued. Then what was Young up to? Who was prompting him? I finally begged the club to let me place the matter before the leaders of the Communist party for decision. After a violent debate, my proposal was accepted.

One night ten of us met in an office of a leader of the party to hear Young restate his charges against Swann. The party leader, aloof and amused, gave Young the signal to begin. Young unrolled a sheaf of papers and declaimed a list of political charges that excelled in viciousness his previous charges. An instinct warned me that something was wrong, but I could not make out what it was. I stared at Young, feeling that he was making a dreadful mistake, but fearing him because he had, by his own account, the sanction of high political authority. When Young had finished the party leader asked:

“Will you allow me to read these charges?”

“Of course,” said Young, surrendering a copy of his indictment. “You may keep that copy. I have ten carbons.”

“Why did you make so many carbons?” the leader asked.

“I didn’t want anyone to steal them,” Young said.

“If this man’s charges against me are taken seriously,” Swann said, “I’ll resign and publicly denounce the club.”

“You see!” Young yelled. “He’s with the police!”

I was sick. The meeting ended with a promise from the party leader to read the charges carefully and render a verdict as to whether Swann should be placed on trial or not. I was convinced that something was wrong, but I could not figure it out. One afternoon I went to the club to have a long talk with Young; but when I arrived, he was not there. Nor was he there the next day. For a week I sought Young in vain. What had become of the man? I asked about him far and wide, but could get no word. Meanwhile the club’s members asked his whereabouts and they would not believe me when I told them that I did
not know. Was he ill? Had he been picked up by the police?

Somebody suggested that we search Young’s luggage which was still in the club’s back room. One afternoon Comrade Grimm and I sneaked into the club’s headquarters and opened Young’s luggage. What we saw amazed and puzzled us. First of all, there was a scroll of paper twenty yards long—one page pasted to another—which had drawings depicting the history of the human race from a Marxist point of view. The first page was titled:

A Pictorial Record of Man’s Economic Progress

“This is terribly ambitious,” I said. “He’s very studious,” Grimm said.

There were long dissertations written in longhand; some were political and others dealt with the history of art. Finally we found a letter with a Detroit return address and I promptly wrote asking news of our esteemed member. A few days later a letter came which said in part:

Dear Sir:

In reply to your letter of the—, we beg to inform you that Mr. Young, who was a patient in our institution and who escaped from our custody a few months ago, has been apprehended and returned to this institution for mental treatment.

I was thunderstruck. Was this true? Undoubtedly it was. Then what kind of club did we run that a lunatic could step into it and help run it? Were we all so mad that we could not detect a madman when we saw one? I called a meeting of a few of the most trusted members of the club and laid the matter before them. They were dumfounded. We swore ourselves to secrecy and decided to suppress the matter. We agreed that we had made a terrible mistake.

But, of course, we had no power to restrain the other members from asking questions. Swann hammered at us from meeting to meeting.

“Where is Comrade Young? Is he sick? Is he dead? Is he in jail? Did the Communist party order him to stay away from the club?”

And to these questions I could but lie:

“I’ve had no word from Comrade Young. As soon as any is received, I’ll inform the club.”

Meanwhile I made a motion that all charges against Swann be dropped, which was done. I offered Swann an apology but, as the leader of the Chicago John Reed Club, I was a completely sober and chastened Communist.

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 now wanted to give time to writing the book of biographical sketches I had planned. 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. 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.

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 was instructed to give my unit a report of my activities; writing, organizing, speaking. I agreed to do this and wrote a report.

A unit, membership in which is obligatory for all Communists, is the party’s basic form of organization. Unit meetings are held on certain nights which are kept secret for fear of police raids. Nothing treasonable transpires at these meetings; but, once one is a Communist, one does not have to be guilty of wrongdoing to attract the attention of the police. At these meetings members pay their dues, are given party tasks, are instructed in the party’s interpretation of world events.

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.

“Welcome, comrade,” he said, grinning. “We’re glad to have a writer with us.”

“I’m not much of a writer,” I said.

The meeting started. About twenty Negroes were gathered. 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 few stray items I had published, what my duties were in the John Reed Club. I finished and waited for comment. There was silence. I looked about. Most of the comrades sat with bowed heads. Then I was surprised to catch a twitching smile on the lips of a Negro woman. Minutes passed. The Negro woman lifted her head and looked at the organizer. The organizer smothered a smile. Then the woman broke into unrestrained laughter, bending forward and burying her face in her hands. I stared. Had I said something funny?

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

The giggling became general. The unit organizer, who had been dallying with his pencil, looked up.

“It’s all right, comrade,” he said. “We’re glad to have a writer in the party.”

There was more smothered laughter. Some of the more intelligent ones were striving to keep deadpan faces. What kind of people were these? I had made a serious report and now I heard giggles.

“I did the best I could,” I said uneasily. “I realize that writing is not basic or important. But, given time, I think I can make a contribution.”

“We know you can, comrade,” the black organizer said.

His tone was more patronizing than that of a southern white man. I grew angry. 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. I left the meeting baffled.

During the following days I learned through discreet questioning that I had seemed a fantastic element to the black Communists. I was shocked to hear that I, who had been only to grammar school, had been classified as an
intellectual.
What was an intellectual? I had never heard the word used in the sense in which it was applied to me. I had thought that they might refuse me on the grounds that I was not politically advanced; I had thought they might place me on probation; I had thought they might say I would have to be investigated. But they had simply laughed. And I began to realize why so few sensitive Negroes had had the gall to come as close to them as I had.

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. Above all, my manner of speech had seemed an alien thing to them.

“He talks like a book,” one of the Negro comrades had said.

And that was enough to condemn me forever as bourgeois.

The more I learned of the Negro Communists the more I found that they were not vicious, that they had no intention to hurt. They just did not know anything and did not want to learn anything. They felt that all questions had been answered, and anyone who asked new ones or tried to answer old ones was dangerous. The word “writer” was enough to make a black Chicago Communist feel that the man to whom the word applied had gone wrong.

I discovered that it was not wise to be seen reading books that were not endorsed by the Communist party. On one occasion I was asked to show a book that I carried under my arm. The comrade looked at it and shook his head.

“What’re you reading this for?” he asked.

“It’s interesting,” I said.

“Reading bourgeois books can only confuse you, comrade,” he said, returning the book.

“You seem convinced that I’m easily confused,” I said.

“You know,” he said, his voice dropping to a low, confidential tone, “many comrades go wrong by reading the books of the bourgeoisie. The party in the Soviet Union had trouble with people like that.”

“Didn’t Lenin read bourgeois books?” I asked.

“But you’re not Lenin,” he shot at me.

“Are there some books reserved for some people to read, while others cannot read them?” I asked.

“Comrade, you do not understand,” he said.

An invisible wall was building slowly between me and the people with whom I had cast my lot. Well, I would show them that all men who wrote books were not their enemies. I would communicate the meaning of their lives to people whom they could not reach; then, surely, my intentions would merit their confidence. I dismissed the warning about the Soviet Union’s trouble with intellectuals. I felt that it simply did not apply to me. The problem I faced seemed a much simpler one. I had to win the confidence of people who had been misled so often that they were afraid of anybody who differed from themselves. Yet deep down I feared their militant ignorance.

In my party work I met a Negro Communist, Ross, who was under indictment for “inciting to riot.” I decided to use him in my series of biographical sketches. His trial was pending and he was organizing support in his behalf. Ross was typical of the effective, street agitator. Southern-born, he had migrated north and his life reflected the crude hopes and frustrations of the peasant in the city. 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. 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 would make his life more intelligible to others
than it was to himself. I would reclaim his disordered days and cast them into a form that people could grasp, see, understand, and accept.

I approached Ross and explained my plan. He was agreeable. He invited me to his home, introduced me to his Jewish wife, his young son, his friends. I talked to Ross for hours, explaining what I was about, cautioning him not to relate anything that he did not want to divulge.

“I’m after the things that made you a Communist,” I said.

It was arranged that I was to visit Ross each morning and take notes for two hours. At last, I thought, I would reveal dramas of hope, fear, love, and hate that existed in these humble people. I would make these lives merge with the lives of the mass of mankind. I knew I could. My life had prepared me for this.

Word spread in the Communist party that I was taking notes on the life of Ross and strange things began to happen. A quiet black Communist came to my home one night and called me out to the street to speak to me in private. He made a prediction about my future that frightened me.

“Intellectuals don’t fit well into the party, Wright,” he said solemnly.

“But I’m not an intellectual,” I protested. “I sweep the streets for a living.” I had just been assigned by the relief system to sweep the streets for thirteen dollars a week.

“That doesn’t make any difference,” he said. “We’ve kept records of the trouble we’ve had with intellectuals in the past. It’s estimated that only 13 per cent of them remain in the party.”

“Why do they leave, since you insist upon calling me an intellectual?” I asked.

“Most of them drop out of their own accord,” he said.

“Well, I’m not dropping out,” I said.

“Some are expelled,” he hinted gravely.

“For what?”

“General opposition to the party’s policies,” he said.

“But I’m not opposing anything in the party.”

“But you have to prove yourself.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll have to prove your revolutionary loyalty.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do through writing.”

“That’s not the way to do it,” he said. “You must act.”

“How?”

“The party has a way of testing people.”

“Well, talk. What is this?”

“How do you react to police?”

“I don’t react to them,” I said. “I’ve never been bothered by them.”

“Do you know Evans?” he asked, referring to a local, militant Negro Communist.

“Yes. I’ve seen him; I’ve met him.”

“Did you notice that he was injured?”

“Yes. His head was bandaged.”

“He got that wound from the police in a demonstration,” he explained. “That’s proof of revolutionary loyalty.”

“Do you mean that I must get whacked over the head by cops to prove that I’m sincere?” I asked.

“I’m not suggesting anything,” he said. “I’m explaining.”

“That’s a primitive way to measure sincerity,” I gasped.

“It’s a practical way,” he said.

“Look, suppose a cop whacks me over the head and I suffer a brain concussion. Suppose I’m nuts after that? Can I write then? What will I have proven?”

He did not answer. He shook his head.

“The Soviet Union has had to shoot a lot of intellectuals,” he said.

“Good God!” I exclaimed. “Do you know what you’re saying? You’re not in Russia. You’re standing on a sidewalk in Chicago. You talk like a man lost in a fantasy.”

He said nothing. 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; and no doubt my rash words did not help any.

“You’ve heard of Trotsky, haven’t you?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Do you know what happened to him?”

“He was banished from the Soviet Union,” I said.

“Do you know why?”

“Well,” I stammered, trying not to reveal my ignorance of politics, for I had not followed the details of Trotsky’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.”

“It was for counterrevolutionary activity,” he snapped impatiently; I learned afterwards that my answer had not been satisfactory, had not been couched in the acceptable phrases of bitter, anti-Trotsky denunciation.

“I understand,” I said. “But I’ve never read Trotsky. What’s his stand on minorities?”

“Why ask me?” he asked. “I don’t read Trotsky.”

“Look,” I asked, “if you found me reading Trotsky, what would that mean to you?”

“You have no need to read Trotsky,” he said.

“Don’t you think I can read Trotsky and not be influenced to follow him?” I asked.

“Comrade, you don’t understand,” he said in an annoyed tone.

That ended the conversation. But that was not the last time I was to hear the phrase: “Comrade, you don’t understand.” I had not been aware of holding wrong ideas. I had not read any of Trotsky’s works; indeed, the very opposite had been true. It had been Stalin’s
The National and Colonial Question
that had captured my interest.

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. 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. 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. 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. 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. And I had exclaimed to myself how different this was from the way in which Negroes were sneered at in America.

Then what was the meaning of the warning I had received from the black Communist? 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? What was the danger in showing the kinship between the sufferings of the Negro and the sufferings of other people?

I sat one morning in Ross’s home with his wife and child. I was scribbling furiously upon my yellow sheets of paper. The doorbell rang and Ross’s wife admitted a black Communist, one Ed Green. He was tall, taciturn, soldierly, square-shouldered. I was introduced to him and he nodded stiffly.

“What’s happening here?” he asked bluntly.

Ross explained my project to him, and as Ross talked I could see Ed Green’s face darken. He had not sat down and when Ross’s
wife offered him a chair, he did not hear her.

“What’re you going to do with these notes?” he asked me.

“I hope to weave them into stories,” I said.

“What’re you asking the party members?”

“About their lives in general.”

“Who suggested this to you?” he asked.