Native Son

by Richard Wright

  He tried to move his hands and found that they were shackled by strong bands of cold steel to white wrists of policemen sitting to either side of him. He looked round; a policeman stood in front of him and one in back. He heard a sharp, metallic click and his hands were free. There was a rising murmur of voices and he sensed that it was caused by his movements. Then his eyes became riveted on a white face, tilted slightly upward. The skin had a quality of taut anxiety and around the oval of white face was a framework of whiter hair. It was Mrs. Dalton, sitting quietly, her frail, waxen hands folded in her lap. Bigger remembered as he looked at her that moment of stark terror when he had stood at the side of the bed in the dark blue room hearing his heart pound against his ribs with his fingers upon the pillow pressing down upon Mary’s face to keep her from mumbling.

  Sitting beside Mrs. Dalton was Mr. Dalton, looking straight before him with wide-open, unblinking eyes. Mr. Dalton turned slowly and looked at Bigger and Bigger’s eyes fell.

  He saw Jan: blond hair; blue eyes; a sturdy, kind face looking squarely into his own. Hot shame flooded him as the scene in the car came back; he felt again the pressure of Jan’s fingers upon his hand. And then shame was replaced by guilty anger as he recalled Jan’s confronting him upon the sidewalk in the snow.

  He was getting tired; the more he came to himself, the more a sense of fatigue seeped into him. He looked down at his clothes; they were damp and crumpled and the sleeves of his coat were drawn halfway up his arms. His shirt was open and he could see the black skin of his chest. Suddenly, he felt the fingers of his right hand throb with pain. Two fingernails were torn off. He could not remember how it had happened. He tried to move his tongue and found it swollen. His lips were dry and cracked and he wanted water. He felt giddy. The lights and faces whirled slowly, like a merry-go-round. He was falling swiftly through space….

  When he opened his eyes he was stretched out upon a cot. A white face loomed above him. He tried to lift his body and was pushed back.

  “Take it easy, boy. Here; drink this.”

  A glass touched his lips. Ought he to drink? But what difference did it make? He swallowed something warm; it was milk. When the glass was empty he lay upon his back and stared at the white ceiling; the memory of Bessie and the milk she had warmed for him came back strongly. Then the image of her death came and he closed his eyes, trying to forget. His stomach growled; he was feeling better. He heard a low drone of voices. He gripped the edge of the cot and sat up.

  “Hey! How’re you feeling, boy?”

  “Hunh?” he grunted. It was the first time he had spoken since they had caught him.

  “How’re you feeling?”

  He closed his eyes and turned his head away, sensing that they were white and he was black, that they were the captors and he the captive.

  “He’s coming out of it.”

  “Yeah. That crowd must’ve got ’im.”

  “Say, boy! You want something to eat?”

  He did not answer.

  “Get ’im something. He doesn’t know what he wants.”

  “You better lie down, boy. You’ll have to go back to the inquest this afternoon.”

  He felt their hands pushing him back onto the cot. The door closed; he looked round. He was alone. The room was quiet. He had come out into the world again. He had not tried to it had just happened. He was being turned here and there by a surge of strange forces he could not understand. It was not to save his life that he had come out; he did not care what they did to him. They could place him in the electric chair right now, for all he cared. It was to save his pride that he had come. He did not want them to make sport of him. If they had killed him that night when they were dragging him down the steps, that would have been a deed born of their strength over him. But he felt they had no right to sit and watch him, to use him for whatever they wanted.

  The door opened and a policeman brought in a tray of food, set it on a chair next to him and left. There was steak and fried potatoes and coffee. Gingerly, he cut a piece of steak and put it into his mouth. It tasted so good that he tried to swallow it before he chewed it. He sat on the edge of the cot and drew the chair forward so that he could reach the food. He ate so fast that his jaws ached. He stopped and held the food in his mouth, feeling the juices of his glands flowing round it. When he was through, he lit a cigarette, stretched out upon the cot and closed his eyes. He dozed off to an uneasy sleep.

  Then suddenly he sat upright. He had not seen a newspaper in a long time. What were they saying now? He got up; he swayed and the room lurched. He was still weak and giddy. He leaned against the wall and walked slowly to the door. Cautiously, he turned the knob. The door swung in and he looked into the face of a policeman.

  “What’s the matter, boy?”

  He saw a heavy gun sagging at the man’s hip. The policeman caught him by the wrist and led him back to the cot.

  “Here; take it easy.”

  “I want a paper,” he said.

  “Hunh? A paper?”

  “I want to read the paper.”

  “Wait a minute. I’ll see.”

  The policeman went out and presently returned with an armful of papers.

  “Here you are, boy. You’re in ’em all.”

  He did not turn to the papers until after the man had left the room. Then he spread out the Tribune and saw: NEGRO RAPIST FAINTS AT INQUEST. He understood now; it was the inquest he had been taken to. He had fainted and they had brought him here. He read:

  Overwhelmed by the sight of his accusers, Bigger Thomas, Negro sex-slayer, fainted dramatically this morning at the inquest of Mary Dalton, millionaire Chicago heiress.

  Emerging from a stupor for the first time since his capture last Monday night, the black killer sat cowed and fearful as hundreds sought to get a glimpse of him.

  “He looks exactly like an ape!” exclaimed a terrified young white girl who watched the black slayer being loaded onto a stretcher after he had fainted.

  Though the Negro killer’s body does not seem compactly built, he gives the impression of possessing abnormal physical strength. He is about five feet, nine inches tall and his skin is exceedingly black. His lower jaw protrudes obnoxiously, reminding one of a jungle beast.

  His arms are long, hanging in a dangling fashion to his knees. It is easy to imagine how this man, in the grip of a brain-numbing sex passion, overpowered little Mary Dalton, raped her, murdered her, beheaded her, then stuffed her body into a roaring furnace to destroy the evidence of his crime.

  His shoulders are huge, muscular, and he keeps them hunched, as if about to spring upon you at any moment. He looks at the world with a strange, sullen, fixed-from-under stare, as though defying all efforts of compassion.

  All in all, he seems a beast utterly untouched by the softening influences of modern civilization. In speech and manner he lacks the charm of the average, harmless, genial, grinning southern darky so beloved by the American people.

  The moment the killer made his appearance at the inquest, there were shouts of “Lynch ’im! Kill ’im!”

  But the brutish Negro seemed indifferent to his fate, as though inquests, trials, and even the looming certainty of the electric chair held no terror for him. He acted like an earlier missing link in the human species. He seemed out of place in a white man’s civilization.

  An Irish police captain remarked with deep conviction: “I’m convinced that death is the only cure for the likes of him.”

  For three days the Negro has refused all nourishment. Police believe that he is either trying to starve himself to death and cheat the chair, or that he is trying to excite sympathy for himself.

  From Jackson, Mississippi, came a report yesterday from Edward Robertson, editor of the Jackson Daily Star, regarding Bigger Thomas’ boyhood there. The editor wired:

  “Thomas comes of a poor darky family of a shiftless and immoral variety. He was raised here and is known to local residents as an irreformable sneak thief and liar. We were unable to send
him to the chain gang because of his extreme youth.

  “Our experience here in Dixie with such depraved types of Negroes has shown that only the death penalty, inflicted in a public and dramatic manner, has any influence upon their peculiar mentality. Had that nigger Thomas lived in Mississippi and committed such a crime, no power under Heaven could have saved him from death at the hands of indignant citizens.

  “I think it but proper to inform you that in many quarters it is believed that Thomas, despite his dead-black complexion, may have a minor portion of white blood in his veins, a mixture which generally makes for a criminal and intractable nature.

  “Down here in Dixie we keep Negroes firmly in their places and we make them know that if they so much as touch a white woman, good or bad, they cannot live.

  “When Negroes become resentful over imagined wrongs, nothing brings them to their senses so quickly as when citizens take the law into their hands and make an example out of a trouble-making nigger.

  “Crimes such as the Bigger Thomas murders could be lessened by segregating all Negroes in parks, playgrounds, cafés, theatres, and street cars. Residential segregation is imperative. Such measures tend to keep them as much as possible out of direct contact with white women and lessen their attacks against them.

  “We of the South believe that the North encourages Negroes to get more education than they are organically capable of absorbing, with the result that northern Negroes are generally more unhappy and restless than those of the South. If separate schools were maintained, it would be fairly easy to limit the Negroes’ education by regulating the appropriation of moneys through city, county, and state legislative bodies.

  “Still another psychological deterrent can be attained by conditioning Negroes so that they have to pay deference to the white person with whom they come in contact. This is done by regulating their speech and actions. We have found that the injection of an element of constant fear has aided us greatly in handling the problem.”

  He lowered the paper; he could not read any more. Yes, of course; they were going to kill him; but they were having this sport with him before they did it. He held very still; he was trying to make a decision; not thinking, but feeling it out. Ought he to go back behind his wall? Could he go back now? He felt that he could not. But would not any effort he made now turn out like the others? Why go forward and meet more hate? He lay on the cot, feeling as he had felt that night when his fingers had gripped the icy edges of the water tank under the roving flares of light, knowing that men crouched below him with guns and tear gas, hearing the screams of sirens and shouts rising thirstily from ten thousand throats….

  Overcome with drowsiness, he closed his eyes; then opened them abruptly. The door swung in and he saw a black face. Who was this? A tall, well-dressed black man came forward and paused. Bigger pulled up and leaned on his elbow. The man came all the way to the cot and stretched forth a dingy palm, touching Bigger’s hand.

  “Mah po’ boy! May the good Lawd have mercy on yuh.”

  He stared at the man’s jet-black suit and remembered who he was: Reverend Hammond, the pastor of his mother’s church. And at once he was on guard against the man. He shut his heart and tried to stifle all feeling in him. He feared that the preacher would make him feel remorseful. He wanted to tell him to go; but so closely associated in his mind was the man with his mother and what she stood for that he could not speak. In his feelings he could not tell the difference between what this man evoked in him and what he had read in the papers; the love of his own kind and the hate of others made him feel equally guilty now.

  “How yuh feel, son?” the man asked; he did not answer and the man’s voice hurried on: “Yo’ ma ast me t’ come ’n’ see yuh. She wants t’ come too.”

  The preacher knelt upon the concrete floor and closed his eyes. Bigger clamped his teeth and flexed his muscles; he knew what was coming.

  “Lawd Jesus, turn Yo’ eyes ’n’ look inter the heart of this po’ sinner! Yuh said mercy wuz awways Yo’s ’n’ ef we ast fer it on bended knee Yuh’d po’ it out inter our hearts ’n’ make our cups run over! We’s astin’ Yuh t’ po’ out Yo’ mercy now, Lawd! Po’ it out fer this po’ sinner boy who stan’s in deep need of it! Ef his sins be as scarlet, Lawd, wash ’em white as snow! Fergive ’im fer whutever he’s done, Lawd! Let the light of Yo’ love guide ’im th’u these dark days! ’N’ he’p them who’s a tryin’ to he’p ’im, Lawd! Enter inter they hearts ’n’ breathe compassion on they sperits! We ast this in the nama Yo’ Son Jesus who died on the cross ’n’ gave us the mercy of Yo’ love! Ahmen….”

  Bigger stared unblinkingly at the white wall before him as the preacher’s words registered themselves in his consciousness. He knew without listening what they meant; it was the old voice of his mother telling of suffering, of hope, of love beyond this world. And he loathed it because it made him feel as condemned and guilty as the voice of those who hated him.

  “Son….”

  Bigger glanced at the preacher, and then away.

  “Fergit ever’thing but yo’ soul, son. Take yo’ mind off ever’thing but eternal life. Fergit whut the newspapers say. Fergit yuh’s black. Gawd looks past yo’ skin ’n inter yo’ soul, son. He’s lookin’ at the only parta yuh tha’s His. He wants yuh ’n’ He loves yuh. Give yo’se’f t’ ’Im, son. Lissen, lemme tell yuh why yuh’s here; lemme tell yuh a story tha’ll make yo’ heart glad….”

  Bigger sat very still, listening and not listening. If someone had afterwards asked him to repeat the preacher’s words, he would not have been able to do so. But he felt and sensed their meaning. As the preacher talked there appeared before him a vast black silent void and the images of the preacher swam in that void, grew large and powerful; familiar images which his mother had given him when he was a child at her knee; images which in turn aroused impulses long dormant, impulses that he had suppressed and sought to shunt from his life. They were images which had once given him a reason for living, had explained the world. Now they sprawled before his eyes and seized his emotions in a spell of awe and wonder.

  …an endless reach of deep murmuring waters upon whose face was darkness and there was no form no shape no sun no stars and no land and a voice came out of the darkness and the waters moved to obey and there emerged slowly a huge spinning ball and the voice said let there be light and there was light and it was good light and the voice said let there be a firmament and the waters parted and there was a vast space over the waters which formed into clouds stretching above the waters and like an echo the voice came from far away saying let dry land appear and with thundering rustling the waters drained off and mountain peaks reared into view and there were valleys and rivers and the voice called the dry land earth and the waters seas and the earth grew grass and trees and flowers that gave off seed that fell to the earth to grow again and the earth was lit by the light of a million stars and for the day there was a sun and for the night there was a moon and there were days and weeks and months and years and the voice called out of the twilight and moving creatures came forth out of the great waters whales and all kinds of living creeping things and on the land there were beasts and cattle and the voice said let us make man in our own image and from the dusty earth a man rose up and loomed against the day and the sun and after him a woman rose up and loomed against the night and the moon and they lived as one flesh and there was no Pain no Longing no Time no Death and Life was like the flowers that bloomed round them in the garden of earth and out of the clouds came a voice saying eat not of the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden, neither touch it, lest ye die….

  The preacher’s words ceased droning. Bigger looked at him out of the corners of his eyes. The preacher’s face was black and sad and earnest and made him feel a sense of guilt deeper than that which even his murder of Mary had made him feel. He had killed within himself the preacher’s haunting picture of life even before he had killed Mary; that had been his first murder. And now the preacher made it walk befor
e his eyes like a ghost in the night, creating within him a sense of exclusion that was as cold as a block of ice. Why should this thing rise now to plague him after he had pressed a pillow of fear and hate over its face to smother it to death? To those who wanted to kill him he was not human, not included in that picture of Creation; and that was why he had killed it. To live, he had created a new world for himself, and for that he was to die.

  Again the preacher’s words seeped into his feelings:

  “Son, yuh know whut tha’ tree wuz? It wuz the tree of knowledge. It wuzn’t enuff fer man t’ be like Gawd, he wanted t’ know why. ’N’ all Gawd wanted ’im t’ do wuz bloom like the flowers in the fiel’s, live as chillun. Man wanted t’ know why ’n’ he fell from light t’ darkness, from love t’ damnation, from blessedness t’ shame. ’N’ Gawd cast ’em outa the garden ’n’ tol’ the man he had t’ git his bread by the sweat of his brow ’n’ tol’ the woman she had t’ bring fo’th her chillun in pain ’n’ sorrow. The worl’ turned ergin ’em ’n’ they had t’ fight the worl’ fer life….”

  …the man and the woman walked fearfully among trees their hands covering their nakedness and back of them high in the twilight against the clouds an angel waved a flaming sword driving them out of the garden into the wild night of cold wind and tears and pain and death and the man and woman took their food and burnt it to send smoke to the sky begging forgiveness….

  “Son, fer thousan’s of years we been prayin’ for Gawd t’ take tha’ cuss off us. Gawd heard our prayers ’n’ said He’d show us a way back t’ ’Im. His Son Jesus came down t’ earth ’n’ put on human flesh ’n’ lived ’n’ died t’ show us the way. Jesus let men crucify ’Im; but His death wuz a victory. He showed us tha’ t’ live in this worl’ wuz t’ be crucified by it. This worl’ ain’ our home. Life ever’ day is a crucifixion. There ain’ but one way out, son, ’n’ tha’s Jesus’ way, the way of love ’n’ fergiveness. Be like Jesus. Don’t resist. Thank Gawd tha’ He done chose this way fer yuh t’ come t’ ’Im. It’s love tha’s gotta save yuh, son. Yuh gotta b’lieve tha’ Gawd gives eternal life th’u the love of Jesus. Son, look at me….”