Three Days Before the Shooting . . .

by Ralph Ellison

  “Now what are some of the political aspects of the Nigra here in D.C.? Well, around here things are so out of hand, mongrelized and confused that I don’t know where to begin, but here are a few manifestations: Nigras visiting white folks; walking or riding along the streets with white women; visiting the Congress; hanging around Abe Lincoln’s monument; visiting white churches; carrying picket signs; sending delegations to see the President; carrying briefcases with real papers in them; Nigras wearing homburg hats and Chesterfield overcoats; hiring uniformed chauffeurs, especially if the chauffeur is white. All these things are political, because the Nigra who does them is dying to become a diplomat so that he can get assigned abroad from where he aims to monkey with our sovereign states rights.

  “To these add those Nigras from Georgia and Mississippi who turn up wearing those African robes and turbans in an effort to break into white society and get closer to white folks. Gentlemen, there’s nothing worse or more political than a Nigra who denies the United States of America because that is a Nigra who has not only turned his back on his mammy and pappy but has denied the South!

  “Here are some other forms of Nigra politics which y’all have over-looked: these young buck Nigras going around wearing berets, beards and tennis shoes in the wintertime and whose britches are so doggone tight that they look like they’re ‘bout to bust out of them. They’re not the same as the white boys who dress that way, they’re politically dangerous and it’s worse, in the long run, than letting a bunch of Nigras run around the Capital carrying loaded pistols. A law ought to be passed before something serious occurs.

  “And be on watch for your quiet Nigra. Be very careful of the Nigra who’s too quiet when other loud-mouthed Nigras—who are safe Nigras—are out sassing white folks on the street corners and in the Yankee press and over the Yankee radio and T.V. Never mind the loudmouths, they’re like the little fyce dogs that bark at you when you approach the big gate and then, when you walk into the yard they run to lick your hand. Throw them a bone. But keep your eye on the quiet Nigra who watches every move the white man makes and studies it, because he’s probably trying to think up a theory and a strategy and tactic to subvert something….”

  “But go back to the automobile,” Wiggins said. “My father-in-law is a dealer and I think he needs instruction.”

  “I’m glad you reminded me,” McGowan said. “Now I’ve told you about those little foreign cars but there’s more to the political significance of Nigras and autos. Cadillacs used to be O.K. but after what that Nigra did today on Senator Sunraider’s lawn, I’m not so positive. That doggone Nigra was trying to politicalize the Cadillac! Which proves again what I say about everything the Nigra does being potentially political. But once you grasp this fact you also have to watch the Nigra who doesn’t want a Cadillac, because he can stand a heap of political analysis.

  “And pay close attention to the Nigra who has the money to buy one but picks an Imperial instead. Likewise the Nigras who love English autos. Watch all Nigras who pick Jaguars, Humbers, and if you ever hear of one, Rolls Royces. Likewise those who go around bragging about the Nigra vote electing the president of the United States. Such Nigras are playing dirty politics even though they might not be able to vote themselves. Yes, and watch the Nigra who comes telling a white man about the Nigra’s ‘gross yearly income,’ because there you have an arrogant, biggety Nigra who is right up in your face talking open politics and who thinks you don’t recognize it. Unless of course, you’re convinced that the Nigra is really trying to tell you that he knows how you and him can make some quick money. In such a case the Nigra is just trying to make a little hustle for himself, so make a deal with him and don’t worry about it because that Nigra doesn’t give a damn about anybody or anything except himself—while the other type is trying to intimidate you.

  “Then there’s the Nigra who reads the Constitution and the law books and broods over them. That’s one of the most political types there is. And like unto him is the Nigra who scratches his behind when he talks to a white man instead of scratching his head in the traditional Southern Nigra manner—because even where the Nigra scratches is political!

  “But gentlemen, let me hasten to say after this very brief and inadequate catalogue of Nigra political deviousness, that to my considerable knowledge no Nigra has ever even thought about assassinating anybody. And I’ll tell y’all why: It was bred out of him years ago!”

  Even as I laughed I watched the conflicting expressions moving back and forth across McGowan’s broad face. It looked as though he wanted desperately to grin but like a postage stamp which had become too wet, the grin kept sliding in and out of position. And I in turn became agitated. My laughter—it was really hysteria—was painful. For I realized that McGowan was obsessed by history to the point of nightmare. He had the dark man confined in a package and this was the way he carried him everywhere, saw him in everything. But now, laughing, I realized that I envied McGowan and admitted to myself with a twinge of embarrassment, that some of the things he said were not only amusing but true. And perhaps the truth lay precisely in their being seen humorously. For McGowan said things about Negroes with absolute conviction which I dared not even think. Could it be that he was more honest than I, that his free expression of his feelings, his prejudices, made him freer than I? Could it be that his freedom to say what he felt about all that Sam the waiter symbolized actually made him freer than I? Suddenly I despised his power to make me feel buried fears and possibilities, his power to define so much of the reality in which I lived and which I seldom bothered to think about.

  And was it possible that the main object of McGowan’s passion was really an idea, the idea of a non-existent past rather than a living people?

  “Yes, gentlemen,” McGowan was saying. “The only way to protect yourself from the Nigra is to master politics and that you Yankees have never done because y’all have never studied the Nigra.”

  Across the room I watched Sam, his hands held behind him, smiling as he chatted pleasantly with a white-haired old gentleman. Were there Negroes like McGowan, I wondered. And what would they say about me? How completely did I, a liberal, exradical, northerner, dominate Sam’s sense of life, his idea of politics? Absolutely, or not at all? Was he, Sam, prevented by some piety from confronting me in a humorous manner, as my habit of mind, formed during the radical Thirties, prevented me from confronting him; or did he, as some of my friends suspected, regard all whites through the streaming eyes and aching muscles of one continuous, though imperceptible and inaudible, belly laugh? What the hell, I thought, is Sam’s last name?

  JUNETEENTH

  QUARTERLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE 4 (1965): 262–76

  No, the wounded man thought, Oh no! Get back to that; back to a bunch of old-fashioned Negroes celebrating an illusion of emancipation, and getting it mixed up with the Resurrection, minstrel shows and vaudeville routines? Back to that tent in the clearing surrounded by trees, that bowl-shaped impression in the earth beneath the pines?… Lord, it hurts. Lordless and without loyalty, it hurts. Wordless, it hurts. Here and especially here. Still I see it after all the roving years and flickering scenes: Twin lecterns on opposite ends of the platform, behind one of which I stood on a wide box, leaning forward to grasp the lectern’s edge. Back. Daddy Hickman at the other. Back to the first day of that week of celebration. Juneteenth. Hot, dusty. Hot with faces shining with sweat and the hair of the young dudes metallic with grease and straightening irons. Back to that? He was not so heavy then, but big with the quick energy of a fighting bull and still kept the battered silver trombone on top of the piano, where at the climax of a sermon he could reach for it and stand blowing tones that sounded like his own voice amplified; persuading, denouncing, rejoicing—moving beyond words back to the undifferentiated cry. In strange towns and cities the jazz musicians were always around him. Jazz. What was jazz and what religion back there? Ah yes, yes, I loved him. Everyone did, deep down. Like a great, kindly, daddy bear along the stree
ts, my hand lost in his huge paw. Carrying me on his shoulder so that I could touch the leaves of the trees as we passed. The true father, but black, black. Was he a charlatan—am I—or simply as resourceful in my fashion. Did he know himself, or care? Back to the problem of all that. Must I go back to the beginning when only he knows the start …?

  Juneteenth and him leaning across the lectern, resting there looking into their faces with a great smile, and then looking over to me to make sure that I had not forgotten my part, winking his big red-rimmed eye at me. And the women looking back and forth from him to me with that bright, bird-like adoration in their faces; their heads cocked to one side. And him beginning:

  On this God-given day, brothers and sisters, when we have come together to praise God and celebrate our oneness, our slipping off the chains, let’s us begin this week of worship by taking a look at the ledger. Let us, on this day of deliverance, take a look at the figures writ on our bodies and on the living tablet of our heart. The Hebrew children have their Passover so that they can keep their history alive in their memories—so let us take one more page from their book and, on this great day of deliverance, on this day of emancipation, let’s us tell ourselves our story….

  Pausing, grinning down…. Nobody else is interested in it anyway, so let us enjoy it ourselves, yes, and learn from it.

  And thank God for it. Now let’s not be too solemn about it either, because this here’s a happy occasion. Rev. Bliss over there is going to take the part of the younger generation, and I’ll try to tell it as it’s been told to me. Just look at him over there, he’s ready and raring to go—because he knows that a true preacher is a kind of educator, and that we have got to know our story before we can truly understand God’s blessings and how far we have still got to go. Now you’ve heard him, so you know that he can preach.

  Amen! They all responded and I looked preacher-faced into their shining eyes, preparing my piccolo voice to support his baritone sound.

  Amen is right, he said. So here we are, five thousand strong, come together on this day of celebration. Why? We just didn’t happen. We’re here and that is an undeniable fact—but how come we’re here? How and why here in these woods that used to be such a long way from town? What about it, Rev. Bliss, is that a suitable question on which to start?

  God, bless you, Rev. Hickman, I think that’s just the place we have to start. We of the younger generation are still ignorant about these things. So please, sir, tell us just how we came to be here in our present condition and in this land….

  Not back to that me, not to that six-seven year old ventriloquist’s dummy dressed in a white evening suit. Not to that charlatan born—must I have no charity for me?….

  Was it an act of God, Rev. Hickman, or an act of man…. Not to that puppet with a memory like a piece of flypaper….

  We came, amen, Rev. Bliss, sisters and brothers, as an act of God, but through—I said through, an act of cruel, ungodly man.

  An act of almighty God, my treble echo sounded, but through the hands of cruel man.

  Amen, Rev. Bliss, that’s how it happened. It was, as I understand it, a cruel calamity laced up with a blessing—or maybe a blessing laced up with a calamity….

  Laced up with a blessing, Rev. Hickman? We understand you partially because you have taught us that God’s sword is a two-edged sword. But would you please tell us of the younger generation just why it was a blessing?

  It was a blessing, brothers and sisters, because out of all the pain and the suffering, out of the night of storm, we found the Word of God.

  So here we found the Word. Amen, so now we are here. But where did we come from, Daddy Hickman?

  We come here out of Africa, son; out of Africa.

  Africa? Way over across the ocean? The black land? Where the elephants and monkeys and the lions and tigers are?

  Yes, Rev. Bliss, the jungle land. Some of us have fair skins like you, but out of Africa too.

  Out of Africa truly, sir?

  Out of the ravaged mama of the black man, son.

  Lord, thou hast taken us out of Africa…

  Amen, out of our familar darkness. Africa. They brought us here from all over Africa, Rev. Bliss. And some were the sons and daughters of heathen kings …

  Some were kings, Daddy Hickman? Have we of the younger generation heard you correctly? Some were kin to kings? Real kings?

  Amen! I’m told that some were the sons and the daughters of kings …

  … Of Kings! …

  And some were the sons and daughters of warriors …

  … Of warriors …

  Of fierce warriors. And some were the sons and the daughters of farmers …

  Of African farmers …

  … And some of musicians …

  … Musicians …

  And some were the sons and daughters of weapon makers and of smelters of brass and iron …

  But didn’t they have judges, Rev. Hickman? And weren’t there any preachers of the word of God?

  Some were judges but none were preachers of the word of God, Rev. Bliss. For we come out of heathen Africa…

  Heathen Africa?

  Out of heathen Africa. Let’s tell this thing true; because the truth is the light.

  And they brought us here in chains …

  In chains, son; in iron chains …

  From half-a-world away, they brought us …

  In chains and in boats that the history tells us weren’t fit for pigs—because pigs cost too much money to be allowed to waste and die as we did. But they stole us and brought us in boats which I’m told could move like the swiftest birds of prey, and which filled the great trade winds with the stench of our dying and their crime …

  What a crime! Tell us why, Rev. Hickman…

  It was a crime, Rev. Bliss, brothers and sisters, like the fall of proud Lucifer from Paradise.

  But why, Daddy Hickman? You have taught us of the progressive younger generation to ask why. So we want to know how come it was a crime?

  Because, Rev. Bliss, this was a country dedicated to the principles of almighty God. That Mayflower boat that you hear so much about Thanksgiving Day was a Christian ship—Amen! Yes, and those many-named floating coffins we came here in were Christian too. They had turned traitor to the God who set them free from Europe’s tyrant kings. Because, God have mercy on them, no sooner than they got free enough to breathe themselves, they set out to bow us down …

  They made our Lord shed tears!

  Amen! Rev. Bliss, amen. God must have wept like Jesus. Poor Jonah went down into the belly of the whale, but compared to our journey his was like a trip to paradise on a silvery cloud.

  Worse than old Jonah, Rev. Hickman?

  Worse than Jonah slicked all over with whale puke and gasping on the shore. We went down into hell on those floating coffins and don’t you youngsters forget it! Mothers and babies, men and women, the living and the dead and the dying—all chained together. And yet, praise God, most of us arrived here in this land. The strongest came through. Thank God, and we arrived and that’s why we’re here today. Does that answer the question, Rev. Bliss?

  Amen, Daddy Hickman, amen. But now the younger generation would like to know what they did to us when they got us here. What happened then?

  They brought us up onto this land in chains …

  … In chains …

  … And they marched us into the swamps …

  … Into the fever swamps, they marched us …

  And they set us to work draining the swampland and toiling in the sun…

  … They set us to toiling…

  They took the white fleece of the cotton and the sweetness of the sugar cane and made them bitter and bloody with our toil … And they treated us like one great unhuman animal without any face …

  Without a face, Rev. Hickman?

  Without personality, without names, Rev. Bliss, we were made into nobody and not even mister nobody either, just nobody. They left us without names. Without choice.
Wthout the right to do or not to do, to be or not to be …

  You mean without faces and without eyes? We were eyeless like Samson in Gaza? Is that the way, Rev. Hickman?

  Amen, Rev. Bliss, like baldheaded Samson before that nameless little lad like you came as the Good Book tells us and led him to the pillars whereupon the big house stood—Oh, you little black boys, and oh, you little brown girls, you’re going to shake the building down! And then, Oh, how you will build in the name of the Lord!

  Yes Reverend Bliss, we were eyeless like unhappy Samson among the Philistines—and worse …

  And WORSE?

  Worse, Rev. Bliss, because they chopped us up into little bitty pieces like a farmer when he cuts up a potato. And they scattered us around the land. All the way from Kentucky to Florida; from Louisiana to Texas; from Missouri all the way down the great Mississippi to the Gulf. They scattered us around this land.

  How now, Daddy Hickman? You speak in parables which we of the younger generation don’t clearly understand. How do you mean, they scattered us?

  Like seed, Rev. Bliss; they scattered us just like a dope-fiend farmer planting a field with dragon teeth!

  Tell us about it, Daddy Hickman.

  They cut out our tongues …

  … They left us speechless …

  … They cut out our tongues …

  … Lord, they left us without words …

  … Amen! They scattered our tongues in this land like seed…

  … And left us without language …

  … They took away our talking drums …

  … Drums that talked, Daddy Hickman? Tell us about those talking drums …

  Drums that talked like a telegraph. Drums that could reach across the country like a church bell sound. Drums that told the news almost before it happened! Drums that spoke with big voices like big men! Drums like a conscience and a deep heart-beat that knew right from wrong. Drums that told glad tidings! Drums that sent the news of trouble speeding home! Drums that told us our time and told us where we were …