It was not the economics of Communism, nor the great power of trade unions, nor the excitement of underground politics that claimed me; my attention was caught by the similarity of the experiences of workers in other lands, by the possibility of uniting scattered but kindred peoples into a whole. My cynicism—which had been my protection against an America that had cast me out—slid from me and, timidly, I began to wonder if a solution of unity was possible. My life as a Negro in America had led me to feel—though my helplessness had made me try to hide it from myself—that the problem of human unity was more important than bread, more important than physical living itself; for I felt that without a common bond uniting men, without a continuous current of shared thought and feeling circulating through the social system, like blood coursing through the body, there could be no living worthy of being called human.
I hungered to share the dominant assumptions of my time and act upon them. I did not want to feel, like an animal in a jungle, that the whole world was alien and hostile. I did not want to make individual war or individual peace. So far I had managed to keep humanly alive through transfusions from books. In my concrete relations with others I had encountered nothing to encourage me to believe in my feelings. It had been by denying what I saw with my eyes, disputing what I felt with my body, that I had managed to keep my identity intact. But it seemed to me that here at last in the realm of revolutionary expression was where Negro experience could find a home, a functioning value and role. Out of the magazines I read came a passionate call for the experiences of the disinherited, and there were none of the lame lispings of the missionary in it. It did not say: “Be like us and we will like you, maybe.” It said: “If you possess enough courage to speak out what you are, you will find that you are not alone.” It urged life to believe in life.
I read on into the night; then, toward dawn, I swung from bed and inserted paper into the typewriter. Feeling for the first time that I could speak to listening ears, I wrote a wild, crude poem in free verse, coining images of black hands playing, working, holding bayonets, stiffening finally in death…I read it and felt that in a clumsy way it linked white life with black, merged two streams of common experience.
I heard someone poking about the kitchen.
“Richard, are you ill?” my mother called.
“No. I’m reading.”
My mother opened the door and stared curiously at the pile of magazines that lay upon my pillow.
“You’re not throwing away money buying those magazines, are you?” she asked.
“No. They were given to me.”
She hobbled to the bed on her crippled legs and picked up a copy of the Masses that carried a lurid May Day cartoon. She adjusted her glasses and peered at it for a long time.
“My God in heaven,” she breathed in horror.
“What’s the matter, mama?”
“What is this?” she asked, extending the magazine to me, pointing to the cover. “What’s wrong with that man?”
With my mother standing at my side, lending me her eyes, I stared at a cartoon drawn by a Communist artist; it was the figure of a worker clad in ragged overalls and holding aloft a red banner. The man’s eyes bulged; his mouth gaped as wide as his face; his teeth showed; the muscles of his neck were like ropes. Following the man was a horde of nondescript men, women, and children, waving clubs, stones, and pitchforks.
“What are those people going to do?” my mother asked.
“I don’t know,” I hedged.
“Are these Communist magazines?”
“Yes.”
“And do they want people to act like this?”
“Well…” I hesitated.
My mother’s face showed disgust and moral loathing. She was a gentle woman. Her ideal was Christ upon the Cross. How could I tell her that the Communist party wanted her to march in the streets, chanting, singing?
“What do Communists think people are?” she asked.
“They don’t quite mean what you see there,” I said, fumbling with my words.
“Then what do they mean?”
“This is symbolic,” I said.
“Then why don’t they speak out what they mean?”
“Maybe they don’t know how.”
“Then why do they print this stuff?”
“They don’t quite know how to appeal to people yet,” I admitted, wondering whom I could convince of this if I could not convince my mother.
“That picture’s enough to drive a body crazy,” she said, dropping the magazine, turning to leave, then pausing at the door. “You’re not getting mixed up with those people?”
“I’m just reading, mama,” I dodged.
My mother left and I brooded upon the fact that I had not been able to meet her simple challenge. I looked again at the cover of the Masses and I knew that the wild cartoon did not reflect the passions of the common people. I reread the magazine and was convinced that much of the expression embodied what the artists thought would appeal to others, what they thought would gain recruits. They had a program, an ideal, but they had not yet found a language.
Here, then, was something that I could do, reveal, say. The Communists, I felt, had oversimplified the experience of those whom they sought to lead. In their efforts to recruit masses, they had missed the meaning of the lives of the masses, had conceived of people in too abstract a manner. I would make voyages, discoveries, explorations with words and try to put some of that meaning back. I would address my words to two groups: I would tell Communists how common people felt, and I would tell common people of the self-sacrifice of Communists who strove for unity among them.
That following Thursday night, when I joined my friends at the hotel for beer, I pulled out my crude verses and laid them on the table. Sol read them.
“This can be published,” he said.
“That’s not the point,” I said. “What do they mean to you?”
“This is the vision of the disinherited,” he said.
“If you’re going to publish these to recruit me into the party, then nothing doing,” I said.
“They’ll be published whether you join or not,” he said.
I told the group of my mother’s reaction to the Masses cartoon.
“She’ll have to learn the symbolism of the revolution,” somebody said.
“But why can’t Communism speak a language she understands?” I asked.
There was a lot of argument that went nowhere.
Still suspicious, my eyes watching for the slightest anti-Negro gesture, I attended the next meeting of the club. In the end I had to admit that they were glad to have me with them. But I still doubted their motives. Were they trying to get my head bashed in a picket line so that they could capitalize on the publicity? Or did the discipline of the club demand that they be friendly with me? If that was true, then those who did not want a Negro in the club could resign. But no one made a move to resign. How had these people, denying profit and home and God, made that hurdle that even the churches of America had not been able to make?
The editor of Left Front accepted two of my crude poems for publication, sent two of them to Jack Conroy’s Anvil, and sent another to the New Masses, the successor of the Masses. Doubts still lingered in my mind.
“Don’t send them if you think they aren’t good enough,” I said.
“They’re good enough,” he said.
“Are you doing this to get me to join up?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “Your poems are crude, but good for us. You see, we’re all new in this. We write articles about Negroes, but we never see any Negroes. We need your stuff.”
I sat through several meetings of the club and was impressed by the scope and seriousness of its activities. The club was demanding that the government create jobs for unemployed artists; it planned and organized art exhibits; it raised funds for the publication of Left Front; and it sent scores of speakers to trade-union meetings. The members were fervent, democratic, restless, eager, self-sacrifi
cing. I was convinced, and my response was to set myself the task of making Negroes know what Communists were. While mopping the operating rooms of the medical research institute, I got the notion of writing a series of biographical sketches of Negro Communists. I told no one of my intentions, and I did not know how fantastically naïve my ambition was.
I had attended but a few meetings before I realized that a bitter factional fight was in progress between two groups of members of the club. But when I tried to learn the nature of the fight, no one would tell me anything. Sharp arguments rose at every meeting. I noticed that a small group of painters actually led the club and dominated its policies. The group of writers that centered about Left Front resented the leadership of the painters. Being primarily interested in Left Front, I sided in simple loyalty with the writers. Then came a strange development. The Left Front group declared that the incumbent leadership did not reflect the wishes of the club. A special meeting was called and a motion was made to reelect an executive secretary. When nominations were made for the office, my name was included. I declined the nomination, telling the members that I was too ignorant of their aims to be seriously considered. The debate lasted all night. A vote was taken in the early hours of morning by a show of hands, and I was elected. I had been a member of the club for less than two months and did not fully understand the purposes of the organization.
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 non-party 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 bulg
ing, 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.”
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