Black Power

by Richard Wright

  Bit by bit my eyes became accustomed to the naked bodies and I turned my attention to the massive and green landscape, above which drifted that inevitable blue haze. I sped past plantations of banana trees, palm trees, coconut trees, orange trees, and rubber trees; then there loomed wawa trees and mahogany trees; cottonwood trees, white and tall and straight, stood like monuments amidst the green forest. Cocoa trees crowded the countryside with their red, brown, and yellow pods, then came patches of cocoa yam, cassava, and pineapple. But these plantations were like no plantations I’d ever seen before; there was no order, no fences, no vast sweeps of plowed earth such as one sees in the American Midwest—there was just a profuse welling of plants in a tangled confusion stretching everywhere, seemingly with no beginning and no end.

  The bus rocked on through thick jungle; then, half an hour later, roared into another batch of mud villages. As we slowed for a crossroads, I stared again at the half-nude black people and they returned my gaze calmly and confidently. What innocence of instincts! What unabashed pride! Such uninhibitedness of living seemed to me to partake of the reality of a dream, for, in the Western world where my instincts had been conditioned, nude bodies were seen only under special and determined conditions: in the intimacies of marriage, in expensive nightclubs, in the clandestine rendezvous of lovers, in art galleries, or in the bordels of the kind that Mr. Justice liked to haunt… and only men of undoubtedly professional stamp—doctors, artists, undertakers—were permitted, by the tolerance of the state or the indulgence of society, to deal with nudity, and then only behind closed doors. Yet, as I stared out of the bus window, I was amazed at the utter asexuality of the mood and the bearing of the people! Sex per se was absent in what I saw; sex was so blatantly prevalent that it drove all sexuality out; that is, it eliminated all of that evidence of sublimated and projected sexual symbolization with which Western men are habitually prone to decorate their environment in depicting to themselves the reality of the hidden bodies of their women. The hair of the women was plainly done, wrapped tightly in black strings and tied in plaited rows close to the skull; no rouge or powder showed on any woman’s cheeks; no fingernails were painted; and, save for a few tiny earrings of gold, they were bare of ornamentation of every kind.

  Undoubtedly these people had, through experiences that had constituted a kind of trial and error, and in response to needs that were alien and obscure to me, chosen some aspect of their lives other than sex upon which to concentrate their passions, and what that other aspect was and the manner in which they concentrated their passions upon it was something that I did not know, nor could I guess at its nature. Was it hunger? Was it war? Was it climate? Or was sex being deliberately brought into the open…? Had it been from some taboo originating in their religion? Or had it risen out of the vicissitudes of natural catastrophes? And, again, faced with the absolute otherness and inaccessibility of this new world, I was prey to a vague sense of mild panic, an oppressive burden of alertness which I could not shake off….

  Fishing villages, quaint and bleak in the blinding sun, flashed by, then came Elmina, Cape Coast, Anomabu, historic Gold Coast place names that stirred me to a memory of dark and bloody events of long ago. The road twisted through plantation and forest and jungle and again, to my right, the green waves of the Atlantic leaped wild and free, rolling and breaking upon the yellow sands and the grayish rocks of the far-flung shore, and I knew that it was across those stretches of barren beach that hundreds of thousands of black men, women, and children had been marched, shackled and chained, down to the waiting ships to be carted across the ocean to be slaves in the New World….

  The bus stopped in a tiny village and I clambered down to stretch my legs; three or four Africans followed me, then the Europeans got off…. I strode around the market place and finally halted before a young woman who sat cross-legged and who was nude to the waist. Balanced on her head was a huge tray of peeled coconuts.

  “I want to buy a coconut,” I told her.

  The flesh of her cheeks had been slashed by double marks in two places: tribal marks…. Though scarring the cheeks was being done less and less, it still occurred among the more backward elements of the population. In the old days all babies were thus marked at birth for purposes of identification, and some of the tribal marks were truly intricate; indeed, there were times when I had the impression that some delicate cobweb was covering a person’s face, so many crossing lines traversed the jaws and cheeks, reaching from the temple to the chin, from the nostrils to the ears.

  The young woman to whom I had spoken burst into embarrassed laughter, turned and beckoned to a girl friend, mumbled something to her in her tribal tongue, and pointed to me. Her friend sauntered over slowly, lifting her cloth and covering her breasts; she evidently knew something of Western ways….

  “You wanna buy?” she asked me, smiling.

  “A coconut,” I said.

  She translated for her friend who, taking a coconut from her tray, whacked a hole in it with one deft stroke of her cutlass, and handed it to me, still giggling. I paid her and she tossed my coin upon the tray and, without looking, her fingers fished around on the tray and found my change. I stood to one side and drank the coconut milk, studying her. Her eyes were sloe-shaped; her feet were large and splayed, the soles coarsened by earth and rain and rocks. The skin of her arms held a slightly ashened hue. When she became aware of my gaze, she burst again into laughter, hiding her face. The Europeans standing nearby turned to look at me and the girl, and I wondered what they were thinking….

  En route again, we sped through several thriving commercial centers. Now and then, looming up from the beach, and fronting both the sea and the jungle, were huge white castles and forts, their lofty ramparts holding decaying gun emplacements that still pointed commandingly toward both the misty expanse of the Atlantic and the tropically green countryside. These forts and castles had been built centuries ago by the Portuguese, the Dutch, the Danes, and the Swedes and they had been designed not only to ward off attacks and raids of the hostile and desperate natives, but also those of other European imperialist rivals whose jealous hunger for gold and slaves made them a prey to be feared. For centuries these dominating structures had served as storage depots, barracks, military command headquarters, arsenals, and they also contained deep dungeons in which kidnaped, bought, or stolen slaves had been kept for overseas shipment. The iron rings and chains which had fastened their black bodies to the masonry were still intact.

  How had the Europeans gotten a toehold upon this shore? Had they sneaked in? Had the naïve natives invited them in? Or had they fought their way forward in bloody battles? It was none of these; it had been through guile… a guile which enthroned distrust as a cardinal element in the African attitude toward Europe, a distrust that lives on in the African heart until this day.

  The Portuguese set the pattern in 1481. John II, upon ascending the throne, organized a huge fleet for the purpose of establishing a European settlement upon the coast where it had been said that gold was an article of household use among the infidel natives. Historical records relate that the expedition carried “500 soldiers and officers and 100 masons and other workers” they carried enough stones, cut, prepared, and ready to be fitted into place for the hurried building of a fort; also on board was ammunition, food, and a priest…. The idea had been, by ruse or force, to erect a fort strong enough to repel rival imperialist attacks and, at the same time, to compel the respect and obedience of the natives. The Portuguese strategy was to ask the natives to grant them the right to build a church in order that they might confer upon them the blessings of Jesus Christ; the force was to be held in reserve in case the natives refused to accept such blessings….

  Anchoring off Elmina in 1482, the expedition’s commander, one Don Diego d’Azambuja, sought an audience with the native chief, using a Portuguese who had learned the tribal language as his interpreter. Concealing their arms beneath their imposing and gaudy clothing, they presented the chi
ef with a sugared demand to establish a Christian church on the coast, extolling the benefits of heart and spirit that would ensue from such an institution.

  The natives and the chief had but a hazy conception of Europe, but they were practical enough to doubt the word of men who came thousands of miles in ships to erect domiciles in their land; being naïve, they guessed erroneously that the white men had been driven forcibly out of their country, had been reduced to living in their ships, and now wanted to take their tribal lands for themselves. The Africans, mystical and fanatical lovers of their ancestral soil, could not conceive of people voluntarily leaving their homes and families and traveling vast distances merely for the sake of trade. A tragic misconception! Four hundred and thirty-one years ago, the first African to leave a record of protest, diplomatic yet charged with anxiety, spoke as follows:

  “I’m not insensible to the high honor which your great master, the chief of Portugal, has this day conferred upon me. His friendship I have long endeavored to merit by the strictness of my dealing with the Portuguese, and by my constant exertions to procure an immediate lading for their vessels. But never until this day did I observe such a difference in the appearance of his subjects; they have hitherto been only meanly attired, were easily contented with the commodities they received; and so far from wishing to continue in this country, were never happy until they could complete their lading, and return. Now I remark a strange difference. A great number richly dressed are anxious to be allowed to build houses, and to continue among us. Men of such eminence, conducted by a commander who from his own account seems to have descended from the God who made day and night, can never bring themselves to endure the hardships of this climate; nor would they here be able to procure any of the luxuries that abound in their own country. The passions that are common to us all will therefore inevitably bring on disputes; and it is far preferable that both nations should continue on the same footing they have hitherto done, allowing your ships to come and go as usual; the desire of seeing each other occasionally will preserve peace between us…” (A History of the Gold Coast, by W. Walton Claridge, vol. 1).

  But the Portuguese had long before made up their minds that it was well worth their while to risk the terrible climate, and, pretending to be spokesmen of the Gentle Jesus, they hankered not for peace, but for victory. Rebuffed, they soon resorted to threats, which caused the African chief to give an uneasy consent. But, next morning, as the Portuguese workmen were frantically hoisting the prepared stones into place, the natives of Elmina attacked them, wounding many of their men. D’Azambuja altered his tactics and rained presents and bribes upon the natives, offering profuse apologies. Despite this, the construction of the fort was pushed night and day and, in less than a month, a tower had been built against which the natives were helpless. The Portuguese flag was hoisted and a mass was said….

  The European campaign against the mainland of Africa, buttressed by a mixture of religious ideology and a lust for gold, had begun in earnest; there had been no declaration of war; there had been no publicly declared aims save those of soul-saving, which even the Portuguese didn’t believe, and, as time passed, European governments per se were not even involved in these calculated assaults, for it was the right, endorsed by no less than the Pope, of any individual merchant, criminal, or adventurer to buy a ship, rig it out, muster a crew, and set sail for Africa and try his luck.

  Fortified with the authority of a papal bull, publicly minimizing the loot to be had, and extolling the opportunities for Christian service, John II proceeded at once to safeguard his new possession by spreading the word that the natives of the coast of West Africa were cannibals and would eat Europeans; he caused rumors to be circulated that terrible storms rose four times a year and made the seas impassable; and he assured the world that no one ought to be foolhardy enough to venture into West African waters in any other than a ship of Portuguese construction, for others were definitely unseaworthy…. There followed a partial “blackout” of all information relating to Portuguese activities on the coast of West Africa until 1500 when other European nations, overcoming the psychological intimidations of Catholicism, disregarded the papal bull and pushed their way past bloody Portuguese resistance and into the trade in black slaves and yellow gold.

  For 150 years there followed a period of free-for-all warfare among the Portuguese, the Dutch, the French, the English, the Swedes, the Germans and the African natives…. Relying mainly upon the authority of their firepower, the Portuguese forbade the Africans to trade with any other European power, an injunction which the Africans, of course, resented. The Portuguese penalty for violating their wishes was to raze and burn African villages, and in time even worse reprisals were meted out. The French, being less strong at sea, were also dodging in and out of the coastal native settlements, trading and keeping a wary eye out for the Portuguese. The English made direct representations to the Africans, trying to dissuade them from trading with the Portuguese, and when the Africans failed to comply, they too burned and destroyed native villages and looted the countryside of goats, sheep, and fowl. Sometimes the English and the French formed uneasy alliances against the Portuguese, hoping that, with such a common front, they could drive them out of West Africa, but such alliances could last only so long as the two respective home countries were at peace with each other. Hence, on many occasions the English and the French, hearing that their respective home countries were at war with each other in Europe, would turn suddenly and attack each other in Africa, even though both of them were under attack by the hated Portuguese.

  Toward the end of the sixteenth century the Dutch made a bid to share in the rich spoils by making an alliance with native tribes and arming them with guns (much to the fury of the Portuguese who loved the advantage of gunpowder over spears!) and urging them to fight against the Portuguese whom they had grown to hate. Meanwhile, Portugal became diverted by her rich colonies in the New World and allowed her forts to fall into disrepair and to become undermanned. In 1637 the Dutch made a determined assault upon the Portuguese fort at Elmina and captured it, and five years later they had driven the Portuguese, after 160 years of occupation, out of West Africa altogether.

  The Dutch victory on the Guinea Coast went unchallenged for but a short time, for, in 1657, the Swedes built a fort at Cape Coast, which fell to the Danes soon afterward; after changing hands several times, the fort at Cape Coast fell to the English for keeps in 1664. The war between the English and the Dutch changed but little the status quo regarding the forts, and when peace came in 1667, the situation was about what it had been before the shooting started. Then, in 1655, the Germans horned in, building two forts at Sekondi and Axim.

  In 1693 the natives around Accra attacked the Danes in their strongly fortified Castle Christianborg and defeated them through trickery and captured the castle, but, a year later, they sold it back to the Danes! From 1694 onwards the Dutch power began to decline slowly under the constant attack of native tribesmen, and, since most of the European interlopers were fighting each other in other parts of the world, forts changed hands only to be given back to their original owners when peace came about at spots far from Africa. When England, therefore, lost her American colonies, she was too weak, in 1785, to contest the Dutch ownership of forts in West Africa.

  Eight

  Though the distance from Takoradi to Accra was but 170 miles, it took us all of eight hours to make the journey; it was nearing six o’clock when Accra loomed through the sunset on the horizon.

  A smiling but somewhat reserved mulatto woman who spoke clipped and careful English—she was the Prime Minister’s secretary—was on hand at the bus station to meet me. The Prime Minister, she told me, was in the Northern Territories on an urgent political mission.

  “What is the political situation?” I asked her.

  “You’ll see,” she said cryptically, lifting her brows.

  She drove me in her English car across Accra, and I could hear the faint sounds of drums beatin
g in the distance, the vibrations coming to my ears like the valved growl of a crouching beast.

  “What are those drums?”

  “You’ll find out,” she said, laughing.

  “I feel strange; I see and hear so much that I don’t understand.”

  “It’ll take you a few days to get into it,” she said.

  In the sun’s dying light we came to a group of modernistic bungalows situated atop a chain of low-lying hills where the heat and humidity were more bearable. These beautiful bungalows, I was told, had been built expressly by the British authorities for the creature comforts of the new African ministers, many of whom had only recently been released from prison where they had been serving terms for sedition. But the wily black ministers, full of an old-fashioned distrust of Europeans, had had the unheard-of temerity to refuse to live in the bungalows, had stifled their natural yen for a modern domicile, and had remained, much to British astonishment, in the neighborhoods of their constituents. Their refusal to accept this British graciousness indicated that they suspected that the bungalows were bait to separate them from the common people and to keep them, as the British had always preferred to remain (as a matter of state policy), aloof and remote. But the African politicians had sensed that the most dangerous thing that they could do was to draw a class line between themselves and the masses of tribal voters who had endowed them with power….