Black Power

by Richard Wright

  “Who was head of the compound before you?” I asked him.

  “A Mr. Cochrane…. But he’s been set aside by the family.”

  “Was there a dispute?”

  He did not answer. I sensed that he did not want to go into the disposition of Mr. Cochrane and I did not press the matter. I was resolved to see Mr. Cochrane later.

  “Now, when do you call a meeting of this compound family?”

  “Whenever cases arise.”

  “What kind of cases? Crimes? Marriages?”

  “Oh, no. Crimes are handled by the police. Marriages are under the customs of the tribal people. Christians marry in church. I call a meeting when land has to be leased. For example, we own the land on which the petrol station is operating across the street. The people who own that station leased that land from us and pay us rent.”

  “Now, Mr. Hagerson, suppose a pagan girl here wanted to get married. Or a pagan boy, for that matter…. What would happen?”

  “With the boy,” Mr. Hagerson said, “it’s simple. He goes and lives with his wife. But the girl’s case is different. If a man falls in love with a girl living here, he must send two of his relatives to the girl’s parents to ask if the girl is free, that is, if she’s engaged or not. In coming, they must bring a guinea apiece with them, that is, two guineas. If the girl’s family says that the girl is free, the two relatives leave and go back and when they return, they bring four guineas and a ring with them…. If the girl happens to be engaged, they leave and they forfeit the two original guineas they had brought…. If the girl is free and the two relatives have left the additional two guineas apiece and the ring, the bridegroom has to send the following:

  6 guineas

  30 shillings for the mother and father

  2 bottles of gin

  2 bottles of whiskey

  1 dozen bottles of mineral water

  1 dozen bottles of beer

  “These are gifts from the bridegroom and his family and they are given to the family of the bride. But the parents of the bride give back to the bridegroom’s family a shilling out of each guinea which has been given. The womenfolk change a pound into penny pieces and they send these to all the members of the bride’s family with this message: ‘Here is drink. Your niece or granddaughter is engaged.’”

  “What politics do the members of your family believe in, Mr. Hagerson?”

  Mr. Hagerson and his assistant tilted back their heads and roared with laughter.

  “Convention People’s Party, sir,” Mr. Hagerson told me.

  I gave Mr. Hagerson some shillings for “drink” and made my way past Christianborg Castle to the home of Mr. W. T. Cochrane. It was a gaunt structure enclosed by a stone wall. Mr. Cochrane was a man of sixty-odd, tall, mulatto, gracious. I told him that I wanted to ask about the Slave Market Castle and he regarded me with caution.

  “What do you want to know about it?”

  “You were the former head man there,” I said. “Why aren’t you the head man now?”

  “You’ve talked to Mr. Hagerson?”

  “Yes.”

  Finally Mr. Cochrane cleared his throat and said:

  “You see, there’s a fight going on in our family. There’s a case in the courts—”

  “What’s it about?”

  “Well, you see, it’s a fight over the ownership of the land there. These people, who were once slaves—that is, their ancestors were—think that they own that land. They are fighting us about it. They are contesting the ownership of the land in court—”

  “Who is ‘us’ in the case, Mr. Cochrane?”

  “Well, our side of the family—”

  “The mulatto side?” I ventured cautiously.

  “I wouldn’t put it that way,” he said quickly.

  Mr. Cochrane was staring thoughtfully before him. I had at last put my finger on the heart of the problem. The black side of the family was fighting the white side of the family for possession of the land. That was not an unusual thing, but the manner of the fight, as Mr. Cochrane revealed it to me, was unique. Convinced now that I, a stranger, had no part in the fight, he talked freely.

  “Those people think that because they’ve lived there all these years, they own that land,” he argued. “It’s a hangover from slavery. They argue their claim under tribal law. They say the land is theirs just because they are on it. But they can’t prove it in court—”

  “And what would constitute proof in court in a case like this?”

  “Records and testimony,” he said.

  “Are there records?”

  “There are some,” he said slowly.

  It was the old war of race and class being fought all over again in a new guise; it was Europe against Africa, Christianity against paganism; freedom against slavery; law against custom; white against black; the rich against the poor; individuals against the tribe. The black side of the family had been born in slavery (that is, their ancestors had been), and they were now contending that they, by custom and traditional right, owned and controlled the land; and the mulattoes were contending that the documents and legal instruments in their hands gave them the clear right to the land….

  I couldn’t guess who would win that fight, but, in a sense, it was the same fight that Nkrumah had made in the Legislative Assembly a few days before. Nkrumah had had no legal right to the land in which he had been born; he had pled that since his people had been living for centuries on that land, they had the right to rule it…. That fight, that claim, that plea went straight through the heart of all black Africa.

  Twenty-Three

  I spent the afternoon visiting the newspaper offices. There are about twenty daily and weekly newspapers in the Gold Coast but none of them, with the exception of one—the Daily Graphic—is a newspaper in the sense that the West uses that term. They are broadsheets, badly printed, dingy, smeared, horribly written, with atrocious layouts and unreadable editorials. The two official papers of the Convention People’s Party, the Ghana Evening News and the Ashanti Sentinel, though suffering from being printed under primitive conditions, are at least coherent and militant, reflecting the basic moods and hopes of the people.

  The printing shops are tiny and cluttered; many of the presses are hand-powered; the staff, in terms of quality, is extremely poor; and the salaries of the reporters are unbelievably low. Sometimes when a press breaks down, the paper does not appear on the streets for days….

  It was Nkrumah who founded the Ghana Evening News (formerly the Accra Evening News) in 1948, and it has a circulation of more than 15,000; it is the most influential single newspaper in the Gold Coast. Then there is the Daily Graphic, owned by the West Africa Graphic Company, a subsidiary of the London Daily Mirror, the British Labour Party paper. Launched in the fall of 1950, the Graphic has evoked intense local African opposition which dubs it the “white press.” It is technically the best newspaper in the Gold Coast, having a circulation of more than 40,000. It is equipped with linotype machines and has a number of Europeans on its staff.

  The most influential of the opposition press is the Daily Echo, one of the two publications of the Independent Press, Ltd. Its editor in chief is Daniel George Tackie, a member of the royal family of James Town with the title of NII Arde Nkpa. Other Gold Coast papers are the Spectator, the African Morning Post, the Ghana Daily Express, the African National Times….

  Nothing short of a miracle gets these papers printed at all. In one shop I talked to the editor and his co-workers; I asked them why many of the city’s papers did not merge their resources and circulation, etc., and try to lift up the standards of the Fourth Estate. I was informed that such co-operation among educated Africans was impossible, that each African was fiercely independent. I countered by reminding them that the Africans were reputed to be communal-minded…. Well, it seems that newspapers here are generally owned by families, and these families in turn are tied up with tribal interests, politics, etc.

  Strictly speaking, there is no independent press i
n the Gold Coast; each paper is violently partisan and libel suits are many and ludicrous. One of the devices for squeezing out unwelcome competitors is to sue, and the one to whom the court decision is awarded has the right to seize the press of the loser!

  Here is a short news item taken from the African Morning Post (Wednesday, September 16, 1953):

  ODIKOR’S DEATH BEING INVESTIGATED

  The Kedwai Police are investigating the death of the Odikor of Senfinear Bedwai, Nana Kwami Booba, who was found dead in the bush recently with a gun shot on his chest.

  It is said that the Odikor left home early in the morning with a gun to see his animal traps. In the evening when it was discovered that the chief had not returned a search party was organized. He was found lying dead in the bush.

  The government, trying to aid the press, has suggested that a national printing press be set up on which all of the newspapers can run off their editions. Such a press would seek to teach the basic essentials of the modern newspaper, how to increase circulation, how to devise a strict libel code, etc., but, so far, the African editors will have none of it. They feel that the opposition would have an opportunity to learn what they were printing and would, therefore, steal their news if all the papers were printed on a common press….

  The Gold Coast press differs sharply from the press of the American Negro. If one ignored the names, one would never know that the press was giving news of black people. Words like discrimination, lynch, race, Jim Crow, white people, etc., are conspicuously absent.

  Most African papers carry no foreign news at all; the Daily Graphic usually devotes two or three paragraphs to “World News.” The Gold Coast African feels that he is at the center of the universe and a conversation about world affairs is likely to elicit silence. The African newspaper, like the African himself, is a local thing. African ideas and culture do not fare well on alien soil, and the African has no hankering for foreign parts.

  Twenty-Four

  I was invited by the Gold Coast Information Service to hear Mr. Gbedemah, the Minister of Commerce, deliver a talk upon one of the pet schemes of Nkrumah’s government. The scheme, known as the Volta Project, is to be launched with the creation of one of the world’s largest inland lakes. There is a vast basin, sparsely populated, in Ashanti; this basin is surrounded by hills and if the Volta River were dammed up at a certain point, a lake, in about three years’ time, would rise, making a body of water some two thousand square miles in area.

  The main object in creating this lake would be to obtain cheap electric power with which to manufacture aluminum. Fabulously rich Ashanti has not only timber, gold, and diamonds, but also deposits of bauxite estimated at 200,000,000 tons…. Enough to last for two hundred years! The trapped waters of the Volta River are expected to turn turbines and generate enough electric power for the production of aluminum cheap enough to be sold on world markets.

  At present the Gold Coast Government, the British Government, and the Canadian Aluminum Company are trying to find a formula to pool their joint funds and build the dam, control the flow of water, and produce 600,000 kilowatts of electricity per year. Of these 600,000 kilowatts of electric power, 500,000 will be earmarked for the production of aluminum, and 100,000 will be allocated to the Gold Coast for industrial and agricultural purposes. Hence, there is expected to spring up on the Accra plains a light industry under African leadership. Also experiments are being made to determine if the arid coastal plains will grow quantities of food if sufficiently irrigated….

  The British are asking the right to buy aluminum from such a project at rates prevailing in the dollar areas of the world. It is estimated that many thousands of workers will have to be moved from their present living sites and this will entail a vast job of resettlement of people who are not used to leaving the lands of their ancestors. It is also hoped that the edges of this great lake will provide marshes in which rice can be grown. This last item sounds attractive inasmuch as the Gold Coast now imports much of its rice supply from Liberia. It is also contended that the new project is needed to balance the economy of the Gold Coast, for at present the mainstay of the farmers is the one-crop system of cocoa. If one year the cocoa crop should fail, the Gold Coast would face famine or worse and the country would be engulfed in economic chaos.

  All of this sounds wonderful, but for whose ultimate benefit is it? If the Africans are able to swing such a mammoth project with the British and the Canadians, and if the British civil servants can be trusted not to try to be civil masters, it would be a step toward the twentieth century for the Gold Coast. But does not this Volta scheme sound as though the British were exchanging political for economic control?

  After I’d left Mr. Gbedemah’s lecture, I was talking with a group of young Africans about the fantastic wealth of the Gold Coast, and one of them told me that some Americans were skeptical of such wealth. I told him that I saw no reasons for American skepticism in such matters, and that I was certain that he was mistaken. He then showed me the following document, laughing uproariously as he handed it to me.

  It read as follows:

  OFFICE OF

  UNITED AFRICAN MISSIONARY ALLIANCE

  747 East 62nd Street

  Chicago 37, U. S. A.

  July 5, 1952

  The British Embassy

  3100 Massachusetts Ave., N.W.

  Washington, D. C.

  Honorable Sir:

  The United African Missionary Alliance is interested in purchasing the British Gold Coast Colony in West Africa as a homestead for those of our members in the United States who are desirous of going to Africa to do missionary work.

  Please inform your government at London immediately of our intentions, and if your government is willing to sell this territory to us, please notify the United African Missionary Alliance at once. Tell us how much money your government will accept in exchange for this territory. We will pay your price, if it is reasonable.

  Looking forward to hearing from the Embassy just as soon as you can get a reply from your government.

  Yours truly

  United African Missionary Alliance (signed) Rev. J. H. Edmondson

  JHE:mc

  Encl-DP

  All of which indicated how remote America was from Africa, from colonies, and the realities that govern the lives of the people who live in them. The gentleman who showed me the above letter was a responsible man and he obtained the document from government files. I have no way of gauging the intentions of this particular organization to buy the Gold Coast and send missionaries to lift up the poor African to something lower; I can only hope that the Africans can be spared more interference of that kind.

  When I awakened one morning, damp and enervated as usual, the steward came to tell me something and I could not understand him; then and there I took my first lesson in pidgin English and found that it consisted of a frightful kind of baby talk.

  The first principle was that the African never referred to the European in the second person; it was always the third person that he had to use. For example, “Massa go now?” Never: “You go now?” When an African houseboy is asked to fetch something, he replies: “I go bring ’em, Massa.” A child is always called “piccin,” which is short for pickaninny. Lunch, dinner, eating, a meal, and food of all kinds are designated by the word “chop.” The word “little” must have caused them great pains, for it has been replaced by the word “small.” Everything that is little is “small” something very little is “small small.” It is used in a great variety of ways. For example, instead of saying, “Wait a little,” one says “Wait small.” If one does not wish much whiskey to be poured into one’s glass, one says: “Small whiskey….” If one does not wish to eat much, one says: “Small chop.” “Dash me, Massa,” means, “Give me a tip, sir.” If you call, asking for the master, and he has gone upstairs, you are supposed to understand when the houseboy tells you: “Massa, he catch topside, sar.” The stewards have been drilled into a clownish form of exaggerated polit
eness. “Yes” is always said as, “Yes, please….” “No” is uttered as: “No, please….” If a steward dares give a European a bit of information, he must not be so presumptuous as to speak it straight out, but he begins with: “Excuse me, please, to say…” One hears the word “pass” all day long and all night long; that one word takes care of the entire range of comparatives, material or psychological. For instance: “I like this pass that…” A man who is more important socially than another “passes” him. A building that is taller than another “passes” the other building. A youngster who is impertinent to an older person is trying to “pass” that older person. To look for something is to “catch” it. Thus, if you ask for the master of the house, the houseboy will tell you: “I go catch ’im.” And if the master is not in, you are supposed to know that fact from the following sentence: “Massa, I see Massa, but he not there.” The first time I heard a boy say that I thought he was trying to talk religion….

  It was amazing how much one could communicate by juggling these simple words. I suspected that the African had adopted these words on a basis that rested in his own language, Twi, which is fundamentally tonal, and one word can mean many things, depending upon how it is said, its context, etc.

  I was still in the dark as to how the African mind functioned and I wanted to come to closer grips with it. I appealed at last to a white missionary, Lloyd Shirer, telling him that I wanted to ask an African, a cook or a houseboy, his beliefs. Mr. Shirer worked for the Department of Welfare in the Northern Territories and knew the Gold Coast well, having spent some thirty years in the “bush.” He told me that what his cook could tell me would relate only to his cook’s part of the country, that is, the North, but that the basic psychological reactions were mostly the same everywhere. Since Mr. Shirer spoke the language, he promised me a word-by-word translation.