Black Power

by Richard Wright

  That got him; he stared off above the heads of the crowds of people dancing over a glassy floor. Then he said:

  “All right. Come to see me Thursday. At four.”

  I was there on the dot of four. I met a trained lawyer, gracious, affable, generous-hearted, a man who was deeply baffled and tried to hide it, a man whose mind was desperately trying to grapple with a new and alien reality which he hated. He had the bearing of an aristocrat, relaxed, poised; he was on his mental toes each moment I spent with him. No honest Englishman could ever really quarrel with this man; he personified, alas, exactly what England wanted to make every African into…. And yet they had unceremoniously ditched him! And he felt it; he never said one word about it; but it was deep and bitter in him. He had been betrayed by England, the land that had given him his ideals and his sense of honor.

  “What are the differences between you and Nkrumah?”

  “We really have no differences,” he said blandly.

  “Oh, really, now. You are at each other’s throats!”

  “We are one in our aim for self-government for the Gold Coast,” he said.

  “But you are not together,” I said.

  He took a deep breath, looked off, then glanced at me and said:

  “Nkrumah is selfish. With wiles and tricks he stole power. We sent for that man to come and help us. Then, while pretending to work for us, he secretly built up his own following within our ranks. Ruthlessly, he split the national front, then made a filthy deal with the British…. One day he said that he wanted national freedom, and the next day he compromised with the British.”

  “Do you think he’ll keep power for long?” I asked.

  “Yes; until the illiterate masses wake up,” he said.

  “Why don’t you try to win the masses to your side?”

  I watched a grimace come over his face; he looked at me and smiled ruefully.

  “Masses?” he echoed the word. “I don’t like this thing of masses. There are only individuals for me—”

  “But masses form the basis of political power in the modern world today,” I told him.

  “You believe that?” he asked me. “I know you fellows dote on this thing of masses…. I’ve read that you claim that this mass unrest comes from the industrialization of the Western world—”

  “Where else could it come from?” I asked him. “Look, how did Nkrumah learn his techniques of organization? In New York, in Chicago, in Detroit, and in London he saw men organizing and he studied their methods. Then he came to Africa and applied them…. You’re facing the twentieth century, Dr. Danquah.”

  He shook his head. Every word that I had uttered clashed with deep-set convictions. And it suddenly flashed through me that this man was not a politician and would never be one.

  “Why is it that you cannot appeal to the masses on the basis of their daily needs?” I asked him. “You’re a lawyer; you’re used to representing…. Well, represent them. As we say in America: Be a mouthpiece for them—”

  “I can’t do things like that—”

  “It’s the only road to power in modern society,” I said. “No matter how deeply you reject it, it’s true.”

  “It’s emotion,” he protested.

  It was the lawyer speaking. He was used to those facts which the tradition of law said were admissible; all other facts had to be excluded.

  “I heard your speech,” I told him. “I’d like to make a suggestion—”

  “Go ahead,” he said.

  “Had I been you,” I began, “I’d have stood up there and told those people: ‘I’m Her Majesty’s Opposition. I do not agree with the methods of Nkrumah. But, today, gentlemen, we have heard a motion for self-government. I’m an African. I want, above all things, to see my country free. So, for what it’s worth, I hereby vote for this measure. And, in so doing, I challenge Nkrumah to keep his word and drive for self-government. I’m here to see that he does not lag, does not tarry….’ Dr. Danquah, had you said that, you would have become the hero of that hour. Those masses outside of that Assembly would have been galvanized. Nkrumah himself would have been speechless. And the British would have been thunderstruck; it would have put them on the spot…. Don’t you see?”

  He stared at me and shook his head slowly.

  “I can’t say things like that,” he protested.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t believe in it,” he said.

  “It’s not a matter of believing; it’s politics! You would have voiced the demands of your country’s masses, and you would have, with one stroke, pushed the British to a point where they would have had to act….”

  He was shaking his head…. It was no use. He was of the old school. One did not speak for the masses; one told them what to do….

  “You are a Christian?” I asked him, switching the subject.

  “Yes,” he said.

  I was dumfounded.

  “But I’ve read your book, The Akan Doctrine of God. You are a pagan too?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Don’t you find a conflict in the two religions?”

  “No. Not at all. I go to church and serve God, and then I go to the Stool House and worship my ancestors,” he explained. He was on familiar ground now and he grew expansive. “You see, the Christian worships the Son. We worship the Father. It’s the same thing.”

  I wanted to ask him why he felt the need to worship both the Father and the Son in that manner, but I shied off digging into delicate areas. It was evident that he knew nothing of the impact of the industrial West; the destiny of the disinherited would never be his; he was anchored for always in the calm waters of belief…. Our apprehensions of reality were too profoundly different to permit of much talk along religious lines. With a promise to meet and talk again, I took my leave.

  It bothered me that I couldn’t find among educated Africans any presentiment of what the future of their continent was to be. The more highly educated they had been, the more unfit they seemed to weigh and know the forces that were shaping the modern world.

  It must not be thought that I did not give a full measure of respect to the ideas of Dr. Danquah. It’s rare in our world today to feel that the sky has a value over and above that of space to be conquered, and that the earth means something more than an object out of which to dig minerals, or that human personality is something beyond a mere consumptive-productive unit…. The good doctor’s grasp of life was essentially poetic; it was close to that which our fantasies and daydreams would have reality be; its essence was woven out of what we call human traits. Yet, if he would pit himself against his political adversaries, if he would win a struggle for the liberation of his country, he would have to lay aside such poetic preoccupations and adopt more realistic measures. He could, of course, declare that he would have no truck with such methods, that they were beneath him; but, if he did that, he would go down to defeat as so many others had gone before him.

  What amazed me was that men like Dr. Danquah saw and knew each day what the British wanted from the Gold Coast; they knew that the hunger for raw materials and the opportunity to sell merchandise at high prices constituted the crux of British imperialism. An educated African might well curse those mysterious forces of geography that had made his country so fabulously rich in those raw materials that served as the fulcrum of world power politics….

  Twenty-Eight

  I had long wanted to come to grips with the chiefs of the Gold Coast and finally one evening one was served up to me at the dinner table of the American Consul. This chief was a tall, gentle black man with a delicate face, sensitive fingers; it was obvious that he was burning to have his say, but he inhibited himself, declaring that he was not a political man. He was a Christian from the town of Odumase, the state of Manya Krobo. Gently, I steered the conversation toward native religious practices.

  “Really,” he told me, waving his hands a little impatiently, “our religion is basically the same as that of all other people. You mustn’t
get the idea that there’s anything fantastic in ancestor worship.”

  “I agree with you,” I said, anxious that he should talk freely. “All people have in them the germs of ancestor worship. The Russians are always talking of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin as being the fathers of the Russian Revolution. In America, we speak of our Founding Fathers. What they did in establishing the foundations of our country has assumed almost a magical sanctity.” I could see the chief relaxing, and that was just my aim.

  “There is nothing that we do in a Stool House that is strange,” he explained. “There are stools there. To us they are sacred. Just as other churches have holy things, so do we. And you must realize that even in the illiterate masses there is a certain wisdom. By trial and error, they have learned a lot. For example, there is a certain leaf of a certain tree. If you hold it in one of your hands, you can catch a scorpion in the other, and the scorpion cannot sting you—”

  “How was that discovered?” I asked.

  “I don’t know how these fetish men found it out, but they did,” he said.

  It was strange how his mind seemed to prefer to deal with such magical manifestations. The African places mystery between cause and effect and there is a deep predilection toward omnipotence of thought, of spirit acting on spirit. The more I listened to Africans describe their achievements in the realms of the magical, the more I felt that it was how one related fact to fact that constituted the real difference between the Western and non-Western mind. When the chief had saturated my understanding with mystery, I launched into a discussion of politics where, I was certain, he could give me no facts tinged with mysticism.

  “What do you think of the Convention People’s Party?” I asked him.

  “I’m not a political man,” he began, “but, of course, politics influence my life. I’m a chief. Nkrumah has reduced the power of the chiefs, but he could not have done it unless the British had consented to it. You must understand that. I’m not bothered about all this talk about the wicked British imperialists. It’s against their code of action that I inveigh. They betrayed a sacred trust that we chiefs had given them—”

  “Tell me more about that,” I urged him.

  “It’s simple,” he explained. “Most of us chiefs gave the British our power. They didn’t conquer all of us. Our tribes had been fighting one another. Now, for decades we’d watched the British and we liked the way that they did things…. Then, orally and in writing, we made agreements; we surrendered our power to them; we told them to establish peace…. Now, I contend that that power was not theirs to give away…. They should have handed it back to the men from whom they had got it. But they went and gave it away; they didn’t even consult us; we knew nothing about it; they just did it and told us that we had to like it. Our ancestors had no notion that some day the power that they had tendered the British would one day be given away to people who are our enemies…. The British could not have ruled this country for the past hundred years without the consent of the chiefs….”

  “I see your point,” I said. “But listen to another side of the story. What did the British give your people? In the light of the gold and diamonds and manganese and timber that they took out of the country, and all for a pittance, could they not have built roads for you other than in those areas where they had to bring their raw materials down to the ports? Could they not have built more schools? Could they not have improved the health standards of the people?”

  He didn’t answer. He knew that the real responsibility for those matters had rested, in the last analysis, with the chiefs…. And those chiefs had not been anxious to bring reforms into the lives of the masses of the people. They knew that widespread literacy marked the termination of chieftaincy. Under the British the chiefs had had it soft and they’d wanted to keep it soft. Now, in looking back, they were wishing that they had acted a little differently; but that time had gone…. A new political party had condemned them on the very grounds which they had claimed were their own: moral grounds.

  In the old days the chiefs had, through the hereditary rights of royal families, formed the sacred instruments of rule and had ordered the lives of the people; now Nkrumah had insisted that the instruments of rule be made secular, elective, that the entire legislative body of a given community could not be completely hereditary. And the young men of the nation had marched in agreement with that democratic aim.

  “Don’t you think,” I asked him, “that the new schools that will be built, the new health measures now in operation, will outweigh the claims of those who lost power?”

  “Our ancestors, to help us,” the chief said, “made a gentleman’s agreement with the British, then the British broke their promise and leveled their guns at us. They let us down. That was not right!”

  The concept of honor was being evoked against the right of men to live and breathe without fear and poverty. The black elite was asserting its claims against the younger men who yearned to toss off the yoke of imperialism and banish the blindness of centuries of illiteracy. Blacks against blacks!

  “We are not used to political parties, central governments,” he lamented.

  “Look,” I argued gently, “all nations have central governments. A central government is an absolute necessity if man is to live at all rationally. How can you trade with nations of the world, how can you educate your children, how can you wipe out disease, how can you defend yourself against aggression unless you have a strong central government?”

  “But we are not educated; we don’t know how—”

  “Then learn,” I said. “Make your mistakes. A central government is simply national housekeeping. Why let another government do this for you? Your people are passionately anxious to try. Then let them try. Common people rule elsewhere; why not here?”

  The chief sighed. What pathos! He was a “decent” man, but it seemed that all “decent” people were being driven out of power in the world today.

  In the old days a chief’s children had, by hereditary and prescriptive right, first choice to enter what limited schools existed. Now, all students, regardless of background or social origin, had to pass an entrance examination to be admitted to the universities of the nation…. And the chiefs, the old and great families, did not like it. Their blood was the best blood in the land, hallowed by the stools containing the souls of their ancestors—stools that had gradually turned black by the constant dripping of sheep’s blood upon them. Now that the magical authority of those blackened stools over the minds of their subjects had gone, they didn’t like it; they wanted a chance to turn the clock back; they didn’t want history to catch up with Africa…. But the past had gone; the magic wouldn’t work any more; the sheep, goats, chickens, and even human beings, when slain as sacrifices, were of no avail….

  The Gold Coast was being strait-jacketed into the future; events were moving fast to overcome the inertia of the chiefs. But was the pace so swift that the native genius of the people was not being taken into account? In olden times the undertakings of the people had been communal; they had labored to the sound of drums and music. Today prefabricated houses were being thrown up overnight…. Was enough thought being given to what had happened in other industrial countries?

  The pathos of Africa would be doubled if, out of her dark past, her people were plunged into a dark future, a future that smacked of Chicago or Detroit…. But how can these harassed politicians, working in such a heated and partisan atmosphere, battling both the British and the black elite, have time to think and plan? What would be the gain if these benighted fetish-worshipers were snatched from their mud huts and their ancestor idolatry, and catapulted into the vast steel and stone jungles of cities, tied to monotonous jobs, condemned to cheap movies, made dependent upon alcohol? Would an African, a hundred years from now, after he has been trapped in the labyrinths of industrialization, be able to say when he is dying, when he is on the verge of going to meet his long dead ancestors, those traditional, mysterious words:

  I’m dying


  I’m dying

  Something big is happening to me…?

  Twenty-Nine

  To find opinions on these questions, I sought to talk to Dr. K. A. Busia, one of Africa’s foremost social scientists. He was with the opposition, but he had indisputable facts in his grasp.

  I called at his office in the Department of Social Sciences at Achimota University. Dr. Busia turned out to be a short, medium-sized, affable man who had about him a slightly worried and puzzled air. He was the author of The Position of the Chief in the Modern Political System of Ashanti and Social Survey Sekondi-Takoradi. I could tell at once that he was orientated and could express himself with ease.

  “Dr. Busia, to just what degree are the traditional rituals and ceremonies of the Akan people still intact?” I asked him.

  “They are completely intact,” he told me. “The people hide them from the West, and they make peripheral concessions to Western opinion. But the central body of our beliefs and practices still functions and is a working frame of reference from day to day.”

  “You are with the opposition, are you not?”

  “I am.”

  “Do tribal rituals play a part in the Convention People’s Party?”

  “They most certainly do,” he snapped.

  “Why has not this been pointed out before? Why has no one shown the vital link between modern politics in Africa and the religious nature of tribal life?”

  “Westerners who approach tribal life always pick out those manifestations which most resemble their own culture and ignore the rest,” he said. “That which they recognize as Western, they call progress.”

  “What is the significance of the oath-taking and libation pouring at Convention People’s Party’s rallies?”

  “It’s to bind the masses to the party,” he said. “Tribal life is religious through and through. An oath is a great thing to an African. An oath links him with the past, allies him with his ancestors. That’s the deepest form of loyalty that the tribal man knows. The libation pouring means the same thing. Now, these things, when employed at a political meeting, insure, with rough authority, that the masses will follow and accept the leadership. That is what so-called mass parties need…. The leaders of the Convention People’s Party use tribal methods to enforce their ends.”