Black Power

by Richard Wright

  So, the voice that America rejected is finding a home at last, a home such as was never dreamed of.

  But our hope is steeped in a sense of sober tragedy. In the final pages of a book I wrote called 12 Million Black Voices, I tried to indicate the quality of that hope when I said:

  “We black folk, our history and our present being, are a mirror of all the manifold experiences of America. What we want, what we represent, what we endure, is what America is. If we black folk perish, America will perish. If America has forgotten her past, then let her look into the mirror of our consciousness and she will see the living past living in the present, for our memories go back, through our black folk of today, through the recollections of our black parents, and through tales of slavery told by our black grandparents, to the time when none of us, black or white, lived in this fertile land.

  “The differences between black folk and white folk are not blood or color, and the ties that bind us are deeper than those that separate us. The common road of hope which we have all traveled has brought us into a stronger kinship than any words, laws, or legal claims.

  “Look at us and know us and you will know yourselves, for we are you, looking back at you from the dark mirror of our lives!

  “What do we black folk want?

  “We want what others have, the right to share in the upward march of American life, the only life we remember or have ever known.

  “The Lords of the Land say: ‘We will not grant this!’

  “We answer: ‘We ask you to grant us nothing. We are winning our heritage though our toll in suffering is great!’

  “The Bosses of the Buildings say: ‘Your problem is beyond solution!’

  “We answer: ‘Our problem is being solved. We are crossing the line you dared us to cross, though we pay in the coin of death!’

  “The seasons of the plantation no longer dictate the lives of many of us; hundreds of thousands of us are moving into the sphere of conscious history.

  “We are with the new tide. We stand at the crossroads. We watch each new procession. The hot wires carry urgent appeals. Print compels us. Voices are speaking. Men are moving! And we shall be with them….”

  I am leaving off my interpretation of the literature of the American Negro at a point which antedates the present by some years. After World War II a list of new names and new themes entered the body of American Negro expression, but not enough time has elapsed for me to subject that new phase of expression to the same kind of analysis that I’ve used in the foregoing. Not enough perspective exists for me to feel the new trends. Yet the sheer absence of some of the old qualities is enough to allow one to draw some inferences. For example, in the work of Chester Himes, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Ann Petry, Frank Yerby, Gwendolyn Brooks, etc., one finds a sharp loss of lyricism, a drastic reduction of the racial content, a rise in preoccupation with urban themes and subject matter both in the novel and the poem. Why is this?

  Again I remind you that an understanding of Negro expression cannot be arrived at without a constant reference to the environment which cradles it. Directly after World War II, the United States and Soviet Russia emerged as the two dominant world powers. This meant a lessening of the influence of the ideology of Marxism in America and a frantic attempt on the part of white Americans to set their racial house somewhat in order in the face of world criticism. America’s assumption of world leadership brought her racial problem to the fore in the mind of the world and the resulting shame and self-consciousness on the part of white Americans have resulted in several dramatic alterations in the Negro’s relationship to the American scene. The recent decision of the United States Supreme Court to integrate the schools of America on a basis of racial equality is one, but by no means the chief, change that has come over the American outlook. Naturally this effort on the part of the American nation to assimilate the Negro has had its effect upon Negro literary expression.

  I’ve heard some people express the view that they do not like the new literary expression of the Negro as much as they admired the old. This is a sentimental approach. What I’ve discussed with you in this lecture certainly should have proved that the mode and pitch of Negro literary expression would alter as soon as the attitude of the nation toward the Negro changed.

  At the present moment there is no one dominant note in Negro literary expression. As the Negro merges into the main stream of American life, there might result actually a disappearance of Negro literature as such. If that happens, it will mean that those conditions of life that formerly defined what was “Negro” have ceased to exist, and it implies that Negroes are Negroes because they are treated as Negroes. Indeed, I’d say to you here who listen to my words that I could convert any of you into Negroes, in a psychological sense, in a period of six months. That is, I could, by subjecting you to certain restrictions, hatreds, hostilities, etc., make you express yourselves as the American Negro formerly did.

  One last thought…. As Negro literary expression changes, one feels that American liberal thought has sustained a loss. What, then, was the relation of Negro expression to liberal thought in the United States? The Negro was a kind of conscience to that body of liberal opinion. The liberals were ridden with a sense of guilt, and the Negro’s wailing served as something that enabled the liberal to define his relationship to the American scene. Today the relationship between liberals and Negroes is hard to define. Indeed, one feels that the liberals kind of resent the new trend of independence which the Negro exhibits. But this is inevitable; the Negro, as he learns to stand on his own feet and express himself not in purely racial, but human terms, will launch criticism upon his native land which made him feel a sense of estrangement that he never wanted. This new attitude could have a healthy effect upon the culture of the United States. At long last, maybe a merging of Negro expression with American expression will take place. As that process develops and continues, you may watch it, using the few concepts that I’ve discussed with you. In that case I feel that its human drama will have, perhaps, some meaning for you.

  If the expression of the American Negro should take a sharp turn toward strictly racial themes, then you will know by that token that we are suffering our old and ancient agonies at the hands of our white American neighbors. If, however, our expression broadens, assumes the common themes and burdens of literary expression which are the heritage of all men, then by that token you will know that a humane attitude prevails in America towards us. And a gain in humaneness in America is a gain in humaneness for us all. When that day comes, there will exist one more proof of the oneness of man, of the basic unity of human life on this earth.

  PART IV

  The Miracle of Nationalism in the African Gold Coast

  Time: The middle of the twentieth century.

  Place: The hot and lush high rain forest of British West Africa.

  Characters: Black students, black workers, black doctors, black judges, black knights of the British Empire, black merchants, black schoolteachers, black politicians, black mothers, black cooks, black intellectuals, detribalized and disinherited; and a white British colonial Governor, white merchants and businessmen, white British civil servants, white missionaries, white British army officers, and white CID men.

  I’ve commenced as though I were about to present a drama. But it’s not quite that. Yet, in a sense, what I’m about to relate is a phase of the prime, central and historical drama of the twentieth century, the most common and exciting drama that we know. All of us are caught up in its stupendous and complicated unfolding; all of us play some kind of role, passive or active, in it; and yet most of us are totally unaware that we do so.

  What I have to tell you shall be in the form of a story, a simple story. That is, the story is simple in outline, but its scope and meaning and content are extremely intricate. What makes this story even more involved than the telling of it is that, though it deals in the main with black people in the faraway depths of Africa’s fetid jungles, though it is about life
couched in a strange guise, though it’s about men Whose skin color and whose shape of nostrils and whose curl of hair and whose accents of speech and whose outlook upon life differ drastically and markedly from yours, this story involves you, you white men of Europe; it is, in an odd sense, your story—a tale of yourselves projected in a drama whose setting is fantastic and whose characters are draped in external aspects of life alien to you. As you watch this story unfold and roll toward its unexpected denouement, you will be observing actions whose motives are akin to yours, attitudes mainly derived from your assumptions, decisions whose resolutions partake of your will, and ideals whose emotional coloration reflect values that have long shone in the ardent hearts of Western man. Indeed, I’d go so far as to say that, had you been the personages in this drama, you would undoubtedly have acted more or less as these black men acted. In fact, I’m sure that, had it not been for your historical attitudes and deeds, and the historical attitudes and deeds of your fathers and your fathers’ fathers, this story would not have happened.

  One swelteringly hot night, in 1948, a group of six black men, each coming stealthily from his home and traveling by a separate, secret route, met at an agreed-upon spot in an African jungle. All six of these men were members of what was then called the United Gold Coast Convention, a nationalist organization composed almost exclusively of the black bourgeoisie, that is, black doctors, black merchants, black lawyers, black businessmen, etc., who resided in an area of British West Africa which Europeans had fondly christened, because of the fabulous booty in gold and slaves that it had yielded them, the “Gold Coast.”

  The avowed aim of that organization was self-government. Under the justification that it was allowing the Gold Coast people to prepare themselves for eventual nationhood, the British permitted this organization to exist more or less legally, though no one could really tell how long the organization would be tolerated or at what point it would or could be characterized by the British CID (Criminal Investigation Division of Scotland Yard) as Communistic or subversive.

  The six men meeting clandestinely in that jungle that night, though members of the organization, were in deep and passionate disagreement with that organization’s aims. They were ex-tribal men and they felt that that organization was too snobbish, too British in tone and outlook, too hedged about with property, educational, social, and class qualifications. In short, they felt that it was a kind of exclusive club. Though that organization’s membership consisted entirely of black men, these six blacks felt that it fostered values, attitudes, and standards alien and offensive to their hearts, that is, British values of extreme individualism, of invidious class and social distinctions, of divisive Anglo-Saxon manners that facilitated British tactics of divide and rule. They resented being told from the outside what was “good” for them; they felt outraged at the thought of someone above them monitoring the pace and pitch of their social, economic, and political progress. They wanted the right to choose what they felt they needed most and they were convinced that their wisdom was better for their people than the cold, dry, abstract notions of professors in British universities. These men knew that the Western world considered those aspects of the tribal life of their country that most resembled Western mores as “good” and those aspects that differed from Western mores as “bad.”

  Though these men wore Western clothes, they had not learned—and did not wish to learn—to look down in disfavor upon the naked, ignorant tribal masses that comprised their racial, cultural, and blood kin. They were of the conviction that the struggle to free their country from alien rule should involve the whole population—every man, woman, and child in it regardless of religious, family, or class loyalties—and not just the black, British-educated elite. These six black men were, therefore, as much opposed to the rich British blacks as they were to the rich British whites. They wanted freedom, their own flag flying over their ancestral homeland, the right to restore the ancient names of their land, their towns, their rivers. In short, they wanted the right to control their total destiny, and they wanted that right for more than just a few of their kind who had been hand-picked by Britishers actuated by racial, religious, and imperialistic motives. To be sure, these six blacks had read attentively their John Stuart Mill, their John Locke; but there was something in their hearts that made them detached from, and suspicious of, the preachments and postulates of those British prophets of freedom and democracy.

  So the gathering together that night of these six men in secret constituted an act of treason not only toward the British, but toward a decisive section of their own people, the best qualified and wisest of their own leaders. What did the six men want? They were striving for a total transformation and redemption of the situation in which they found themselves. They were politicians, these men, but their policies, because of the situation in which they found themselves and because of their peculiar outlook upon life, bordered upon the intensity of the religious.

  No record was kept of that meeting that night in that jungle, but, since I’ve talked to all of the men involved and feel I know them, I think I can paraphrase what they said. Will you allow me to state their case, using my memory and imagination to put words in their mouths?

  Black man number one: “I want no freedom based upon the assumptions of the British. Such a freedom simply means exchanging a set of white masters for a set of black masters. If I’m against British rule, then I’m against the rule of her stooges.”

  Black man number two: “All day and all night they talk to us about ‘sound and solid development, sound and solid education.’ All right. The British, in 104 years, provided an abortive sort of education for less than 10 per cent of our people; that is, less than 10 per cent of our population received an elementary and badly taught knowledge of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Now, if that British educational timetable were followed by the black bourgeois elite when it came to power, it would take one thousand years to make our society partially literate. I say to hell with John Stuart Mill and John Locke. Let’s make our own philosophy, based upon our own needs.

  “Who says that we black men must duplicate and ape the development of the white man? Aren’t we in the position of studying the white man’s mistakes, taking advantage of them, and making even faster progress than he made? To imitate the white man means that we are still slaves in our hearts. I say, let us be free; and freedom means mapping out our own road for ourselves, making our own mistakes and being responsible for them.”

  Black man number three: “Since more than 90 per cent of our people are illiterate, it cannot be said that Britain has any loyal masses in the Gold Coast. Why, then, is she here? She wants the bauxite, the gold, the timber, the manganese, the diamonds. I say, let’s so organize our people and so pool these raw materials that we can bargain them for what we need most from the outer world. Why in hell should white men come in here and take our raw materials at prices that they set, and then sell us imported European goods at prices that they determine?”

  Black man number four: “How are we going to organize our people? As the European Socialist organizers organized theirs? Or as the Russian Communists organized and trained their people for revolution? Obviously not. We have practically no industrial proletariat and, hence, Marxist ideology is, in the long run, of little or no interest to us. I say let us organize our people on the basis of a struggle for national freedom and of their being proud of their ancestor-worshiping traditions. Now, gentlemen, I realize that we do not believe in such mumbo jumbo, and all the childish rituals that such traditions imply. But we have no other basis upon which to make a call for unity. So we must say to our people: ‘Let’s heave out the British and save our culture and traditions.’ But we, we who have been educated in the West, know well that the moment we start organizing our people to defend and protect their ancient traditions, those traditions must of necessity begin to weaken, will be destroyed. And that is exactly what we want. So let us do two things at once: Organize the tribes and pit them in str
uggle against the British, and, in organizing our tribes to do that job, we launch them toward taking the first step toward a secular life, toward a new outlook.”

  Black man number five: “I agree. We are outsiders in our own land. So let us stand outside of the tribal life, in which we do not believe, and organize it. That means that, in order to go forward, we must go backward a step or two. We must all, from this night forward, doff our Western clothes and wear the clothes of our tribes. We must do this in order to win the confidence and allegiance of the masses. But we must go further than that; we must cut off the avenue of retreat to the past so that our people will never go back, can never go back. Though dressed in tribal clothes, we must always use the most modern methods in organizing. We are going to latch our tribal people directly onto the techniques of the twentieth century. We’re going to change our people!”

  Black man number six: “We need really fear no competition from outsiders, from potential rivals, such as Communists. During the last fifty years there has not come from Russia one volume dealing with the manner and techniques of organizing tribal men. So let us make our main slogan: SELF-GOVERNMENT NOW! In that way, no one can top our appeal to our people. One other thing. We must have unity. We must have an iron discipline. He who breaks the unity of our ranks will have to be tossed beyond the pale. The basis for that is already in our tribal life. It is not only a political party that we must organize; it is a brotherhood. We must share and share alike in all things. So tight must our unity be that no enemy can sneak into our ranks. The whole might of Britain cannot break a political unity based upon tribal brotherhood and cemented in blood loyalty.”