Manchild in the Promised Land

by Claude Brown

  “You ever been out in them Jewish neighborhoods? In Long Island, in Brooklyn, in the Bronx, man, they don’t have a whole lot of bars and liquor stores. Hell no! They have their synagogues; they have their bakeries, their grocery stores, their delicatessens, and shit, but they don’t have a lot of bars and liquor stores. Man, those people aren’t that easily bullshitted. They know where it’s at. You know why? They know how to get that money; they know the value of money. They’re not going to be just going out here talking about ‘glory be to God.’ They know they got to get that money.

  “The black man is a lost man, and Muhammad is trying to show him the way. I’m telling you, Claude, if we’re going to make it, man, you’ve got to listen to the word of Muhammad. He’s the only one who seems to know. Do you know what he’s done? He has taken junkies, man, here off the street, taken them downtown and put them in suits, man. I mean, he’s dressed them up, given them jobs, and made carts who were strung out with long habits respectable people again. He’s given them a cause, man, to fight for. He’s taken the stigma off them.

  “That’s what’s got a lot of people around here strung out, man, and fucked up in their minds. They don’t know who they are. They think they’re Negroes; they think they’re lost. They ain’t got nobody to look up to but that white god. That’s hard to accept, man. Can you imagine being a Negro in a place where the only Supreme Being is a white god, and he’s in the white people’s corner, and the white people are fucking over you? You might as well kill yourself.

  “The junkies have to use drugs, man, to stand this life. I couldn’t do it myself, man, without using drugs. I don’t see how you do it. Everybody with a little bit of sensitivity would have to use something or else kill himself. I couldn’t accept being a Negro. I know I’m no damned Negro. That’s why I was going to jail and doing all that fucking up for a long time, because I thought I was a Negro in a white world ruled by a white god. Once I found out that I was a black man and that God was a black man, I can walk with anything now. I know I’m too powerful to be made a slave ever again. My mind is free. When you get freedom of the mind, nobody can fuck with you. Nobody can enslave anybody who’s got freedom of mind. All they can do is kill you.

  “Those white people can’t do anything to me now, man. The most they can do to me is kill me, but they can’t make me a slave any more. They can’t make me believe that it’s right to go and spend my money in the bars. They can’t make me believe that Jesus is white. They can’t make me believe that I should go to church and all that kind of shit and live to go to heaven. Uh-uh, man. My mind is free, and this is what freedom of mind means. Whatever you do, man, you do it black, because you know you’re a black man, and you know that God is black. When you got that knowledge of the power of blackness in this world, nobody and no force can fuck with you, because you’ve got the black god in your corner.”

  Floyd said, “Salaam aleichem, brother. Remember, Allah is black.”

  About six months later, I ran into Bulldog. I hadn’t seen him in about three or four years. He was as big as a house. He looked like he must have been boxing or wrestling professionally. He’d gotten huge since I’d last seen him.

  I said, “Bulldog. How you been?” I didn’t ask him where he’d been or anything like that, because I usually had a pretty good idea, by this time, where cats had been when I hadn’t seen them for a while. I was glad to see him. I grabbed his hand and shook it. I asked him if he wanted to go have a drink with me.

  He said that he couldn’t do that. He started off, “I just got out of jail, man.”

  I said, “Yeah ? That’s nice.” Since I was with someone who wasn’t accustomed to meeting people who’d just come out of jail, I tried to change the subject. I said, “Come on, let’s go in the bar.”

  Again he said, “No, man. I just got out of jail.”

  I said, “Yeah, well where were you?”

  He started telling me that he hit a cop one night, and they thought he was crazy and put him in Bellevue. Some attendants there started messing with him. He took on three or four of them, so they sent him to Materwann for about two years. He’d come out, and now he was a Muslim.

  I said, “Wow! It seems as though this Muslim thing is getting to everybody.”

  He started telling me about it. He said, “You know, man, I don’t eat no pork, and I don’t drink no more. That’s why I can’t go in the bar with you and have that drink.”

  “Yeah, okay, B.D. I can understand that. Do you want to go someplace and have a cup of coffee?”

  He said, “All right.”

  We had a cup of coffee, and he started telling me about how he had just come out of jail, all over again. Then it dawned on me that maybe they let Bulldog out a little too soon. He kept repeating, “I just got out of jail.” If you asked him something else, he’d say, “I’m a Muslim.” He had a beard, which he seemed real proud of. He kept pulling on it and stroking it as though it were something precious.

  After a while, he told me about his new name. He said, “You know, Pashif’s my real name now.”

  “Okay, Pashif.” I shook his hand and said, “Salaam aleichem.”

  “Oh! Are you a Muslim too, man?”

  “No, Brother Pashif, but I’ve heard a little about it. I’ve met a few people, and I know quite a few.”

  “Do you know Alley Bush?”

  I said, “Yeah, why?”

  “Alley Bush is a Muslim too.”

  “Oh, yeah? I haven’t seen him in a long time, and I wondered what happened to him.”

  “Yeah, he’s out here, and he’s a Muslim. As a matter of fact, he’s supposed to make a speech on 125th Street and Seventh Avenue tonight.”

  “Yeah ? I’ll have to come back and hear this. I’d like to see him.”

  I left Bulldog. I came back that night, because I wanted to see Alley Bush. There he was, speaking on his box. Knowing Alley Bush, I didn’t think he could ever be really involved in this thing. I thought he was just jiving about it.

  After he was finished, I went up to him and said, “Come on, man, let’s go down and have a beer or something.”

  He said, “No, man. I can’t do that, because … I could do it, but we’d have to go about three blocks away, because some of my brothers might see me.”

  We went and had a beer, and he started telling me about the white devils and all this kind of business. He started telling me about the great plans he had for getting up a colored army and starting a revolution. He said, “The country is ready, and what we need now is a revolution.”

  I thought, Damn, everybody seems to be going kind of crazy with this thing. Where is all this stuff coming from? So I asked Alley Bush if he had been in jail lately.

  “Yeah, I just got out about three months ago.”

  I asked him if that was where he became a brother. He said yes and that his name was Bashi now and that his father had been a Muslim. I knew his father hadn’t been a Muslim when I’d seen him. Alley Bush was a real great liar. He just couldn’t help lying. If you asked him the simplest thing, he just had this compulsion to lie.

  We sat there sipping, and he started asking me when I was going to forsake, this world of the white devils and go and join the black brothers “in our struggle for freedom of the mind and freedom in our own way of life and freedom in a land of our own where we can take our rightful place among the gods.”

  I was taking all this with a grain of salt. Occasionally I’d laugh, and he would get a little angry. He started raising his voice and almost screaming this stuff about the white devils and the great black man. This was funny, because Alley was a very light-skinned guy, and he’d always been aware of it.

  It seemed as though, under this new Muslim movement, everybody was becoming real black and becoming proud of it. Maybe this was a good thing. Maybe it was bringing all the shades together and making us realize that we’re all colored, regardless of complexion.

  It seemed to me that everybody who was coming out of jail was a Black
Muslim. While he was raving, I was thinking about this. I said, “Damn, Alley, what the hell is going on in the jails here? It seems that everybody who comes out is a Muslim.”

  He said, “Yeah, man. When you’re out here, you’re so involved in the way the white man has been teaching you to live and doing shit that he’s been brainwashing you to believe, you just can’t see where you’re going. You can’t do the things that you ought to do, you know? But there, when you’re in jail, man, you’ve got a lot of time to think about it. Then you can really see how this white man is fucking with you. The white cats in jail, man, they don’t have to take all the shit that we have to take. They get the better jobs, and they get everything. It’s just the black man, the black man, wherever he is, they’re gon try and fuck with him. Actually, if the black man wasn’t a god, he wouldn’t have lasted this long, all the shit he’s had to take in this country. Yeah, this is what it takes.

  “You know what we got to do here, Sonny? We got to take Harlem out of Goldberg’s pocket. You know Harlem is in Goldberg’s pocket?”

  “Yeah, Alley, that’s been said before.”

  He said, “That’s not my name. That’s the name that the white devils gave me, man. When you call me that, you remind me of the fact that I’ve been robbed of my heritage. It’s a painful thing, so I wish you wouldn’t call me that. I wish you’d call me by my Muslim name, my real name, my true and honest name, given to my black father in the black land by a black god, many, many centuries ago.”

  “Okay, Bashi. Pardon me.”

  “What we need here, Sonny, is a revolution. If all goes well with me, we’re going to have it here in this country before long. I’m trying to get a lot of militant black men who are ready to stop taking this shit. I’ve been in jail with them, and I know that these guys are ready for a revolution. They’re ready to die, because they know we ain’t got a chance in this world anyway, seeing as how the white men are running it.

  “But if we revolt now, even if most of us have to die, our sons and grandsons might have a chance in it. The only thing that’s going to get Harlem out of Goldberg’s pocket is that we take 125th Street and leave it all to the proprietors, but move the main thoroughfare to 145th Street. If all the Negroes would pool their money together and start purchasing all the real estate on 145th Street, in about two years time we could have it. We could have 145th Street being the main thoroughfare, and it would all be owned by black people

  “That’s power, and that’s why Goldberg’s got all the power now—because of money. They’ve got millions and millions of black dollars being spent right down here on 125th Street. That’s what you heard me holler about up there tonight. That’s what makes me so mad when I see it. And the niggers just keep going in there giving him more of their money, and he’s not giving them a damn thing, man. All he’s going to give them is some low-quality goods. Shit, it seems as though the nigger would have enough sense by now, man, to see that if he’s ever to get anything in this country, he’s going to have to start thinking for himself and start being a little selfish.

  “The time is now, man, to get together. You see me out here, Sonny, and you see all the other black brothers out here. We’ve forsaken this white world altogether. I couldn’t go downtown and work, man. I couldn’t stand to be around white people for one hour a day.

  “Do you really think you’re out of slavery? Then all you got to do is go down as far as Maryland, brother. Go in some of those restaurants down there and ask them for a cup of coffee. They’ll look at you like you’re a runaway slave or something. And they might treat you like one.

  “Man, we sit down here tonight, and we talk. I’m angry. With you, brother, I think you’re one of these complacent niggers out here who managed to get by and not have it bother them directly. So you figure you’re not out here. Yeah, I’ll bet you’re walking around here thinking you’re free. When the shit comes down on you, you’re going to be one of the angriest niggers out here on this street, man.

  “As a matter of fact, I’m gon watch you. I’m gon watch you, because you’ve been going through all this shit, and you been going through it almost anesthetized. I’m going to keep watching you, because I know, when the shit gets to you, it’s gon hit you real hard, real hard, because it’s all going to come down on you at once … everything that’s been piling up. You may not realize it, man, but you’re angry.

  “Sonny, every black man in this land is angry now, especially in Harlem. There’s no way for them not to be. You look around you, brother. You can’t get any money. You come up, a little boy, in this place. You go downtown to work. They want to treat you like you’re still a little boy. All the time when you’re growing up in this great New York City, man, your childhood is just filled with exploitation by those white devils out there. Everyplace you go, brother. You got to go to the white butcher shop; you got to go to the white grocery store. They’ve got colored barbershops. That’s all they let us have, Sonny. The only reason they let us have a colored barbershop is because those white devils don’t know nothin’ about cutting no colored hair. They don’t really know nothin’, man.

  “The people ain’t got no soul. I’m telling you, brother. They’re not even real. Yeah, I’m telling you, man. Those people are behind us. Colored people have got all the feelings, man. You see all these niggers running out here talking about they want some white girl. Damn, I don’t want me nothin’ but a nigger woman. I don’t see how anybody couldn’t want one, seeing as how they’re the only ones who’ve got any soul, man. You been around all these people with soul for so long. They’re into it with Allah. That’s right.

  “You come up all this time, Sonny, all your life in Harlem. And there is the white landlord, man, who your folks got to be worried about paying the rent to. There is the white grocer, who your moms got to be going down pleading with that mother-fucker to give her some credit so she could feed her kids. They got to be going and taking their stuff to the pawnshop to some damn white pawnbroker, who they got to beg for a few dollars, because he knows they’re up tight and need the money, and he’s gon try and take their shit for nothing at all.

  “They got to be going to a white fish market, that’s gon be gypping them. They got to go to the white butcher, who’s gon be selling them some old dried-up mother-fucking neck bones and pig tails and pig feet. They wouldn’t even think about selling that shit in any white neighborhood. They don’t even sell it for dogmeat in white neighborhoods. You go to the movies, the movies are owned by the white people. Everything here is white.

  “If you’re not mad, I feel sorry for you, Sonny, because you’re crazy, and you’re lost, man. So there, black man, you’ve got to be mad, brother.”

  “Alley, man, you can get mad about this shit, but if you can’t do anything about it, it’s gon fuck with your mind, you know? Unless you stop being mad because you realize you have to stop, for your own good.”

  “How the hell are you gon stop bein’ mad when you’ve got a foot up in your ass?”

  I said, “Look, man, if you’re going to live, you got to try and take the foot out of your ass. There’s some things, man, that anger doesn’t mean a damn thing to. You can get mad if you want to, but why bother if nobody’s going to pay any attention to you? Alley, the way I feel about it is that we—you, me, the cats we came up with, probably all the cats that were in jail with you—we were angry all our lives. That’s what that shit was all about. We were having our revolution. The revolution that you’re talking about, Alley, I’ve had it. I’ve had that revolution since I was six years old. And I fought it every day—in the streets of Harlem, in the streets of Brooklyn, in the streets of the Bronx and Lower Manhattan, all over—when I was there stealing, raising hell out there, playing hookey. I rebelled against school because the teachers were white. And I went downtown and robbed the stores because the store owners were white. I ran through the subways because the cats in the change booths were white.

  “I was rebelling every time I went to somepla
ce like the Children’s Center, like the Youth House, like Wiltwyck, like Warwick. I was rebelling, man. And all I met in there were other young, rebellious cats who couldn’t take it either.

  “But nobody was winning. That revolution was hopeless. The cats who had something on the ball and they could dig it in time, they stopped. They stopped. They didn’t stop being angry. They just stopped cutting their own throats, you know ? That kind of revolution was impossible. It was doomed to fail, right from the word go.

  “Now, look at it realistically, Alley. How the hell are you gonna come in here and say, ‘Look, white man, we’re living in your world, but I want you to let us have a revolution’? This is what it would amount to, because the black man’s just in no position to revolt against anything here. You know what that’s all about, Alley. You’ve been around; you’ve heard of this before. People have always been talking that shit, but nobody’s gotten up and started any revolution. In the old days, in the slave uprisings, these people were ready to die.”

  Alley said, “Wait a minute! Wait a minute, Sonny, I’m ready to die too, man. Shit, I don’t feel as though I’ve got any more now than the folks in slavery had. I don’t feel that their pain is any more than mine. Shit, why shouldn’t I be ready to die?”

  “Look, Alley, if you just want to die, why bother to go out there and do it in the name of freedom?”

  He said, “Man, because I want everybody to know that they’re not free. I want you to know; I want my sisters to know; I want my brothers to know; I want the whole generation to know that we’re not free.”

  “Alley, man, didn’t you find out anything when you were in jail? Didn’t you find out anything about the rebellion or the revolution and why we were losing all that time? Why all those cats in there lost?”