Amiable with Big Teeth

by Claude McKay

  Shrewd evaluators of personalities, the Marxists found Newton Castle malleable material, a type of intellectual that could be dominated and disciplined and who once converted would remain faithful to their cause. And Newton Castle was emotionally ripe and ready to have the Marxists take up the burden that his sister had carried.

  His first year among the radicals was one of disciplined study of Marxism as interpreted by the Leninist-Stalinist school. The word “Communist” was still generally unpopular in America; besides, one might be politically and socially penalized for being a Communist. To distinguish themselves from the Socialists, Social-Democrats, Trotskyites and other innumerable fractional groups who adhered to the Marxist-Proletarian-Dialectical interpretation of History and Society, the Communists called themselves the Leninist-Stalinist Marxists.

  But in the beginning of the second year of Newton Castle’s apprenticeship, the Soviet Dictatorship in a worldwide maneuver launched its People’s Front movement against the weak undefended ramparts of the Democratic world. Intellectuals and intelligentsia as a group always regarded with contempt by the Marxists were now courted, fawned upon and given preferential treatment over the proletarians.

  And suddenly Newton Castle found himself pushed ahead as a Harlem leader. His surprise was immense, for when he first went over to the Marxists, he had thought that it would take him years to qualify as a Marxist proletarian. He had thought that he would have to show by exemplary living that he had divested himself of all snobbish accoutrements. He was an excitable speaker and splendid for the exciting ferment of the People’s Front, whose movement was a universal crusade against the all-destructive hydra-headed power of Fascism and Nazism.

  Castle was catapulted among the elite of those opposed to the Satanic threat to Christian Civilization: liberal politicians, philanthropists, scholars, ministers, diplomats, merchant princes and captains of industry, musicians, artists and writers—all conscripted in this vast movement of the world to combat the forces of evil.

  If his speeches were more rhetorical than substantial, if he merely parroted phrases about Marxist action and people’s power under the aegis of Soviet Dictatorship sweeping the death and destruction of Fascism from the world, he was nevertheless eloquent. And though he thought less of it than his white colleagues, he was a symbol of the non-civilized peoples of the world, even heathen Africa, joining hands with the civilized to save Christendom from destruction.

  But in his unbridled zeal for the people’s movement Newton Castle had precious little sentiment for the particular position of his own people. In fact he despised them. The great masses of his people ignorant, provincial and superstitious, they were nothing in his eyes in comparison with the illimitable spreading masses of the world. Black masses! He hated the phrase. He had only a religious conception of masses of the world all united, who were one without difference in the People’s Front like the hosts of angels in heaven.

  To him the Hands to Ethiopia was not interesting as one means of defending Ethiopia, but only as an organization that might be captured by the Marxists to help expand the gargantuanesque inflated maw of the Popular Front. His uncompromisingly fanatic attitude was disconcerting even to the cynical Maxim Tasan. Never had Tasan possessed so perfect an instrument for his purpose. Indeed Tasan sometimes regretted that Castle was not of another race than Aframerican, as he might have been of multiple services to him.

  Castle was such a zealot of Marxism that Tasan did not even find it necessary to conceal from him his contempt for the cause of Ethiopia. It was merely a sideshow, Tasan said. When he was ordered to give his attention to Aframerica, he felt as if he were taking a vacation. He remarked to a comrade that the Aframericans were merely “chicken feed.”

  Maxim Tasan surveyed the new field with the help of Newton Castle and other Aframerican friends. In Harlem he was noted at all the popular places, at the Savoy dancing palace, the Renaissance, the Witoka,4 the popular bars and restaurants. He was introduced as a guest in some of the Elks Clubs, met present and past Exalted Rulers, and paid for many rounds of drinks. He attended services at the most important churches—Methodist, Baptist, Episcopalian—and he ate at the Romanish orgiastic Banquet Board of the Harlem Deity, Father Divine.5 He could often be spotted in a crowd listening to a street corner orator. Thus he was a familiar figure in Aframerican public places in that early period of the People’s Front. And Maxim Tasan also attended secret meetings of which only the members could know.

  Naturally people were inquisitive about his origin and his purpose. Some said he was a Russian and agent of Stalin, others thought he was an agent of Trotsky and still others believed he was agent-at-large of the Communist International. An anti-Communist Indian Nationalist said that he had seen Tasan in Shanghai and that he had arrived in the United States by way of the Pacific. But thoughtful Aframericans would not give credence to the general gossip. If Maxim Tasan was such an important person, they reasoned, why should he be wasting his time among the comparatively insignificant Aframerican group? However, they became doubtful of their own judgment when it leaked out in the Aframerican press that Mr. and Mrs. Newton Castle had had the privilege of meeting the Soviet ambassador and his wife at a private reception, when the ambassador arrived in New York as the dinner guest of an organization of conservative businessmen. In spite of her husband’s proletarian mindedness, the fashionable streak in Delta Castle made it impossible for her to withstand the itch to let the item out.

  Yet to Harlem the item was no more than a week-end surprise. For despite its general aspect of a mass of people, like a great army of crabs all crawling on the same level, there are many unusual personalities in Harlem, like famous actors dropped into obscurity, who have rubbed shoulders with greatness. Apart from the high bohemian world, such as is represented by the list of guests at the Airplane, there was the more important domain of politics and government. There were individual Harlemites who had enjoyed handshakes with presidents of the United States and sat on the same platform with congressmen. Some had conversed with the ex-King of Spain, the ex-King of England and the late Queen of Romania. Others preferred to boast that they had shaken the hand of the President of the Soviet Union, and had listened to Lenin and talked to Trotsky and Zinoviev6 and even Stalin.

  And so the activity of Maxim Tasan in Harlem was not so strange a thing. There were others like him in Harlem: German exiles, Spanish, Arabs, Hindu, full-caste and Indian half-caste, and Japanese, besides a horde of Union Square comrades and friends.7

  Prompted by Maxim Tasan, Newton Castle had persuaded the Hands to Ethiopia Committee to have another mass meeting on Friday night to speed Lij Alamaya on his tour on Saturday. Castle said that many of the White Friends of Ethiopia desired to attend as a demonstration of their sincerity and solidarity with the cause of Ethiopia. The members of the Hands to Ethiopia agreed that a joint meeting with the White Friends of Ethiopia might create a favorable impression among Harlemites. Pablo Peixota pointed out that there was hardly time to promote a large meeting. It was too late to get a notice in the weekly newspapers. But Newton Castle said that he would use every means to publicize the meeting locally.

  That Friday night the meeting was held in the church of the Rev. Zebulon Trawl. As Pablo Peixota had feared, there was not a great crowd, but it was a fair gathering. The back pews and the balcony were empty, but there were enough people assembled to give warmth and cheer to the meeting. One unusual aspect was that about one-third of the audience was white.

  On the platform there were Lij Alamaya, Pablo Peixota, Newton Castle, Dorsey Flagg, Mrs. Leah Arzell, Elks Exalted Ruler William Headley, Rev. Zebulon Trawl and other members of the Executive Committee of the Hands to Ethiopia. Also Professor A. Banner Makepeace and four other white men of the White Friends of Ethiopia.

  The meeting started with Rev. Zebulon Trawl again praying for the triumph of Ethiopia and that God bless the tour of Lij Alamaya. And too he prayed that God shou
ld bless and enlighten the white friends who were also working to help save Ethiopia. “Give strength and wisdom to the white friends to confound and defeat the white enemies of black people,” he said.

  Pablo Peixota followed the Rev. Zebulon Trawl. He stated they had called an emergency meeting on the eve of Lij Alamaya’s tour, which was mainly for the White Friends of Ethiopia to make manifest their goodwill to the people of Harlem; the people could see, by the large number of white persons present, the sincerity of their purpose. He introduced Professor Makepeace.

  Professor Makepeace said that in joining the White Friends and working with the people of Harlem for the freedom of Ethiopia, he was merely heeding the call of his blood. An English ancestor was a pioneer agitator for the abolition of the African Slave Trade and his American grandfather was an ardent abolitionist. He said the Italian aggression against Ethiopia was but one step in a worldwide plan of the dictators to remake the world according to their will. And it was necessary that the colored people should see the Italian-Ethiopian campaign not merely as an isolated event, not as a struggle of black against white people, but as a struggle of the ruthless and reactionary white powers against the progressive white powers of the world. If the reactionary powers should win all colored and native peoples would be reduced to a greater slavery than the world has ever known. Professor Makepeace chose simple words and spoke objectively but eloquently and with such manifest sincerity he won the people’s hearts and they vigorously cheered him.

  Newton Castle was then asked to give a joint report of the parallel efforts of the Hands to Ethiopia and the White Friends of Ethiopia. And Newton Castle made it a very lengthy report. He reviewed the work of the Hands to Ethiopia group, telling of plans to send ambulance units to Ethiopia and efforts to enlist doctors and nurses, of various committees that were working along different lines to the same purpose. He named the important organizations which were participating and showed how certain elements were working among the colored masses and others among the intelligentsia. He stated that the plan of the work was his idea and he hoped when the time was ripe and opportune to combine all together in the People’s Front. He switched to the White Friends and described their work in raising funds and conducting propaganda for the cause of Ethiopia. He stressed their specially superior role in exerting their influence in the diplomatic spheres. He aptly pointed out that the White Friends could reach and influence certain powerful persons and governments which the Hands to Ethiopia could not. And then he launched forth in an appeal to unite the two organizations immediately so that they could combine their efforts instead of continuing along parallel lines.

  Dorsey Flagg interrupted Newton Castle, declaring that the issue of separate organizations was settled and asking Chairman Peixota to correct him. Newton Castle apologised but said that these were not times to adhere to punctilious points of order when the Fascists were making disorder and spreading terror everywhere among all the peoples of the world. And then he shot into a wild-eyed frenzy about Fascism: “Fascism is the enemy of all the world, of all the people of the world, the black people, the brown people, the white people. We, the people, all one and the same under the epidermis, the same veins, the same red blood. Against us are the anti-Soviet plotters, the imperialists, the colonial exploiters, the anti-democratic capitalists, the war-makers, the blood-letting investors, the anti-Semites, the anti-Marxists, the anti-Christ—

  “Fascism is the enemy. Fascism declared war on Ethiopia and all the people of the world. The machine and the mechanized units of hell are fighting against the people. There is no race and no color, no class and no nation in this hellish fight. It is all the people in one people’s front against the scourge of life. The Soviet Union calls the Democracies to war against the dictatorships and enemies of the people. The Soviet Union leads in the fight to defend Ethiopia and all the peoples of the world, regardless of race and color.

  “Only under the mighty Proletarian Dictatorship is Democracy real, a vital challenge of the people’s will to live and an expression of the Democratic hopes of the people of the world. Oh, let us defend the Soviet Union and thus save Ethiopia. Let us accept and exalt the leadership of Stalin, of the people, by the people and for the people of the world. Let there be no other leader before him! Let us organize our forces by the pattern of the Soviet Union with the sacred image of our great world leader Stalin in our hearts.

  “The triumvirate of the Fascists, Hitler, Mussolini and Trotsky, cannot triumph against him. And we will tolerate no Fascists in our midst deceiving and misleading the people. We cannot defend Ethiopia, we cannot save Ethiopia with Fascists in our organizations. For the Fascists are the fangs of the serpent and the claws of the dragon, the tiger, the hyena and wolf destroying the free life and security of the people—

  “I have been called to order. But there are those who make hypocritical pretense of order and law, while they are sewing the seeds of disorder and lawlessness. Such are the Fascists. I was called to order, but the issues of the life and death of this grand world in which we live—this wonderful world of the people, by the people and for the people—the defense of Ethiopia, the fate of Ethiopia—these issues are greater than points of order.

  “The Fascists started with Ethiopia first to demonstrate their strength, because the African people are weak. My friends, let us start now and here and organize to be strong. Let us rid ourselves of Fascists in our midst. Let us send the Ethiopian envoy, Lij Alamaya, on his tour with a man who is not a traitor to the people and of his people, with a man whose heart is pure and purged of Fascist ideologies.”

  Sternly pointing at Dorsey Flagg, Newton Castle said: “I accuse this man of being a Trotskyite Fascist and enemy of the Soviet Union and of Ethiopia. I say that he is unfit to tour the country with Lij Alamaya. I want you people to decide here and now in open meeting by a show of hands—decide against the man, vote him out of the Hands to Ethiopia organization—We, the People, and You, the People! Demonstrate your power against the Fascists as a unit of the Popular Front. Drive this black Fascist out of your organization—”

  “Stop that black fool of a white man!” shouted Professor Koazhy from the audience. He was not in uniform and had been sitting apparently unobserved in the seventh row. Now he attracted attention as he stood out in the aisle and his voice boomed impressively: “Stop him! Our people don’t want that nonsense! Stop him!” Other voices joined Koazhy’s: “Kick him off the platform!” “Throw him out!” “The crazy spade!” Pablo Peixota pulled at Castle’s coat from behind. But Castle bounded at Dorsey Flagg and cried: “This is the man to throw out, this Fascist!”

  Professor Koazhy rushed to the platform, followed by a number of young Aframerican stalwarts. Simultaneously, the whites in the audience started stamping and chanting in unison: “Throw the Fascist out! Throw the Fascist out! We want Castle! Throw the Fascist out!”

  “Yes, you want Castle, because he is speaking for your people, not for our people!” Koazhy shouted back. Dorsey Flagg threw off his coat and stood out conspicuously in his white shirt. Raising his hands he shook his fists and cried: “Come on, you! Come and throw me out! Throw me out of Harlem! It’s you I want and not your stooge, Castle. Come on, you Union Square soldiers!”8

  But the Union Squarites continued chanting: “Throw the Fascist out! We want Castle!” Chairman Peixota raised his hand, crying: “Quiet please, you’re breaking up the meeting, quiet!” But Newton Castle started prancing and shrilled: “Fascists! Fascists! Black Fascists!”

  A young man pushed him off the platform. He fell over to the parquet and was quickly surrounded by angry people. The church was in an uproar.

  Lij Alamaya stepped to the edge of the platform and held up his hand. The audience quieted down a little. Lij Alamaya spoke: “Friends all, American friends of Ethiopia, I appeal to you as the envoy of the Emperor of Ethiopia. Let us have order. Let’s not fight against each other here. My people are fighting desperately
against the overwhelming Fascist army in Ethiopia. The big fight is there. Let us have peace among ourselves, as workers carrying on behind the lines and serving those who are actually fighting.

  “I need not say that I am anti-Fascist—all Ethiopia is anti-Fascist, for we are fighting against Fascist Italy. I came to America to enlist your support in the fight against the Fascists. I did not come here to divide you people into Fascists and Communists. I don’t believe that such an issue here will help Ethiopia over there. There are no Fascists among the Ethiopians. And I don’t believe that there are any Fascists among the Aframericans.

  “The Ethiopians stand in need of your united help. If we are divided the Fascists who are united will win. Then let us all work together. The Executive Committee of the Hands to Ethiopia has made certain decisions. I have put myself at the disposal of that committee. I will abide by its decisions and cooperate to the best of my ability. I want my mission to the Aframericans to be a success, so that in the future you may more closely cooperate with your Ethiopian brothers. I am an envoy of the Emperor, but I am also a servant of the people. With your united help my mission will succeed, my service will be worthwhile.”

  Suddenly divesting himself of his coat, Lij Alamaya stepped across to where Dorsey Flagg, also coatless, stood and said: “I think Mr. Flagg is what you say—okay! I am sure he hates the Fascists like all the Ethiopians and all true friends of Ethiopia. The Hands to Ethiopia has elected Mr. Flagg to a responsible position and I have confidence in him. We will all work faithfully and unitedly together. God help Ethiopia, God bless America.”

  There were a few hesitant hisses among the whites, but they were immediately suppressed by the mighty applause, which broke like a thunder-clap. Despite the smallness of the audience, it was more spontaneous and prolonged than Lij Alamaya received at the previous mass meeting, when he was officially welcomed. Twice when the clamor was fading out Professor Koazhy boomed: “Hep, hep up Ethiopia! Long live Ethiopia!” And it started again, filling the church like a riotous picnic.