by Claude McKay
REV. TRAWL AIDS FASCIST AGENTS OF HITLER AND MUSSOLINI
WE PROTEST UNFAIR TREATMENT OF WHITE FRIENDS OF ETHIOPIA
WE PROTEST AGAINST THE FASCISTS IN THE CHURCH OF GOD
The pickets were led by Newton Castle bearing a large American flag. It was a considerable squad of them, about three-fourths white and the others colored. They marched in silence. On the other side of the street, there were many more whites. A curious crowd soon gathered to watch the parade and it was increased by many of the late churchgoers. It was whispered in the church what was taking place outside and the people began to desert the pews for the street.
The Rev. Trawl was astonished and upon making enquiries a deacon informed him of what was afoot. He stepped down from the pulpit and strode to the front of the church. He stood at the top of the high flight of steps for a brief moment and watched the pickets, reading the signs. His shining dark features wore a strange expression of bewilderment, and then they were saddened as he seemed to perceive what the demonstration meant.
The Rev. Zebulon fell on his knees and uplifting his hands he prayed like a wailing saxophone: “Oh, Lord, this is one hour of trial for thy people and the testing of thy humble servant. Lord, I have labored all these years to build this church for thy glory, so that thy faithful people may serve thee and sing thy praises and give thanks for thy goodness.
“Lord, I have tried to build a clean church for thy worship and otherwise make it serve my people. For thy poor black sheep need guidance, oh Lord, pushed aside in the back ways of the world, they need guidance to shuffle through the little alleyways. Oh, Lord, I have tried to do my duty in thy service.
“But the wicked are setting themselves up to be the righteous ones and keepers of the law. They have carried their baseness to the very portals of thy house, seeking to desecrate it and dishonor me. Lord, I have asked thee to guide my footsteps and lead me in all things. I have endeavored to walk by thy light only, invoking thy wisdom in my planning and thy approval of my actions. Thou seest and understandest all things deep into the heart of thy people. Lord, if I have not been a good shepherd to my flock, thou knowest. If I have sinned, thou art the one to admonish and chastise me.
“Lord, the white ones have swarmed up here like hornets and peckawoods to sting and peck at God’s black sheep. What have we done for the white people to invade us in this high reservation to frighten and stampede thy black sheep? Lord, I have tried to be a good Christian in the spirit and, in spite of the flesh, in my heart. I have labored in thy service to lead my flock to walk circumspectly in thy light.
“But, Lord, thy light is burning dim in this dark Harlem. Harlem is the stamping ground of false prophets. The racketeers of Satan are posing as angels to deceive your black sheep and lead them astray. The brazen black rams of the unblessed goats are creating havoc among the vain and weak and foolish ewes and lamblings. Some profess to know the secret of your holiness and omniscience and set themselves up as priests and priestesses, mingling your sacred words of eternal life with the honeyed jungle brew of Satan. And some even set themselves up as gods before thee.
“And now, Lord, even the white ones are worse than the black jugglers of Satan. For they are trying to fool God’s poor black sheep with the magic of their white fleece. They take the magic and the strength of their whiteness, which is like a fetish, to break down the confidence and hope of thy people. Lord, they are trying to turn the spirit of my people against the leadership of thy servant. Lord, I pray to thee for strength to stand up against them. Let them not desecrate this thy sanctuary. I have seen the picketing of business places, plants and factories and stores and offices and private houses by thy working folks, oh Lord. But I have never yet seen or even heard anywhere about the picketing of thy house, oh Lord. Is it because this is a place of worship for God’s humble black sheep? And my Lord, these pickets are not even workers. None of them wearing overalls, they are all wearing silk stockings and nifty clothes. Hear my prayer, oh Lord, and show me the way to defeat the machinations of the strong white ones against thy poor black sheep.”
Meantime Professor Koazhy, Sufi Abdul Hamid and Pablo Peixota were circulating among the large crowd, which rapidly filled the block. And they observed the contemptuous regard of the white friends of the pickets and heard some of their comments: “The oily-tongued old black hypocrite!” “We will show him what it means to dare to fight against the Soviet line of action.” “The preaching son of a bastard, he ought to be gagged.”
Professor Koazhy whispered to Sufi Abdul Hamid. Then he clapped his hands and boomed, “Senegambians! Senegambians!” And Sufi Abdul Hamid shouted, “Any Sufists in the crowd, step forward!” Quickly appeared a number of Professor Koazhy’s students, and the bodyguards of Sufi Abdul Hamid surrounded him. “Seize that flag,” Professor Koazhy commanded, “and stop that damned demonstration.”
A broad-busted hefty Senegambian approached Newton Castle and with one grab he wrenched the flag from him and bore it into the church. “A splendid trophy!” cried Professor Koazhy. Other Sufists and Senegambians elbowed their way through the crowd and in among the pickets. They quietly edged each one from off the pavement into the street. They formed a solid line before the church in which they were joined by young members, who were aroused from their astonishment to a vague understanding of the shame of the disorder.
Pulling from his pocket a large red handkerchief, stamped with a white hammer and sickle, Newton Castle waved it from the iron railing across the street from the church upon which he had perched himself. “Comrades,” he cried, “down with the Fascists in Harlem! Destroy the Fascist snakes in your midst! Drive them out of Harlem. Make Harlem safe for Soviet Russia, the defender of the World Proletariat and all oppressed people. Many Harlem preachers are Fascist-minded! Drive the Fascists out of the church and organize—”
A Senegambian pulled him down. He was so small and funny, like a rabbit, that no one wanted to hurt him. But his voice was as noisy and shrill as a bagpipe as he yelled: “Leave me alone! I’m an American citizen! I demand the right of free speech!” And he waved the red face cloth.
Three Senegambians seized him kicking and scratching and hustled him into the dim corridor of a tenement and down to the basement. There they gagged Newton Castle and would have tethered him. But there was no cord. Instead they divested Castle of his suit, which they carried off, leaving him shivering in his underwear. “I guess that will hold you a little while,” said one Senegambian, as they mounted the basement steps.
While Newton was performing his antics on the railing, Pablo Peixota saw a man half hidden behind a barbershop sign and watching the exhibition. Peixota felt certain that the man was Maxim Tasan. He whispered to a Sufist to go after him. But before the Sufist could reach him the wily fellow had disappeared in the crowd.
The Rev. Zebulon Trawl had returned to the platform, when the Senegambian entered triumphantly with the Stars and Stripes, which he had wrested from Newton Castle and poised against the platform. But someone had turned in a riot call. The congregation was streaming back into the church, when a police patrol came furiously clanging into the block and three police cars with sirens screaming. The pickets and their friends had already disappeared. But some of the considerably diminished crowd remained, gossipping with the policemen, while an officer entered the church.
The Rev. Zebulon Trawl had started the service. Fondling the trophy he said: “Oh, Lord, I knew that my prayer would not be in vain. I knew that the Lord would come to the rescue.”
11
THE EMPEROR’S STATEMENT
It fell upon the Hands to Ethiopia organization like a mighty cloudburst, when the news was published that the Emperor of Ethiopia had declared that Ethiopia was not a “Negro” state, that he was the Lion of Judah and descendant of King Solomon and that the Ethiopians did not consider themselves kin to the Aframericans. Further, the declaration stated that the Emperor had sent no special
envoys to the Aframericans.
The news article bore the trademark of one of the reputable news-gathering agencies. It was conspicuously printed in the national newspapers, some giving it the front page. Under the heading “Ethiopian Emperor Repudiates Self-Styled Representative,” the Labor Herald carried the photographs of Emperor Haile Selassie and Lij Tekla Alamaya looking at each other from opposite columns.
Prominent Aframerican weeklies retailed the news under flamboyant headlines of red, black and green. The influential conservative organs had never enthusiastically publicized the Hands to Ethiopia movement. And now their comments were biting in their criticism, not only of the Emperor’s attitude, but of those Aframerican leaders who were turning the thoughts of the people to native African problems instead of concentrating upon vital Aframerican issues. Now they nursed their hurt pride and retaliated by publishing pictures of the Ethiopian types, depicting them as backward, barbarous and unprogressive, compared to the Aframericans. Some of these pictures, evidently originating from Fascist sources, were so particularly offensive, they could not have appeared in any national newspaper. The Emperor Haile Selassie and his spokesmen were compared to the “brass-ankles” of the United States and the West Indies—those equivocal near-white types who had no roots either among the Euramericans or the Aframericans.
Lij Tekla Alamaya was trounced as a fake representative, a swindler and parasite upon gullible colored people who were enamored of tinsel and title. They published the rumors that had floated about him, saying that he had lived all of his adult life in Europe, he was not an authentic Ethiopian, that he was fair of countenance because his father was a Levantine1 (some said a Greek) who had married an Ethiopian woman. He was depicted as a sybarite2 in his private life, enjoying a dandy’s bohemian existence in a hotel downtown and posing as a prince in Harlem with the arms of Ethiopia engraved upon his car and the door of his reception room.
The Executive Committee of the Hands to Ethiopia decided to act quickly to save their movement from complete disintegration. Pablo Peixota sent a telegram recalling Lij Alamaya from his western tour. His chief idea was to try to establish the authenticity of Alamaya by releasing to the newspapers the imperial letter, with the Emperor’s signature and the Ethiopian seal, accompanied by an authoritative statement from Alamaya. In the telegram Peixota cautioned Alamaya not to make any public statement or discuss the matter before seeing him. Also, Peixota sent a telegram to Dorsey Flagg asking him to protect Alamaya and prevent him from talking to any reporters.
There was no way of proving that the Emperor’s declaration was authentic by communicating with him, for the Emperor was with his troops at the front and communication between Addis Ababa and the outside world had broken down. Even the radio station could not be operated.
Pablo Peixota believed that the Emperor’s declaration was fabricated to torpedo the Hands to Ethiopia. He was already quite convinced that the White Friends of Ethiopia organization was no friend of the Aframericans or the Ethiopians, but that they were the friends of Soviet Russia. He felt that the real object of the White Friends was to create sentiment among the colored people in favor of Soviet Russia.
But he was puzzled by the situation. He saw what the White Friends, using Newton Castle as their instrument, were aiming at—the control of his organization. But he could not understand why they should seek such control, why they should be expending so much energy and subterfuge to obtain their ends. For he could not see the colored group as an effective asset in furthering the policy of Soviet Russia. If it were to win the colored people over to the Communist Party, their tactics were absurd, he thought, for political converts are not made by that type of propaganda.
Peixota’s mind did not go beyond the horizon of the traditional method of playing politics. Alien to it and incomprehensible was power politics as a religious ecstasy gripping and sweeping people off their feet to imagine that they could find social salvation in a pharisaism such as: “Soviet Russia is a Workers’ State.”
To him social feeling was an apprehension purely apart from religious emotion. When he availed himself of the channel of the church to promote the Hands to Ethiopia, it was not because he felt that Aframericans were good Christians, but because the church was a social center and perfect rallying point. In the same manner he found the church useful for Democratic rallies. But intellectually he could not combine the sentiment of religion with the aptitude for politics. His conception of politics was something like the numbers game, which had elevated him to his position of responsibility and which, although played in the home, he had managed to keep so severely separate from his respectable family life.
Thus lacking in the imaginative perceptions of social idealism and its international reverberations, Pablo Peixota was psychologically incapable of plumbing the well-spring of Newton Castle’s wild antics or to grasp a hint of the vast web of thought and action of which Maxim Tasan’s penetrating into Harlem was but one little spider’s spin. But of one thing he was concretely aware: Maxim Tasan and his White Friends of Ethiopia desired to destroy the Aframerican Hands to Ethiopia.
Less than a week from their departure, Lij Alamaya and Dorsey Flagg returned to New York. They were met at the Grand Central Station by Pablo Peixota, accompanied by the Rev. Zebulon Trawl and driven to his home. No other committee member was present. Peixota wanted to discuss with Lij Alamaya alone the crisis caused by the Emperor’s declaration and agree with him upon a definite plan of action. As the new secretary of the organization and traveling companion of Lij Alamaya, Flagg’s presence was necessary. Peixota himself was not adept at making notes. Also he relied on the good counsel of the Rev. Trawl. He had already called an emergency meeting of the twenty-four members of the Executive Committee of the Hands to Ethiopia, immediately following the Emperor’s alleged blast. And they endorsed his recalling Lij Alamaya to New York in an effort to resolve the crisis.
Dorsey Flagg doubted that the Ethiopian Emperor would choose such a moment deliberately to offend the Aframerican people. He was emphatic in his belief that the thing was a hoax engineered by Newton Castle and Maxim Tasan with the help of powerfully influential persons. He said bluntly: “It is a Comintern plot.” Peixota did not know what “Comintern” stood for and Flagg told him that it meant the Communist International. Even then Peixota did not grasp its full meaning. Communist was similar to Socialist in his mind. He understood more when Flagg explained the difference between the Communists and the Socialists, but he did not understand in Flagg’s intellectual way. He could, however, apprehend the fact of Communism as the political system of the Soviet State, but not as a doctrine any more than he could understand a doctrine of Democracy.
Lij Alamaya was partial to Dorsey Flagg’s opinion. He said that Maxim Tasan was an extremely clever man, who he considered far more important than he appeared to be. He said he regretted being drawn into a conflict with him, but developments had made that inevitable. Dorsey Flagg told Alamaya not to regret anything, for the only effective way of dealing with persons like Maxim Tasan was by fighting them. But Alamaya was not as forthright and positive of attitude as Flagg. He said that sometimes it was the better policy not to be too aggressive, that an individual might do better to compromise where the larger interests of people were at stake. There was no doubt that Alamaya was genuinely sorry that he had taken a course that had turned Maxim Tasan into an enemy. And again Peixota wondered if there had been some previous secret dealing between Lij Alamaya and Maxim Tasan. But looking searchingly at Alamaya’s gentle and sincere face he felt ashamed of the thought.
Peixota said that had he felt convinced about the Emperor making such a statement, he would wash his hands of the organization. But he would not believe that Haile Selassie could be so discourteous to Aframericans. Alamaya said that even if the Emperor had said anything, he believed that the newspaper item was an exaggeration. He continued to explain why Ethiopia considered itself an African and not a “
Negro” state and said that “Abyssinian” was also objectionable and never used. And just as many thousands of Aframericans considered “Negro” an offensive word and even banned it in conversation and in print, so the Ethiopians preferred to be designated by their ancient original name, “Ethiopian.”
The others were in agreement with Lij Alamaya. Dorsey Flagg said that Koazhy was not just a fool eccentric, when he took an African name and declared that Aframericans and Africans should abolish the word “Negro” because it did not originate among the Africans, but was of European creation. He pointed out that other peoples and countries had changed names, Ireland to Eire, Persians to Iranians. The largest circulating New York daily newspaper never used the word “Negro” but “colored” instead, and it looked better in print than “Negro,” sometimes with a large and sometimes with a small “N,” which was favored by the other newspapers. It was awkward to see a newspaper print, “Mrs. Ada Jones, Negro.” Such a rule was not followed in printing the names of Spanish, Italian, Jewish, or Mongolian people. He, Flagg, was not partial to “colored”; he preferred “Aframerican.” The Rev. Zebulon Trawl suggested that the Aframerican churches should call a national conference and decide upon a name. Dorsey Flagg questioned whether the churches were representative enough to deal with such a matter and thought the Aframerican colleges more suitable. Pablo Peixota thought both churches and colleges might work together, but he considered the first more important, as most names had a religious origin and churches played a primary part in the naming of people.
Peixota submitted his plan of releasing to the press the Emperor’s letter to Lij Alamaya. He suggested that they should work upon a statement from Alamaya to go with it in which he should make a declaration of the real attitude of the Ethiopians towards the Aframericans. And he thought it would be a good idea to get together those Aframericans who had returned from Ethiopia to publish a signed statement. Dorsey Flagg and the Rev. Trawl agreed with the outline of the plan. But Lij Alamaya remained ominously silent.
