191“I spent half my time”: CH, “ A Night of New Roses,” Negro Story, December 1945–January 1946, 10.
193“there was no way out”: B. Moon, “The Race Novel,” 831.
193the word “fuck”: CH, manuscript of If He Hollers Let Him Go, p. 4, CHP-Y, box 7, folder 71.
193“ ‘I’m gonna have you’ ”: Ibid.
194rape of Mrs. Taylor: “Blueprint Fight to Nab Rapists of Negro Woman,” Chicago Defender, December 2, 1944, 5.
194“ ‘You can’t insult me’ ”: Chester Himes, manuscript of If He Hollers Let Him Go, pp. 209–10.
196“Her blonde hair”: CH, If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945; repr., New York: Thunder’s Mouth, 1986), 145, 146, 147.
197“so industrialized”: CH, “Make with a Shape,” Negro Story, August–September 1945, 4.
197“a tour of inspection”: “Calif. USO Worker Lauds Local Club,” Philadelphia Tribune, February 24, 1945, 14.
197“roughly in the middle”: CH to Vandi Haygood, March 15, 1945, CH-RF.
197“many social obligations”: “Chester Himes to Finish Second Novel in California,” Los Angeles Tribune, May 5, 1946, clipping in CH-FBI.
198“like Himes’ project much”: Vandi Haygood to Arna Bontemps, March 6, 1944, Arna Bontemps Papers, box 24, folder “Julius Rosenwald Fund, 1938–1949,” Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Library, Syracuse, New York.
198“a wild, drunken week”: QH, 135.
198“very put together”: Constance Webb, Not Without Love (Lebanon, N.H.: University Press of New England, 2003), 146.
198“meek mannered”: Michael Carter, “This Story Had to Be Told: Author of If He Hollers, in Exclusive Interview, Describes West Coast Shipyard Conditions,” Afro-American, January 5, 1946, 5.
198“very progressive”: Donald Bogle, Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams: The Story of Black Hollywood (New York: Ballantine, 2006), 318–19.
198“dancing between Whites”: Hedda Hopper, “Goldwyn Preparing Annapolis Feature: Out of Character,” Los Angeles Times, September 13, 1948, B6.
199“summoned” to Los Angeles: Arna Bontemps to Vandi Haygood, May 8, 1945, Arna Bontemps Papers, box 11, folder “Haygood, William C.”
199Lena Horne: Arna Bontemps to Langston Hughes, n.d. [before June 3, 1945], in Bontemps/Hughes Letters, 182.
199had been promised the Carver Award: Arna Bontemps to Jack Conroy, September 25, 1945, JC, box 3, folder 151.
199“Dr. Carver was”: MMH-DCDJ, 206.
199“I think he is too excited”: Arna Bontemps to Bucklin Moon, June 18, 1945, Arna Bontemps Papers, box 7, folder “Doubleday & Company Inc.”
200announced on June 9: “Doubleday, Doran Makes First George Washington Carver Award,” Publishers Weekly, June 9, 1945, 2287.
200“it seems a little grotesque”: Orville Prescott, “Books of the Times: Review of Mrs. Palmer’s Honey by Fannie Cook,” New York Times, February 8, 1946, 26.
200“One of the women executives”: CH to CVV, September 13, 1946. CH uses nearly the same wording in the novel The End of a Primitive: “Suddenly he thought of the woman editor who, upon reading the galley proofs of his first novel that had been submitted for a prize, said it made her sick, nauseated her” (p. 95) and in the autobiography The Quality of Hurt: “it was rejected because one of the women editors said it nauseated her” (77).
200Clara Claasen: “Doubleday, Doran Gave a Cocktail Party,” Publisher’s Weekly, November 3, 1945, 2051; Al Silverman, The Time of Their Lives (New York: St. Martin’s, 2008), 205.
201on July 19: CH to Dorothy Elvidge, July 19, 1945, CH-RF.
202telephoned Vandi Haygood: Vandi Haygood to Bucklin Moon, July 30, 1945, Julius Rosenwald Papers, box 436, folder 12, John Hope and Aurelia E. Franklin Library, Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee.
202vice president and the legal department: CH to CVV, September 13, 1946.
202“crazy cousins”: Mollie Moon to Henry Lee Moon, September 17, 1945, MHLM, box 1, folder “Correspondence.”
203died of a cerebral hemorrhage: Estelle B. Himes, Death Certificate #53275, ODH.
203cried hysterically: Johnson interview.
203on October 2: Fannie Wiggins, Death Certificate #57902, ODH.
203“a woman of iron will”: QH, 161.
204“a tough, controversial”: “Doubleday, Doran Books for a Big Autumn,” Publishers Weekly, September 22, 1945.
204“A Real Shocker!”: Advertisement, If He Hollers Let Him Go by Chester Himes, Publishers Weekly, September 29, 1945.
204a “surprised” Chester: CH to CVV, September 13, 1946.
204“remember me kindly”: Henry Lee Moon to Mollie Moon, October 22, 1945, MHLM, box 1, folder “Correspondence.”
205threw parties for white authors: “Doubleday, Doran Gave a Cocktail Party,” 2051; “Doubleday, Doran Gave a Party,” Publishers Weekly, March 3, 1945, 1016.
205“I don’t like it one bit”: Henry Lee Moon to Mollie Moon, October 31, 1945, MHLM, box 1, folder “Correspondence.”
205“a mixture of polemics”: Charles Poore, “Books of the Times: If He Hollers Let Him Go,” New York Times, November 1, 1945, 21.
205“amid the clinking”: Dan Burley, “Dan Burley’s Back Door Stuff: Modern Mose on Sugar Hill,” New York Amsterdam News, November 10, 1945, 14.
206“I consented to go”: CH to CVV, September 13, 1946.
206“nerve-wracking” tension: Henry Lee Moon to Mollie Moon, November 5, 1945, MHLM, box 1, folder “Correspondence.”
206“presenting a true picture”: Earl Conrad, “A Lady Laughs at Fate,” Chicago Defender, January 5, 1946, 9.
206“Chester Himes, author”: “George Washington Carver School: Meet the Author” [flyer], Countee Cullen—Harold Jackman Memorial Collection, box 2, folder 13, Atlanta University, Atlanta.
206“fan letter”: Ruth Seid to CH, November 15, 1945, RW, box 99, folder 1393.
207“very much excited”: Horace Cayton to Richard Wright, October 29, 1945, RW, box 95, folder 1255.
207“the paralyzing fear”: Horace Cayton, “ ‘If He Hollers’: Los Angeles Writer Has Produced Powerful Novel of American Life,” Pittsburgh Courier, November 3, 1945, 7.
207“the ticket-of-admission”: “Ohioan Joins Nation’s Top-Flight Novelists,” Cleveland Call and Post, December 1, 1945, 9A.
207“the calculated castration of prejudice”: Constance Curtis, “About Books and Authors: If He Hollers Let Him Go,” New York Amsterdam News, November 17, 1945, 23.
207“tells so accurately”: Roy Wilkins, “Book Reviews: ‘Blind Revolt: If He Hollers Let Him Go,’ ” The Crisis, November 1945, 362.
208“Jerky in pace”: Richard Wright, “Two Novels of the Crushing of Men, One White, One Black,” PM, November 25, 1945, M8.
208Wright received Chester: Richard Wright, December 14, 1945, “Diary 1945,” RW, box 113, folder 1812.
209“Nothing can hurt me”: Michel Fabre, “Interview with Chester Himes” [1963], in Conversations with Chester Himes, ed. Michel Fabre and Robert Skinner (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1995), 7.
209“The manner in which”: CH to Richard Wright, n.d. [December 1945], RW, box 99, folder 1393.
209“a wonderful time”: CH to Richard Wright, n.d. [December 25, 1945], ibid.
209Joseph Himes Jr. came to town: “Afro Visitors,” Afro-American, January 5, 1946, 12; CH to Richard and Ellen Wright, December 27, 1945, RW, box 99, folder 1393.
210according to Webb: Constance Webb Pearlstein to Lesley Himes, May 12, 1997, and December 1, 1998, LPH, box 1, folder 16.
210“used to pump frustration”: CH to Jo Sinclair, December 21, 1945, Jo Sinclair Papers, box 36, folder 14, Boston University, Boston.
210“blues school of writers”: Earl Conrad, “American Viewpoint: Blues School of Literature,” Chicago Defender, December 22, 1945, 11.
210“I developed a hatred”: Ibid.
211requested that the director: SAC Los Angeles, memorandum to F.B.I. Director, December 5,
1945, CH-FBI.
8. MONKEY AN’ THE LION
213“crazy racialist”: E. Franklin Frazier, Federal Bureau of Investigation File # 138-825, Section 4.
213“It is not a question”: E. Franklin Frazier, “Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City, by St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton,” Social Forces (March 1946): 362.
213He received $2000: CH to CVV, September 13, 1946, CVVP, box He–Hols, folder “Himes, Chester B. 1946–1947.”
213“limited opportunities”: Isaac Rosenfeld, “Best Intentions,” New Republic, December 31, 1945, 910.
213“the one clouded spot”: “Ohioan Joins Nation’s Top-Flight Novelists,” Cleveland Call and Post, December 1, 1945, 9A.
213“If he asked me”: CH, If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945; repr., New York: Thunder’s Mouth, 1986), 81.
213“contribution to American literature”: Walter White, “People, Politics and Places,” Chicago Defender, December 22, 1945, 13.
214“stout weapon”: Arthur P. Davis, “With a Grain of Salt: Rev. of If He Hollers Let Him Go,” Norfolk Journal and Guide, February 9, 1946, 6.
214“see the progress made”: Ruth Jett, review of If He Hollers Let Him Go, by Chester Himes, Congress View, December 1945, 8.
214“there is a hell of a lot”: Eugene Gordon, “Powerful Novel of Negro Life,” Daily Worker, December 30, 1945, 9.
214a time of “self-flagellation”: Alan Wald, Trinity of Passion: The Literary Left and the Anti-Fascist Crusade (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 72.
214to warn about “maneuvering”: CH to Richard Wright, n.d. [Monday], RW, box 99, folder 1393.
215Mrs. Palmer’s Honey is a book”: Advertisement for Mrs. Palmer’s Honey, Publishers Weekly, January 5, 1946, 1.
215“[Mrs. Palmer’s Honey] is a novel”: “From Where I Sit,” advertisement for Mrs. Palmer’s Honey, Saturday Review, February 9, 1946.
216“unreasonable” complaints: CH to William Targ, April 4, 1954, CHP-T, box 9, folder 12.
216“the veiled references”: CH to CVV, September 13, 1946.
216“black corner”: MMH-DCDJ, 187.
216“someone in the firm”: CH to William Targ, April 4, 1954.
216“I believe conclusively”: CH to Wright, n.d. [Monday].
217“treated us like stepchildren”: Arna Bontemps to Jack Conroy, September 25, 1945, JC, box 3, folder 151.
217“the only change I would consider”: CH, “Second Guesses for First Novelists: Chester B. Himes If He Hollers Let Him Go,” Saturday Review of Literature, February 26, 1946, 9.
217“New York Critics have never”: CH to William Targ, April 6, 1954, CHP-T, box 6, folder 1.
217“the bitter cries”: Walter White, “Negro Heroes in Fiction,” Chicago Defender, February 23, 1946, 15.
218sold 13,211 hardcovers: Robert A. Smith to CH, August 4, 1969, CHP-T, box 1, folder 8.
218gathered to “beat that boy”: CH to Wright, n.d. [Monday].
219“the important people to himself”: CH to JAW, October 31, 1962, in DCDJ, 24.
219“invariably taken for a coon”: Edward White, The Tastemaker: Carl Van Vechten and the Making of Modern America (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014), 48.
219“it is the only hope”: Ibid., 164.
220“the undisputed downtown authority”: Emily Bernard, Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten, 1925–1964 (New York: Knopf, 2001), xvii.
220“pompous” . . . “hysterical”: MMH-DCDJ, 188.
220his own series of photographs: CH to CVV, n.d. [March 22, 1946], CVVP, box He–Hols, folder “Himes, Chester B. 1946–1947.”
220“calm and serene”: CH to CVV, June 25, 1946, ibid.
220“The Boiling Point”: CH and Joseph Himes, “The Boiling Point,” Afro-American, March 9, 1946, 4.
220New York Public Library: “Books—Authors,” New York Times, March 16, 1946, 11.
221“citizens of the communist-dominated”: CH, “Negro Martyrs Are Needed,” The Crisis, May 1944, 159.
222“other Negroes own”: CH, “Journey Out of Fear,” Tomorrow, June 1949, 38.
222blamed the cuts to the book: CH to Richard Wright, May 7, 1946, RW, box 99, folder 1393.
223“chatted with us”: CH to CVV, September 13, 1946.
223“sit down to a table”: QH, 78.
223“brutal and vicious”: Ibid.
223“I hope to be following”: CH to CVV, May 12, 1946, CVVP, box He–Hols, folder “Himes Chester B. 1946–1947.”
223arriving on May 7: CH to Wright, May 7, 1946.
224“modern version of a sharecropper’s shanty”: Ibid.
224“I remember that summer”: QH, 93.
224“no publisher would”: Bucklin Moon, “Book Boom,” Negro Digest, April 1946, 79.
224“a better relationship”: CH to CVV, June 10, 1946, CVVP, box He–Hols, folder “Himes Chester B. 1946–1947.”
225“blemishes, marks, scars”: Ibid.
225reputedly sent him a long saga: CH to CVV, September 13, 1946.
225Doubleday agreed: CH to CVV, December 4, 1946, CVVP, box He–Hols, folder “Himes Chester B. 1946–1947.”
225“as it nears the end”: CH to CVV, July 19, 1946, ibid.
225“absolute exhaustion”: CH to CVV, August 12, 1946, ibid.
225his father’s costly operation: Statement of Charges, Mr. Joseph S. Himes, Cleveland Clinic Foundation, August 6, 1946, and January 25, 1947, CHP-T, box 5, folder 15.
226“Few things that ever happened”: CH to CVV, August 12, 1946.
226Chester airmailed: CH to CVV, August 30, 1946, CVVP, box He–Hols, folder “Himes, Chester B. 1946–1947.”
226“quick-tempered but charming”: CVV to CH, September 4, 1946, CHP-T, box 6, folder 11.
226“tremendous and powerful”: CH to CVV, September 4, 1946, CVVP, box He–Hols, folder “Himes, Chester B. 1946–1947.”
226“felt a sense of inferiority”: CH, Lonely Crusade (1947; repr., New York: Thunder’s Mouth, 1997), 294.
226“that beaten, whorish look”: Ibid., 7.
227she “hated” the novel: QH, 93.
227“I often wondered”: Ibid.
227They checked in: CH to CVV, October 14, 1946, CVVP, box He–Hols, folder “Himes, Chester B. 1946–1947.”
227“no great shakes as a success”: “Angry Author from Brooklyn,” Ebony, July 1946, 48.
227“too well-heeled”: QH, 96; Constance Webb, Not Without Love (Lebanon, N.H.: University Press of New England, 2003), 174.
227“finishing touches”: CH to Langston Hughes, October 28, 1946, LH, box 80, folder 1531.
228“become a free man”: C.S., “Report on LONELY CRUSADE by Chester Himes,” AAK.
228“raw and fiery”: M.R., “Second Report on A Lonely Crusade by Chester Himes,” AAK.
228“one of the most dramatic”: Mrs. Blanche Knopf, “Letters of Reference—Chester B. Himes,” p. 3, CH-RF.
228“southern liberals”: Bucklin Moon, “The Race Novel,” New Republic, November 16, 1946, 831.
229“travel abroad for a year”: CH to William C. Haygood, November 7, 1946, CH-RF.
229“the immediate influence”: Chester Himes, “Statement of Plan of Work” (1946), CH-RF.
229“the good food”: Ralph and Fanny Ellison to CH, February 11, 1972, CHP-T, box 3, folder 10.
229“Lenin’s Principles of Marxism”: CH to Ralph Ellison, November 12, 1946, RE, box 52, folder “Hi” miscellaneous.
230“certain general aspects”: Ralph Ellison, draft letter to Horace Cayton, n.d., RE, box 41, folder “Cayton, Horace”; Ralph Ellison, “Richard Wright’s Blues” (1945), in Shadow and Act (New York: Random House, 1964), 78; Lawrence Jackson, Ralph Ellison: Emergence of Genius (New York: Wiley, 2002), 342.
231“the certainty of a crushing fate”: Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, trans. Justin O’Brien (New York: Knopf, 1955), 54.
231“not by consolation”: Ellison, “Richard
Wright’s Blues,” 90.
231“learnedly and vehemently”: CH, Lonely Crusade, 61.
231“one of our best times”: Ralph and Fanny Ellison to CH, February 11, 1972.
232“Hope it didn’t”: Jean Himes to Fanny Ellison, December 12, 1946, RE, box 52, folder “Hi” miscellaneous.
232“I am intolerant”: CH to CVV, May 23, 1947, CVVP, box He–Hols, folder “Himes Chester B. 1946–1947.”
232“long and steadily”: CH to William C. Haygood, December 30, 1946, CH-RF.
232On December 21: “Jilted, He Shoots Girl, Kills Self: E. Side Businessman Dies of Self-Inflicted Wounds in Daylight Murder Attempt,” Cleveland Call and Post, December 21, 1946, 1A.
232“I want to go to Europe”: CH, “Statement of Plan of Work” (1946), p. 2, CH-RF.
232“I wish that I could have been more convincing”: CH to William C. Haygood, December 30, 1946.
232Chester resubmitted: “Himes, Chester: Manuscript Record,” AAK.
232“Himes has done everything”: C. S., “Report on Revision of Chester Himes’ LONELY CRUSADE,” AAK.
233“experiencing a sense of letdown”: CH to William C. Haygood, n.d. [c. February 2, 1947], CH-RF.
233“the circle of restraint”: CH to CVV, February 18, 1947, CVVP, box He–Hols, folder “Himes, Chester B. 1946–1947.”
233“Waldorf of Harlem”: “The Waldorf of Harlem,” Ebony, April 1946, 8.
233“secret understanding”: QH, 116.
234“No publisher is likely”: CVV to CH, February 19, 1947, CVVP, box He–Hols, folder “Himes, Chester B. 1946–1947.”
234“artistic flow of language”: CH to William C. Haygood, n.d. [c. February 2, 1947].
234small photography exhibit: Jean Himes to CVV, March 19, 1947, CVVP, box He–Hols, folder “Himes, Chester B. 1948–1951.”
234Blassingame requested a $2000 advance: Lurton Blassingame to Clinton Simpson, April 14, 1947, AAK.
235“We simply must get away”: CH to CVV, June 10, 1947, CVVP, box He–Hols, folder “Himes, Chester B. 1946–1947.”
235“riding out another”: Will Thomas [Bill Smith], The Seeking (New York: A. A. Wyn, 1953), 130.
236“I do not see a very”: Ibid.
236In Smith’s kitchen: Ibid., 191.
236“You know: give us”: CVV to Langston Hughes, May 9, 1947, in Bernard, Remember Me to Harlem, 245.
Chester B. Himes Page 58
