American Hunger

by Richard Wright

  “You know about Ross’s indictment?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know,” he said, looking off.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “To whom have you shown this material?”

  “I’ve shown it to no one yet.”

  What was the meaning of his questions? Naively I thought that he himself would make a good model for a biographical sketch.

  “I’d like to interview you next,” I said.

  “I’m not interested,” he snapped.

  His manner was so rough that I did not urge him. He called Ross into a rear room. I sat feeling that I was guilty of something. In a few minutes Ed Green returned, stared at me wordlessly, then marched out.

  “Who does he think he is?” I asked Ross.

  “He’s a member of the Central Committee,” Ross said.

  “But why does he act like that?”

  “Oh, he’s always like that,” Ross said uneasily.

  There was a long silence.

  “He’s wondering what you’re doing with this material,” Ross said finally.

  I looked at him. He, too, had been captured by suspicion. He was trying to hide the fear in his face.

  “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to,” I said.

  That seemed to soothe him for a moment. But the seed of doubt had already been planted. I felt dizzy. Was I mad? Or were these people mad?

  “You see, Dick,” Ross’s wife said, “Ross is under an indictment. Ed Green is the representative of the International Labor Defense for the South Side. It’s his duty to keep track of the people he’s trying to defend. He wanted to know if Ross has given you anything that could be used against him in court.”

  I was speechless.

  “What does he think I am?” I demanded. There was no answer.

  “You lost people!” I cried and banged my fist on the table.

  Ross was shaken and ashamed.

  “Aw, Ed Green’s just supercautious,” he mumbled.

  “Ross,” I asked, “do you trust me?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said uneasily.

  We two black men sat in the same room looking at each other in fear. Both of us were hungry. Both of us depended upon public charity to eat and for a place to sleep. Yet we had more doubt in our hearts of each other than of the men who had cast the mold of our lives.

  Self-consciously we went on with the work, but something was gone out of it. Did they think I was gathering material for the police? How could I make them understand what I was trying to do? I found that when I talked to them in abstract terms, my ideas were not understood. The irony of it was that I, who had all but to steal books to read, had been branded as an intellectual by the one group that claimed it was dedicated to educating the oppressed and informing them with a vision of life. I was doubted by those who shared more of my life than any others could possibly share of it.

  I could not doubt the sincerity of Ed Green. His was a long and militant record in the Communist party. Then why was he suspicious of me? And, if he doubted me, whom could he ever trust? If I was an intellectual, then what was a Negro doctor, lawyer, teacher? The thing just did not make sense. Yet there it was …

  Ed Green was afterwards killed in action while fighting for the Spanish Loyalists. He knew how to die better than he knew how to live. He was organically capable of only the most elementary reactions. His fear-haunted life made him suspicious of everything that did not look as he looked, that did not act as he acted, that did not talk as he talked, that did not feel as he felt. His existence both gladdened and frightened me. I was glad that he was militant, but I was frightened when I pondered upon what he could do with his militancy. The only people he could move to believe in him were those who shared his own world of fear, and all the world that lay beyond his terribly restricted vision was enemy ground.

  I wanted to make the lives of these men known through the images already accepted as the common coin of communication. I wanted to make them know that they had allies, that more people than they knew, and in ways they did not understand, were their friends, and that I was their friend. I wanted to voice the words in them that they could not say, to be a witness for their living. And they were wondering if I were in league with the police!

  I had embraced their aims with the freest impulse I had ever known. I, the chary cynic, the man who had felt that no idea on earth was worthy of self-sacrifice, had publicly identified myself with them, and now their suspicion of me hit me with a terrific impact, froze me within. I groped in the noon sun. What was I after? they wanted to know. And when I tried to explain, I always, it seemed, said the wrong things. There were no concrete charges that they could bring against me. They were simply afraid of that which was not familiar. They were more fearful of my ideas than they would have been had I held a gun on them; they could have taken the gun away from me and shot me with it, but they did not know what to do with ideas.

  I talked with white Communists about my experiences with black Communists, and I could not make them understand what I was talking about. White Communists had idealized all Negroes to the extent that they did not see the same Negroes I saw. And the more I tried to explain my ideas the more they, too, began to suspect that I was somehow dreadfully wrong. Words lost their usual meanings. Simple motives took on sinister colors. Attitudes underwent quick and startling transformations. Ideas turned into their opposites while you were talking to a person you thought you knew. I began to feel an emotional isolation that I had not known in the depths of the hate-ridden South.

  I continued to take notes on Ross’s life, but each successive morning found him more reticent. I pitied him and did not argue with him, for I knew that persuasion would not nullify his fears. Instead I sat and listened to him and his friends tell tales of southern Negro experience, noting them down in my mind, not daring to ask questions for fear they would become alarmed. In spite of their fears, I became quite drenched in the details of their lives. I gave up the idea of the biographical sketches and settled finally upon writing a series of short stories, using the material I had got from Ross and his friends, building upon it, inventing. I wove a tale of a group of black boys trespassing upon the property of a white man and the lynching that followed. The story was published in an anthology under the title of Big Boy Leaves Home, but its appearance came too late to influence the Communists who were questioning the use to which I was putting their lives.

  My fitful work assignments from the relief officials ceased and I looked for work that did not exist. I borrowed money to ride to and fro on the club’s business. I found a cramped attic for my mother and aunt and brother behind some railroad tracks. At last the relief authorities placed me in the South Side Boys’ Club and my wages were just enough to provide a deficient diet.

  Then political problems rose to plague me. Ross, whose life I had tried to write, was charged by the Communist party with “anti-leadership tendencies,” “class collaborationist attitudes,” and “ideological factionalism,” phrases so fanciful that I gaped when I heard them. And it was rumored that I, too, would face similar charges. It was known that I had visited Ross, had taken notes on his life, and it was believed that I had been politically influenced by him, though in what way was not stated. As before, the more I tried to explain the guiltier I seemed in the eyes of my comrades. I had taken part in the formation of none of the policies of the Communist party, had expressed no opinion regarding its leadership or work. But the rumors of my disaffection persisted.

  One night a group of black comrades came to my house and warned me against believing in Ross’s ideas. When I assured them that I did not share Ross’s views, they ordered me to stay away from him.

  “But why?” I demanded.

  “He’s an unhealthy element,” they said. “Can’t you accept a decision?”

  “Is this a decision of the Communist party?”

  “Yes,” they said.

  “I
f I were guilty of something, I’d feel bound to keep your decision,” I said. “But I’ve done nothing.”

  “Comrade, you don’t understand,” they said. “Members of the party do not violate the party’s decisions.”

  “But your decision does not apply to me,” I said. “I’ll be damned if I’ll act as if it does.”

  “Your attitude does not merit our trust,” they said.

  I was angry.

  “Look,” I exploded, rising and sweeping my arms at the bleak attic in which I lived, “what is it here that frightens you? You know where I work! You know what I earn! You know my friends! Now, what in God’s name is wrong?”

  They left with mirthless smiles which implied that I would soon know what was wrong.

  But there was relief from these shadowy political bouts. I found my work in the South Side Boys’ Club deeply engrossing. Each day black boys between the ages of eight and twenty-five came to swim, draw, and read. They were a wild and homeless lot, culturally lost, spiritually disinherited, candidates for the clinics, morgues, prisons, reformatories, and the electric chair of the state’s death house. For hours I listened to their talk of planes, women, guns, politics, and crime. Their figures of speech were as forceful and colorful as any ever used by English-speaking people. I kept pencil and paper in my pocket to jot down their word-rhythms and reactions. These boys did not fear people to the extent that every man looked like a spy. The Communists who doubted my motives did not know these boys, their twisted dreams, their all-too-clear destinies; and I doubted if I would ever be able to convey to them the tragedy I saw here.

  Wrestling with words gave me my moments of deepest meaning. The short story, Big Boy Leaves Home, had posed a question: What quality of will must a Negro possess to live and die with dignity in a country that denied his humanity? There took shape in my mind—as though an answer was trying to grope its way out of the depths of me—the tale of a flood, Down by the Riverside. I waded into it, feeling my way, trying to find the answer to my question. But it dissatisfied me when I had finished it; so, casting it aside, I tried to say the same thing in yet another way in Long Black Song. But that did not catch the quality of the experience I was looking for.

  Party duties broke into my efforts at expression. The club decided upon a conference of all the left-wing writers in the Middle West. I supported the idea and argued that the conference should deal with craft problems. My arguments were rejected. The conference, the club decided, would deal with political questions. I asked for a definition of what was expected from the writers, books or political activity. Both, was the answer. Write a few hours a day and march on the picket line the other hours. I pointed out that the main concern of a revolutionary artist was to produce revolutionary art, and that the future of the club was in doubt if a clear policy could not be found.

  The conference convened with a leading Communist attending as adviser. The question debated was: What did the Communist party expect from the club? The answer of the Communist leader ran from organizing to writing novels. I argued that either a man organized or he wrote novels. The party leader said that both must be done. The attitude of the party leader prevailed and Left Front, for which I had worked so long, was voted out of existence.

  The party leader demanded that writers be assigned the task of producing pamphlets for the use of trade unions. I contended that it would be a mistake for the Communist party to persuade writers to abandon imaginative work to write pamphlets. I explained the advantages that could be derived from the long-term artistic products of the club’s writers, and pointed out that these more durable products would outweigh all the pamphleteering. This, too, was rejected by vote. I then appealed for an organizational structure that would include provisions for artistic work of all types, hoping in this way to eliminate constant quarrels over tactics and strategy. But all my proposals were voted down.

  I knew now that the club was nearing its end, and I rose and stated my gloomy conclusions, recommending that the club dissolve. My “defeatism,” as it was called, brought upon my head the sharpest disapproval of the party leader. The conference ended with the passing of a multitude of resolutions dealing with China, India, Germany, Japan, and conditions afflicting various parts of the earth. But not one idea regarding writing had emerged.

  The ideas I had expounded at the conference were linked with the suspicions I had roused among the Negro Communists on the South Side, and the Communist party was now certain that it had a dangerous enemy in its midst. It was whispered that I was trying to lead a secret group in opposition to the party. I had learned that denial of accusations was useless. It was now painful to meet a Communist, for I did not know what his attitude would be.

  Following the conference, a national John Reed Club congress was called. It convened in the summer of 1934 with left-wing writers attending from all states. But, as the sessions got under way, there was a sense of looseness, bewilderment, and dissatisfaction among the writers, most of whom were young, eager, and on the verge of doing their best work. No one knew what was expected of him, and out of the congress came no unifying idea. Through conversations I learned that the members of the New York John Reed Club were in despair at the way in which the congress was drifting, but they took care to conceal their disapproval. This puzzled me, for I felt that the problem should be brought into the open for discussion. But I was glad to hear the New York Communists express honor at the brutal way in which the Chicago Communists made demands upon the Chicago John Reed Club membership. One astonished New York comrade declared:

  “A Chicago Communist is a walking terror!”

  As the congress drew to a close, I attended a caucus to plan the future of the clubs. Ten of us met in a Loop hotel room and, to my amazement, the leaders of the club’s national board confirmed my criticisms of the manner in which the clubs had been conducted. I was excited. Now, I thought, the clubs will be given a new lease on life. Writers would now be free to make their political contributions in the form of their creative work.

  Then I was stunned when I heard a nationally known Communist announce a decision to dissolve the clubs. Why? I asked. Because the clubs do not serve the new People’s Front policy, I was told. That can be remedied; the clubs can be made healthy and broad, I said. No; a bigger and better organization must be launched, one in which the leading writers of the nation could be included, they said. I was informed that the People’s Front policy was now the correct vision of life and that the clubs could no longer exist. I asked what was to become of the young writers whom the Communist party had implored to join the clubs and who were ineligible for the new group, and there was no answer. This thing is cold! I exclaimed to myself. To effect a swift change in policy, the Communist party was dumping one organization, scattering its members, then organizing a new scheme with entirely new people!

  I had sacrificed energy to recruit writers who subscribed to a revolutionary point of view, and now my feelings fought against the waste and meaninglessness to which my efforts were being reduced. This was the first time I had sat with a Communist policymaking body; I had had the illusion that each man would have his say and, out of the facts presented, a decision would be made. I was naïve. I had merely been called in to give my approval to a decision previously made. It angered me.

  I found myself arguing alone against the majority opinion and then I made still another amazing discovery. I saw that even those who agreed with me would not support me. At that meeting I learned that when a man was informed of the wish of the party he submitted, even though he knew with all the strength of his brain that the wish was not a wise one, was one that would ultimately harm the party’s interests. I had heard Communists discuss discipline in the abstract, but when I saw it in its concrete form it tore my feelings.

  It was not courage that made me oppose the party. I simply did not know any better. It was inconceivable to me, though bred in the lap of southern hate, that a man could not have his say. I had spent a third of my life traveling
from the place of my birth to the North just to talk freely, to escape the pressure of fear. And now I was facing fear again, though I had no notion that I was slowly adding fagots to a flame that would soon blaze over my head with all the violence of the assault I had sustained when I had naïvely thought I could learn the optical trade in Mississippi.

  (The artist and the politician stand at opposite poles. The artist enhances life by his prolonged concentration upon it, while the politician emphasizes the impersonal aspect of life by his attempts to fit men into groups. The artist’s enhancement of life may emphasize, at certain times, those aspects that a politician can use. But the politician, at other times, eager to do good for man, may sneer at the artist because the art product cannot be used by him. Hence, the two groups of men, driving in the same direction, committed to the same vision, often find themselves locked in a struggle more desperate than either of them wanted, while their mutual enemies gape at the spectacle in amazement.

  (Why did not we writers leave the realm of politics and organize ourselves? We simply did not know how. We were hostile toward our environment and we did not know how other American writers had met such problems. Totally at odds with our culture, we wanted nothing less than to make anew; and, for our examples, we looked toward Russia, Germany, and France. Out of step with our times, it was but natural for us to respond to the Communist party, which said: “Your rebellion is right. Come with us and we will support your vision with militant action.”

  (Indeed, we felt that we were lucky. Why cower in towers of ivory and squeeze out private words when we had only to speak and millions listened? Our writing was translated into French, German, Russian, Chinese, Spanish, Japanese … Who had ever, in all human history, offered to young writers an audience so vast? True, our royalties were small or less than small, but that did not matter.

  (We wrote what we felt. Confronted with a picture of a revolutionary and changing world, there spilled out of our hearts our reaction to that world, our hope, our anger at oppression, our dreams of a new life; it spilled without coercion, without the pleading of anyone.)