American Hunger

by Richard Wright

  Before the congress adjourned, it was decided that another congress of American writers would be called in New York the following summer, 1935. I was lukewarm to the proposal and tried to make up my mind to stand alone, write alone. I was already afraid that the stories I had written would not fit into the new, official mood. Must I discard my plot-ideas and seek new ones? No. I could not. My writing was my way of seeing, my way of living, my way of feeling; and who could change his sight, his notion of direction, his senses?

  My relationship with Communists reached a static phase. I shunned them and they shunned me. Buddy Nealson, a member of the Communist International, had arrived in Chicago to assume charge of Negro work. This man, it was rumored, was the party’s theoretician on the Negro Question, and word reached me that he had launched a campaign to rid the Communist party of all its “Negro Trotskyite elements.” Of all the Negro Communists I knew, I tried to determine who could be called Trotskyite, and I could think of none. None of the black Communists I knew possessed the intellectual capacity to formulate a Trotskyite position in politics. Most of them were illiterate migrants from southern plantations and they had never been vitally interested in politics until they had entered the Communist party. Nevertheless, the drive against Negro Trotskyism went on, though I was too remote from it to know what was happening.

  The spring of 1935 came and the plans for the writers’ congress went on apace. For some obscure reason—it might have been to “save” me—I was urged by the local Communists to attend and I was named as a delegate. I got time off from my job at the South Side Boys’ Club and, along with several other delegates, hitchhiked to New York.

  Long used to the flat western prairie, I was startled by my first view of New York. We came in along the Hudson River and I stared at the sweep of clean-kept homes and grounds. But where was the smoke pall? The soot? Grain elevators? Factories? Stack-pipes? The flashes of steam on the horizon? The people on the sidewalks seemed better dressed than the people of Chicago. Their eyes were bold and impersonal. They walked with a quicker stride and seemed intent upon reaching some destination in a great hurry.

  We arrived in the early evening and registered for the congress sessions. The opening mass meeting was being held at Carnegie Hall. I asked about housing accommodations and the New York John Reed Club members, all white members of the Communist party, looked embarrassed. I waited while one white Communist called another white Communist to one side and discussed what could be done to get me, a black Chicago Communist, housed. During the trip I had not thought of myself as a Negro; I had been mulling over the problems of the young left-wing writers I knew. Now, as I stood watching one white comrade talk frantically to another about the color of my skin, I felt disgusted. The white comrade returned.

  “Just a moment, comrade,” he said to me. “I’ll get a place for you.”

  “But haven’t you places already?” I asked. “Matters of this sort are ironed out in advance.”

  “Yes,” he admitted in an intimate tone. “We have some addresses here, but we don’t know the people. You understand?”

  “Yes, I understand,” I said, gritting my teeth.

  “But just wait a second,” he said, touching my arm to reassure me. “I’ll find something.”

  “Listen, don’t bother,” I said, trying to keep anger out of my voice.

  “Oh, no,” he said, shaking his head determinedly. “This is a problem and I’ll solve it.”

  “It oughtn’t to be a problem,” I could not help saying.

  “Oh, I didn’t mean that,” he caught himself quickly.

  Goddamn, I cursed under my breath. Several people standing near-by observed the white Communist trying to find a black Communist a place to sleep. I burned with shame. A few minutes later the white Communist returned, frantic-eyed, sweating.

  “Did you find anything?” I asked.

  “No, not yet,” he said, panting. “Just a moment. I’m going to call somebody I know. Say, give me a nickel for the phone.”

  “Forget it,” I said. My legs felt like water. “I’ll find a place. But I’d like to put my suitcase somewhere until after the meeting tonight.”

  “Do you really think you can find a place?” he asked, trying to keep a note of desperate hope out of his voice.

  “Of course, I can,” I said.

  He was still uncertain. He wanted to help me, but he did not know how. He locked my bag in a closet and I stepped to the sidewalk wondering where Harlem was, wondering where I would sleep that night. Before I had left Chicago I had thought of a thousand arguments to present for the retention of the John Reed Clubs, but now the retention of those clubs did not seem important. I stood on the sidewalks of New York with a black skin, practically no money, and I was not absorbed with the burning questions of the left-wing literary movement in the United States, but with the problem of how to get a bath. I presented my credentials at Carnegie Hall. The building was jammed with people. As I listened to the militant speeches, I found myself wondering why in hell I had come.

  I went to the sidewalk and stood studying the faces of the people. The white Communist who had been scouting for a room in which I could sleep ran up to me.

  “Did you find a place yet?”

  “No,” I answered.

  “Well, here’s a name and address,” he said proudly. “Go there and they’ll put you up for tonight.”

  “Thanks,” I said, glad to have a place to flop.

  When the meeting ended, I retrieved my bag from the club, and found the address in a dark alley of Greenwich Village. I knocked at the door. A white man opened it, took one quick look at my face, then pushed the door almost shut again, as though in desperate defense of himself and his home.

  “What do you want?” the words spilled out of him.

  I asked for the person whose name was written on the slip of paper I had.

  “They aren’t here,” he said.

  “When will they return?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he spluttered, inching the door to.

  I walked away. How could I sleep in a home where the sight of my face struck fear into people? I returned to the club and saw a few of the white comrades standing about the sidewalk. I crossed to the opposite side of the street to avoid them. I approached a newsstand merchant. It was nearing three o’clock.

  “Where is Harlem?” I asked.

  He stared at me. I lost my temper.

  “For God’s sake!” I exploded. “I’m a stranger here. I’m asking you where Harlem is!” He blinked and pointed vaguely. “That way,” he said.

  His directions did not help me. I walked on. I met a Chicago club member.

  “Didn’t you find a place yet?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “I’d like to try one of the hotels, but, God, I’m in no mood to argue with a hotel clerk about my color.”

  “Oh, goddamn, wait a minute,” he said.

  I waited as he scooted off. He returned in a few moments with a big heavy white woman. He introduced us.

  “You can sleep in my place, tonight,” she said.

  I walked with her to her apartment and she introduced me to her husband. I thanked them for their hospitality and went to sleep on a cot in the kitchen. I got up at six, dressed, tapped on their door and bade them good-bye. I went to the sidewalk, sat on a bench, took out pencil and paper and tried to jot down notes for the argument I wanted to make in defense of the John Reed Clubs. But again the problem of the clubs did not seem important. What did seem important was: Could a Negro ever live halfway like a human being in this goddamn country?

  That day I sat through the congress sessions, but what I heard did not touch me. That night I found my way to Harlem and walked pavements filled with black life. I was amazed, when I asked passers-by, to learn that there were practically no hotels for Negroes in Harlem. I kept walking. Finally I saw a tall, clean hotel; black people were passing the doors and no white people were in sight. Confidently I entered and was surprised to
see a white clerk behind the desk. I hesitated.

  “I’d like a room,” I said.

  “Not here,” he said.

  “But isn’t this Harlem?” I asked.

  “Yes, but this hotel is for white only,” he said.

  “Where is a hotel for colored?”

  “You might try the Y,” he said.

  “In what direction is it?”

  “Keep walking that way,” he said, pointing.

  Half an hour later I found the Negro Young Men’s Christian Association, that bulwark of Jim Crowism for young black men, got a room, took a bath, and slept for twelve hours. When I awakened, I did not want to go to the congress. I lay in bed thinking: I’ve got to go it alone … I’ve got to learn how again …

  I dressed and attended the meeting that was to make the final decision to dissolve the clubs. It started briskly. A New York Communist writer summed up the history of the clubs and made a motion for their dissolution. Debate started and I rose and explained what the clubs had meant to young writers and begged for their continuance. I sat down amid silence. Debate was closed. The vote was called. The room filled with uplifted hands to dissolve. Then there came a call for those who disagreed and my hand went up alone. I knew that my stand would be interpreted as one of opposition to the Communist party, but I thought: The hell with it …

  New York held no further interest and the next morning I left for home.

  With the clubs now dissolved, I was free of all party relations. I avoided unit meetings for fear of being subjected to discipline. Occasionally a Negro Communist—defying the code that enjoined him to shun suspect elements—came to my home and informed me of the current charges that Communists were bringing against one another. To my astonishment I heard that Buddy Nealson had branded me a “smuggler of reaction.”

  “Why does he call me that?” I asked.

  “He says that you are a petty bourgeois degenerate,” I was told.

  “What does that mean?”

  “He says that you are corrupting the party with your ideas,” I was told.

  “How?”

  There was no answer. I decided that my relationship with the party was about over; I would have to leave it. The attacks were growing worse, and my refusal to react incited Nealson into coining more absurd phrases. I was termed a “bastard intellectual,” an “incipient Trotskyite"; it was claimed that I possessed an “anti-leadership attitude” and that I was manifesting “seraphim tendencies,” the latter phrase meaning that one has withdrawn from the struggle of life and considers oneself an infallible angel.

  I could not dismiss these charges lightly, for a frantic, hysterical hunt was going on in the ranks of the party for Trotskyites. In the Soviet Union men were being shot for Trotskyism. I used to lie awake nights wondering what would happen to me if I lived in the Soviet Union.

  Working all day and writing half the night brought me down with a severe chest ailment. I was in constant pain, scarcely able to breathe. I lay reviewing the life I had lived in the party and I found it distasteful. I realized that I had not been objective in my quixotic fight to save the clubs. I had been fighting as much for myself as for them. But was that wrong? Again I resolved to leave the party, for the emotional cost of membership was too high.

  While I was ill, a knock came at my door one morning. My mother admitted Ed Green, the man who had demanded to know what use I planned to make of the material I was collecting from the comrades. I stared at him as I lay abed and I knew that he considered me a clever and sworn enemy of the party. Bitterness welled up in me.

  “What do you want?” I asked bluntly. “You see I’m ill.”

  “I have a message from the party for you,” he said.

  I had not said good day, and he had not offered to say it. He had not smiled, and neither had I. He looked curiously at my bleak room.

  “This is the home of a bastard intellectual,” I cut at him. He stared without blinking. I could not endure his standing there so stone-like. Common decency made me say: “Sit down.” His shoulders stiffened.

  “I’m in a hurry.” He spoke like an army officer.

  “What do you want to tell me?”

  “Do you know Buddy Nealson?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “But I’ve heard of him.”

  I was suspicious. Was this a political trap? They had hurled baseless accusations at me and I felt that there could be no ground of trust between us. Was he trying to discover if I knew someone whom, politically, I should not know? But, after all, Buddy Nealson was a member of the Communist International. But what if Buddy Nealson had suddenly been accused of something and Ed Green was here trying to find out if I knew him?

  “What about Buddy Nealson?” I asked, committing myself to nothing until I knew the kind of reality I was grappling with.

  “He wants to see you,” Ed Green said.

  I breathed easier. I could not meet Communists now without feeling a degree of fear.

  “What about?” I asked, still suspicious.

  “He wants to talk with you about your party work,” he said.

  “I’m ill and can’t see him until I’m well,” I said.

  Ed Green stood for a fraction of a second, then turned on his heel and marched out of the room.

  Ought I see Buddy Nealson? He was the man who had formulated the Communist position for the American Negro; he had made speeches in the Kremlin; he had spoken before Stalin himself. Then perhaps he could explain many of the aspects of Communism that had baffled me. Anyway, I resolved to confront him and ask him some direct, simple questions and hear what he had to say.

  When my chest healed, I sought an appointment with Buddy Nealson. He was a short, black man with an ever-ready smile, thick lips, a furtive manner, and a greasy, sweaty look. His bearing was nervous, self-conscious; he seemed always to be hiding some deep irritation. He spoke in short, jerky sentences, hopping nimbly from thought to thought, as though his mind worked in a free, associational manner. He suffered from asthma and would snort at unexpected intervals. Now and then he would punctuate his flow of words by taking a nip from a bottle of whisky. He had traveled half around the world and his talk was pitted with vague allusions to European cities. I met him in his apartment, listened to him intently, observed him minutely, for I knew that I was facing one of the leaders of World Communism.

  “Hello, Wright,” he snorted. “I’ve heard about you.”

  As we shook hands he burst into a loud, seemingly causeless laugh; and as he guffawed I could not tell whether his mirth was directed at me or was meant to hide his uneasiness.

  “I hope what you’ve heard about me is good,” I parried.

  “Sit down,” he laughed again, waving me to a chair. “Yes, they tell me you write …”

  “I try to,” I said.

  “You can write,” he snorted. “I read that article you wrote for the New Masses about Joe Louis. Good stuff … First political treatment of sports we’ve yet had. Ha-ha …”

  “I’m trying to reveal the meaning of Negro experience,” I said.

  “We need a man like you,” he said flatteringly.

  I waited. I had thought that I would encounter a man of ideas, but he was not that. Then perhaps he was a man of action? But that was not indicated either. As we talked, I tried to grasp the frame of reference of his words, so that I would know how to talk to him.

  “They tell me that you are a friend of Ross,” he shot at me.

  I paused before answering. He had not asked me directly, but had hinted in a neutral, teasing way. Mentally I prodded myself into remembering that I was speaking to a member of the Communist International. Ross, I had been told, was slated for expulsion on the grounds that he was “anti-leadership"; and if a member of the Communist International was asking me if I were a friend of a man about to be expelled, he was indirectly asking me if I were loyal or not.

  “Ross is not particularly a friend of mine,” I said frankly. “But I know him well; in fact, quite well.�
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  “If he isn’t your friend, how do you happen to know him so well?” he asked, laughing to soften the hard threat of his question.

  “I was writing an account of his life and I know him as well, perhaps, as anybody,” I told him.

  “I heard about that,” he said. “Wright… Ha-ha … Say, let me call you Dick, hunh?”

  “Go ahead,” I said.

  “Dick,” he said, “Ross is a nationalist.” He paused to let the weight of his accusation sink in. He meant that Ross’s militancy was extreme. “We Communists don’t dramatize Negro nationalism,” he said in a voice that laughed, accused, and drawled.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “We’re not advertising Ross.” He spoke directly now.

  “We’re talking about two different things,” I said. “You seem worried about my making Ross popular because he is your political opponent. But I’m not concerned about Ross’s politics at all. The man struck me as one who typified certain traits of the Negro migrant. I’ve already sold a story based upon an incident in his life.”

  Nealson became excited.

  “What was the incident?” he asked.

  “Some trouble he got into when he was thirteen years old,” I said.

  His face looked blank for a second, then he laughed.

  “Oh, I thought it was political,” he said, shrugging.

  “But I’m telling you that you are wrong about that,” I explained. “I’m not trying to fight you with my writing. I’ve no political ambitions. I’m not trying to hurt or help any particular comrade. You must believe that. I’m trying to depict Negro life.”

  “Have you finished writing about Ross?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “I dropped the idea. Our party members were suspicious of me and were afraid to talk.”

  He laughed.

  “You’ve got to know us better, Dick,” he grinned. “I hold a high position in the party. I’ll straighten out this misunderstanding.