The Nigger Factory

by Gil Scott-Heron

  ‘Misser Big Nigger,’ Abul sneered. ‘A plague on his people. A fuckin’ star-gazin’ parasite! A curse on the race!’

  Earl cut the engine off and sat quietly for a minute in front of the path leading to the fraternity house.

  ‘We all got a long way to go,’ the SGA president breathed.

  ‘You can’ git but so far runnin’ off at the mouth while you on yo’ han's an’ knees.’

  ‘You cain’ git nowhere dead.’

  ‘Better dead than a slave,’ Abul spat, lighting another cigarette.

  ‘Is that the way you felt last May when I saw you an’ yo’ guest at that bar on 211?’ Earl asked lighting his own cigarette.

  ‘I wuz waitin’ fo’ you to bring that up las’ night,’ Abul said, his anger and sneering tones dying.

  ‘I asked you a question,’ Earl said.

  ‘Do you wanna know if a white bitch turned my head around?’

  ‘I wanna know what turned you around.’

  ‘Knowledge, man. I learned where I wuz wrong. Thass all.’

  ‘An’ you aren't wearin’ dashikis because the fay broad blew yo’ program away?’

  ‘She had nuthin’ to do with it. I was sick! I was wrong.’ Abul was getting angry again.

  ‘Then learn somethin’ else,’ Earl said softly. ‘You don't face a bazooka with a water pistol. You don't fight a tank with a slingshot. You don't risk the lives of future Black mothers jus’ because you have an emotional commitment to a .22.’

  ‘All dead bodies that leave this world undefended tonight will be placed on yo’ doorstep,’ Abul said.

  ‘All brave Black fools who fight when it is not time to fight will be brought to you.’

  ‘We'll see. The pigs will show us,’ Abul said as he got out of the car.

  While the pig police occupied the minds of the two young Black student leaders, Ogden Calhoun was dismissing them from any further duty on campus, and making another call.

  ‘Yes, I know it's inconvenient. It is an emergency,’ the Sutton president was saying. There was a long pause while the man to whom he wanted to talk was summoned to the phone.

  ‘Yes? . . . yes, Governor. How are you? Yes, sir. That's the point. I am havin’ trouble an’ I'll prob'bly get a whole lot more tomorrow . . . I asked that the campus be cleared by six . . . good . . . if they won't leave at six I'll call your men . . . They'll be right outside of Sutton? Wait, let me take that number . . . yes, I'll call back tomorrow . . . right.’

  Calhoun reclined in his high-back chair and let the exhaustion that had followed him all through a tense and tiring day take over. He had been assured that a National Guard unit would be available if he needed it for the next night. He felt a fearful certainty that it would be needed.

  29

  Plans Abandoned

  Arnold McNeil was sitting in his living room reading a book when the phone rang. It was answered by his wife, Millie.

  ‘It's Edmund,’ she said, referring to the head football coach.

  ‘Good,’ McNeil said, coming to take the receiver. He had not been expecting a call from the coach. ‘Lo, Ed,’ he began. ‘What's up?’

  ‘Arnold? There's been some more trouble down here this evening,’ Mallory said quickly.

  ‘What's happened?’

  ‘The students tore up some furniture an’ things in the dorms ‘bout fifteen minutes ago,’ the coach breathed. He was standing in the pay phone booth in the lobby of Sutton Hall.

  ‘Where's Calhoun? How did these things get started?’

  ‘Calhoun is in his office,’ Mallory said. ‘He came runnin’ in a few minutes ago with Jones an’ one a the men from the Sutton police force.’

  ‘Did he say anything?’

  ‘Not to me, but he seems more resolute than ever about closing the place down.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘He sent the local force home, but Nancy, the girl on the night switchboard, said he made a call to the governor.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For the National Guard, I suppose,’ Mallory fumed.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ McNeil shouted.

  ‘What is it, honey?’ Millie McNeil asked.

  ‘I'll tell you in a minute,’ McNeil waved to her. ‘So what are you sayin’, Ed?’

  ‘That I don’ know what good any alliance we've formed at this stage will do. I know that Calhoun wants the school closed.’

  ‘We all know that. What can we do?’

  ‘Talk to Admissions the first thing in the mornin’. Try an’ see if we can't form an ad hoc faculty committee to investigate the new admissions program.’

  ‘Do you think Thomas added that demand we suggested?’

  ‘I don’ have any idea. I wonder seriously if he'll come to that meetin’ in the mornin’ too. I think the boy's fed up with the whole thing.’

  ‘I didn’ feel that way,’ McNeil said. ‘He's got to do something.’

  ‘Well, whether he comes or not I suggest we go out an’ get the signatures of the faculty members who are willin’ to serve on the new Admissions Committee to see what happens to Thomas an’ MJUMBE.’

  ‘We know what'll happen,’ McNeil said. His tone expressed frustration at the prospect of the bureaucratic whirlpool. ‘They won't be allowed back. Calhoun will say that they're keepin’ the school from operatin’ at one hundred per cent efficiency. That was the “catch phrase” in Calhoun's pronouncement . . . and all of the ol’ guard will fall in behind him waggin’ their tails.’

  ‘Especially after what happened today an’ tonight,’ Mallory admitted. ‘What can we do?’

  ‘Get the signatures from people at that meetin’ in the morning,’ McNeil suggested. ‘That's about all.’

  ‘In other words we really can’ do anything,’ Mallory said.

  ‘That's right,’ McNeil confessed. ‘That's exactly right.’

  Earl Thomas was not having an easy time explaining the activities of the day to his girl, Angie. He had left the campus minutes after the four Sutton patrol cars were dismissed and had flopped exhausted on Angie's living room sofa.

  ‘I jus’ don’ want to see your whole college career ruined,’ she said, stroking the back of his neck. ‘I'm sorry, but you know as well as I do what will happen tomorrow.’

  ‘I'm not leavin’ tuhmaruh,’ Earl said. ‘I'm stayin’. I tol’ the women to leave.’

  ‘The women want to stay. You said so yourself. They mus’ feel as deeply about the whole thing as you do . . . an’ besides, there are more women than men on Sutton's campus.’

  ‘Not the point. The point is that they have to go.’

  ‘An’ what if they don't go?’

  ‘Then I'll leave ‘cause I won't want to see them gettin’ their heads kicked in.’

  ‘You really think that's goin’ to happen? Then I don’ want you there either. I don’ want to see . . .’

  ‘You sound like Zeke an’ Mrs. Gilliam earlier this evenin'!’ Earl exclaimed. ‘What is this? A conspiracy? Get Earl to chump out on his commitment day?’ He sat up and lit a cigarette, saying, ‘I don’ tell you about things I want to do to start a damn debate! I tell you so you'll know where I stand!’

  ‘Or where you lay,’ Angie said, walking to the easy chair and reclining in it. Earl could barely make out her features in the darkness. He could see that her head was back and that her eyes were closed. She was rocking a bit and her bare feet were rubbing across the carpet. He got up and walked over to her, standing her up before him and kissing her forehead.

  ‘Nothin’ will happen to me,’ he said. ‘I promise.’

  ‘How can you promise that?’ Angie asked. He could see for the first time that her eyes were brimming with tears.

  ‘Nothin’ will happen to me that's bad,’ Earl said. ‘I mean that the worst thing I could do would be to stay away from where I belong. If I'm not there I couldn't do you any good or myself any good. No matter how healthy I looked, I'd be dead inside.’

  ‘Earl! I know something will h
appen to you. Something always happens . . . Earl! Make love to me, Earl. Please?’

  There were mixed emotions in the man's eyes. More than anything else in the world he wanted to slap his woman; feel his palm smack with all the conviction he could muster across her tear-stained face. He wanted to grab her and squeeze her until she begged him to release her. He wanted to turn and walk away from her, leaving her there in torment wondering what she had said to anger him.

  ‘Self-pity?’ he asked. ‘Selfishness an’ self-pity? Something always happens to the things that you love? Make love to you one last time before I die? I should knock hell out of you! Doesn't how I live mean more than whether I live? I'm ashamed of myself, you know? I'm damn ashamed because when I met you I thought you were so stuck up and now I see that it was an ice wall of self-pity; a walking martyr. Angie Rodgers. Her old man is dead. Her boyfriend screwed her and left her with a baby in her belly. She's twenty-two years old and walks around with a foot in her ass that was placed there when she was born. I swear and be damned!’

  Angie was stunned. She tried to force Earl to meet her eyes and see the tears that ran more freely now, across her nose, salt water stinging her lips and tongue.

  ‘Is that what it is, Earl? Is that what you think? My desire to make a good home and be a good mother was an “ice wall of self-pity"? My putting aside the things that twenty-two year old women do because I had no man to help me was self-pity? Was it? What can a woman be but cold when she's got to make it by herself? . . . Earl, I love you. I'm a woman . . . Maybe I was wrong to ask you, beg you to make love to me, but I couldn't think of any other way to let you know how much I really love you.’ Angie could find no more words to say. She hadn't even looked up during the last part of her monologue to see the pain burned across Earl's face. She hadn't even noticed that Earl was an open book of confusion and agony because of the things he had said that suddenly became obscene and too incredibly wrong to tolerate any balance or consolation. She walked slowly from the room and up the carpeted stairs.

  Earl sat under the lamp smoking a cigarette, asking himself where all of the understanding he had thought he possessed was now, when he was faced with a crisis that called for understanding. Halfway through the cigarette he stubbed it out and turned off the lamp. He had made up his mind to go and talk to his woman. He wanted to find out if he could be forgiven for being a man.

  Friday

  30

  Final Word

  Mrs Gloria Calhoun, the former Gloria Vernon of Saginaw, Michigan, sat quietly in the upstairs bedroom waiting for the ten o'clock news report. The door had slammed downstairs only minutes before and she had been expecting her husband to come into the bedroom, but now supposed that he was watching the news on the television set in the den.

  She felt rather foolish watching television for information about her husband when he sat just one floor beneath her, but she was somewhat afraid of what the news would be. She hadn't been able to help overhearing the tense phone call that had come from Captain Jones at just past eight o'clock. She hadn't been able to ignore the fact that for some reason Earl Thomas, the Student Government president, had cut into the phone call. As a matter of fact it had seemed as though the usually soft-spoken young Thomas was screaming, his words audible from her seat across the room. A disturbance had taken place and had doubtlessly involved the Sutton police. She hadn't wanted her husband to ask them for any assistance. The Sutton students hadn't demonstrated any need to be contained by armed bullies. She crossed her fingers and prayed that none of the students had been hurt. She hoped that a student's injury had not been the reason that her husband had not come up the stairs to face her.

  When Ogden Calhoun completed his doctorate in 1946 he went straight to Saginaw to marry the woman he had met during his undergraduate studies at Howard University. Calhoun had been one of the youngest black Ph.D.’s in psychology in America. There had been times when neither of the two thought that he would make it. The war, the money, the pressure on Blacks in the higher realms of the educational system had all been against the young couple, but somehow Calhoun's determination had paid off and brought a ray of hope to friends and relatives who saw an almost fairy-tale ending placed on the Calhoun story when the couple married in the Vernon family church.

  Unfortunately that was not the end of the story, but rather the beginning of a new phase. The second phase included Calhoun's appointment as the head of the Psychology Department at Small's College in West Virginia, radical contributions on the causes of Black psychological problems to national psychology journals that lost him his appointment, the loss of their only child, Margaret, from polio at the age of two, and a subsequent wall of frustration built between them by Calhoun's long, exhausting work schedule and his wife's boredom.

  The appointment of Calhoun as president of Sutton had been a second beginning of the second phase. Neither of them had really expected the appointment because in the fifties there was an open fear of Blacks who spoke out so openly against racism and Black oppression. It had been felt that Calhoun's articles of the fifties would be held against him even ten years later by the white corporations that supplied much of the financing for private Black institutions.

  The first year at Sutton had been like a breath of fresh air for the couple. Each became involved with new duties. Mrs Calhoun was a frequent speaker for Women's Day programs at churches in the Black community. Her picture often appeared in the local paper when she was endorsing another one of her many charities.

  As a still-life photo of Ogden Calhoun appeared on the television screen, Mrs Calhoun began to regret the very involvement that she had once been so happy to discover. Her community responsibilities had practically severed her ties with her husband. The two of them had lost touch with one another. Their ability to communicate had faded. Their interest in one another had become impersonal. Their sex life had disappeared.

  ‘Sutton University in Sutton, Virginia, was closed today by University President Ogden Calhoun who reacted to a student strike due to nonimplementation of twelve demands with these words: “I have decided to close Sutton University until such time as the university can undergo a readmission program that will insure the community an ability to function at one hundred per cent efficiency.” Sources have intimated that the Admissions Office will not be considering new applications received from Student Government officials or members of a new radical student faction call MJUMBE. These student leaders touched off two near-riots today when first they seized the stage at a meeting where Calhoun announced plans to close the school, and tonight when students destroyed an estimated eight thousand dollars’ worth of furniture and dormitory equipment. During the interruption of this afternoon's meeting the Sutton students were urged by a MJUMBE leader named Ralph Baker to defy Calhoun and remain on campus. The Sutton police were called in to patrol the grounds, but were asked to leave by Calhoun after the vandalism began. The eighty-seven-year-old institution has been ordered cleared by six o'clock tomorrow evening, but many students have vowed to stay.’

  Mrs Calhoun used the remote control to turn off the television when the announcer turned his attention to other news-making events. She was relieved that no one had been hurt, but there was clear frustration and tension etched into the corners of her mouth and around her eyes, frowns penciling crooked furrows across her forehead. She reached for her coffee cup, but finding it empty returned it to the night table beside her bed. She was tempted to switch off the light and avoid the confrontation that would occur when her husband came up for bed, but she did nothing of the sort. Instead, she allowed her mind to wander, floating across the days, weeks, months, and years of which her marriage consisted. She was so lost in thought that her husband startled her when he opened the door.

  ‘How are you?’ she tried tentatively.

  ‘Tired,’ Calhoun spat out, puffing his pipe.

  ‘Is everything all right on campus?’

  ‘For now,’ Calhoun shrugged, sitting on the edge of the be
d. ‘I went over and did what I could.’

  ‘Was anyone hurt?’

  ‘Of course not. I don't think there was any real reason for the entire incident. Probably started by MJUMBE.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Glo, if you had seen them this afternoon you would have no doubt at all. Savage! Ripped the microphone right out of my hands this afternoon. Tore the wires out of the control panel and threw it on the floor . . . student leaders . . .’

  ‘You couldn't talk to them at all?’

  ‘That's why I'm closing,’ Calhoun snapped. ‘I had them in my office and tried to talk them into negotiating the demands. Damn if they'd have anything to do with anything I suggested.’

  ‘What did they say?’ Mrs Calhoun asked, sitting up.

  ‘Said they'd bring me some things we could bargain with after I'd done what had to be done. Ain't that rich?’ Calhoun stood and removed his coat, shirt, and tie. He dropped all three articles into a plastic laundry bag that hung from the closet door. ‘Tell Arnie that I'll need these things Saturday at the latest when he comes by . . . do I have any shirts down at the laundry?’

  ‘Yes. He said he'd bring them by when he picked up tomorrow. In the meantime you have plenty of shirts in the bottom drawer.’

  ‘Good,’ Calhoun replied. He took a fresh pair of pajamas out of the middle dresser drawer and proceeded into the bathroom.

  Mrs Calhoun stared blankly at her husband and in her mind's eye she could see the years of her life turning to water and swirling down an hourglass-shaped drain. What had happened to them and to their lives? she wondered. Where had her Ogden Calhoun gone? How long had he been gone? Where was Gloria Calhoun, the woman who had saved herself for this one man?