American Hunger by Richard Wright Read Free Book Online Page A

shabby quality of those Negroes whom the Communists had already admitted to membership.
    When speaking from the platform, the Negro Communists, eschewing the traditional gestures of the Negro preacher—as though they did not possess the strength to develop their own style of Communist preaching–stood straight, threw back their heads, brought the edge of the right palm down hammerlike into the outstretched left palm in a series of jerky motions to pound their points home, a mannerism that characterized Lenin’s method of speaking. When they walked, their stride quickened; all the peasant hesitancy of their speech vanished as their voices became clipped, terse. In debate they interrupted their opponents in a tone of voice that was an octave higher, and if their opponents raised their voices to be heard, the Communists raised theirs still higher until shouts rang out over the park. Hence, the only truth that prevailed was that which could be shouted and quickly understood.
    Their emotional certainty seemed buttressed by access to a fund of knowledge denied to ordinary men, but a day’s observation of their activities was sufficient to reveal all their thought processes. An hour’s listening disclosed the fanatical intoleranceof minds sealed against new ideas, new facts, new feelings, new attitudes, new hints at ways to live. They denounced books they had never read, people they had never known, ideas they could never understand, and doctrines whose names they could not pronounce. Communism, instead of making them leap forward with fire in their hearts to become masters of ideas and life, had frozen them at an even lower level of ignorance than had been theirs before they met Communism.
    When Hoover threatened to drive the bonus marchers from Washington, one Negro Communist speaker said:
    “If he drives the bonus marchers out of Washington, the people will rise up and make a revolution!”
    I went to him, determined to get at what he really meant.
    “You know that even if the United States army actually kills the bonus marchers, there’ll be no revolution,” I said.
    “You don’t know the indignation of the masses!” he exploded.
    “But you don’t seem to know what it takes to make a revolution,” I explained. “Revolutions are rare occurrences.”
    “You underestimate the masses,” he told me.
    “No, I know the masses of Negroes very well,” I said. “But I don’t believe that a revolution is pending. Revolutions come through concrete historical processes …”
    “You’re an intellectual,” he said, smiling disdainfully.
    A few days later, after Hoover had had the bonus marchers driven from Washington at the point of bayonets, I accosted him:
    “What about that revolution you predicted if the bonus marchers were driven out?” I asked.
    “The prerequisite conditions did not exist,” he muttered, and shrugged.
    I left him, wondering why he felt it necessary to make so many ridiculous overstatements. I could not refute the general Communist analysis of the world; the only drawback was that their world was just too simple for belief. I liked their readiness to act, butthey seemed lost in folly, wandering in a fantasy. For them there was no yesterday or tomorrow, only the living moment of today; their only task was to annihilate the enemy that confronted them in any manner possible.
    At times their speeches, glowing with rebellions, were downright offensive to lowly, hungry Negroes. Once a Negro Communist speaker, inveighing against religion, said:
    “There ain’t no goddamn God! If there is, I hereby challenge Him to strike me dead!”
    He paused dramatically before his vast black audience for God to act, but God declined. He then pulled out his watch.
    “Maybe God didn’t hear me!” he yelled. “I’ll give Him two more minutes!” Then, with sarcasm: “Mister God, kill me!”
    He waited, looking mockingly at his watch. The audience laughed uneasily.
    “I’ll tell you where to find God,” the