Lonely Crusade by Chester B. Himes Read Free Book Online Page A

welcome, man.”
    “I’m sure of that. But I don’t want to go out any more.”
    “See you tomorrow then,” Luther said and took his departure.
    It was dark now and Lee sat in the darkness alone. Now the hurt and disappointment came; the one hope crumbled to dust. Unconsciously he had built his entire day around his coming home. He had looked forward to painting a glowing picture of his first day at work—a picture of the white fellows and himself laughing, talking, working together in complete unison. To overwhelm her with the evidence that he could get along. To convince her again of his ability to provide a life for them—food, shelter, and some measure of happiness. And to win back her regard for him.
    He had come so laden down with precious gifts of fantasy, to seek the haven of her smile. What was the line? It is in his heart that she is queen , he recalled.
    Well—yes, Lee Gordon thought. But who wants to be queen in a Negro’s heart?
    He arose and walked out of the house in the darkness. For a long and bitter moment he stood on the little stone porch saying goodby to that part of their marriage which had held a hope for happiness. Then he went down the steps in the rain.

Chapter 3
    L EE AND RUTH had been married for eight years that spring of 1943. For Lee their marriage had been the beginning of his life. Before had been nothing but a bewildering sense of deficiency and a vague fear of momentarily being overtaken by disaster.
    At the time of his birth in 1912, Negroes were only servants in California. His parents, Tom and Anna, worked as domestic servants on a Pasadena estate, and he was born in the pleasant little servants’ cottage out in back. In later years when he wondered why he was the only child, his mother told him that he had caused a problem by his birth, and her “missus” had asked her not to have another.
    The schools in Pasadena were not segregated. But the Negro students were known to be the children of the servants and were treated as such.
    When he first entered school, Lee was the only Negro in his class. Even then before it was given other meaning, his black skin was a handicap. It made him hard to hide. Whatever he did, he was always caught.
    But it was not until his first year of geography when he was nine that he came to understand the stigma of his skin. All the class learned that black people were heathen savages, many of whom were cannibals besides. The teacher explained, however, that those in America had been Christianized. But even with that, it was a hurting thing to learn.
    Soon afterwards in his history class he learned that’ Negroes had been slaves. For a time he wondered if his parents were still slaves, but he was too ashamed to ask them.
    In 1926 he was fourteen. He was in the eighth grade. Outside of the curriculum he had not participated in any school activities. He had never had a buddy. The white students had not been deliberately unkind; they had ignored him.
    He had learned nothing to make him proud of being a Negro and everything to make him ashamed of it. The most complimentary thing he had learned concerning Negroes was that they had been freed from slavery. He had never heard the mention of a Negro above the level of a servant. When asked concerning his nationality, he did not know whether to say he was an American or a Negro.
    He came to believe that something was lacking in Negroes that made them less than other people. In gym, during showers, he carefully observed the white boys. The only difference he discovered was the color of their skin, and this seemed no superior attribute. In his first year biology class, he asked about the qualities of skin a number of questions that caused the teacher embarrassment. The teacher kept him after class one day to find out what was troubling him.
    “Is white skin better than black skin?” Lee asked bluntly.
    “There is little difference in the skin itself,” the teacher carefully replied. “But the color of