Authors: Ralph Ellison
“Well,” Brother Jack said, “you are on time. Very good, we favor precision in our leaders.”
“Brother, I shall always try to be on time,” I said.
“Here he is, Brothers and Sisters,” he said, “your new spokesman. Now to begin. Are we all present?”
“All except Brother Tod Clifton,” someone said.
His red head jerked with surprise. “So?”
“He’ll be here,” a young brother said. “We were working until three this morning.”
“Still, he should be on time— Very well,” Brother Jack said, taking out a watch, “let us begin. I have only a little time here, but a little time is all that is needed. You all know the events of the recent period, and the role our new brother has played in them. Briefly, you are here to see that it isn’t wasted. We must achieve two things: We must plan methods of increasing the effectiveness of our agitation, and we must organize the energy that has already been released. This calls for a rapid increase of membership. The people are fully aroused; if we fail to lead them into action, they will become passive, or they will become cynical. Thus it is necessary that we strike immediately and strike hard!
“For this purpose,” he said, nodding toward me, “our brother has been appointed district spokesman. You are to give him your loyal support and regard him as the new instrument of the committee’s authority …”
I heard the slight applause splatter up—only to halt with the opening of the door, and I looked down past the rows of chairs to where a hatless young man about my own age was coming into the hall. He wore a heavy sweater and slacks, and as the others looked up I heard the quick intake of a woman’s pleasurable sigh. Then the young man was moving with an easy Negro stride out of the shadow into the light, and I saw that he was very black and very handsome, and as he advanced mid-distance into the room, that he possessed the chiseled, black-marble features sometimes found on statues in northern museums and alive in southern towns in which the white offspring of house children and the black offspring of yard children bear names, features and character traits as identical as the rifling of bullets fired from a common barrel. And now close up, leaning tall and relaxed, his arms outstretched stiffly upon the table, I saw the broad, taut span of his knuckles upon the dark grain of the wood, the muscular, sweatered arms, the curving line of the chest rising to the easy pulsing of his throat, to the square, smooth chin, and saw a small X-shaped patch of adhesive upon the subtly blended, velvet-over-stone, granite-over-bone, Afro-Anglo-Saxon contour of his cheek.
He leaned there, looking at us all with a remote aloofness in which I sensed an unstated questioning beneath a friendly charm. Sensing a possible rival, I watched him warily, wondering who he was.
“Ah, so, Brother Tod Clifton is late,” Brother Jack said. “Our leader of the youth is late. Why is this?”
The young man pointed to his cheek and smiled. “I had to see the doctor,” he said.
“What is this?” Brother Jack said, looking at the cross of adhesive on the black skin.
“Just a little encounter with the nationalists. With Ras the Exhorter’s boys,” Brother Clifton said. And I heard a gasp from one of the women who gazed at him with shining, compassionate eyes.
Brother Jack gave me a quick look. “Brother, you have heard of Ras? He is the wild man who calls himself a black nationalist.”
“I don’t recall so,” I said.
“You’ll hear of him soon enough. Sit down, Brother Clifton; sit down. You must be careful. You are valuable to the organization, you must not take chances.”
“This was unavoidable,” the young man said.
“Just the same,” Brother Jack said, returning to the discussion with a call for ideas.
“Brother, are we still to fight against evictions?” I said.
“It has become a leading issue, thanks to you.”
“Then why not step up the fight?”
He studied my face. “What do you suggest?”
“Well, since it has attracted so much attention, why not try to reach the whole community with the issue?”
“And how would you suggest we go about it?”
“I suggest we get the community leaders on record in support of us.”
“There are certain difficulties in face of this,” Brother Jack said. “Most of the leaders are against us.”
“But I think he’s got something there,” Brother Clifton said. “What if we got them to support the
issue
whether they like us or not? The issue is a
community
issue, it’s non-partisan.”
“Sure,” I said, “that’s how it looks to me. With all the excitement over evictions they can’t afford to come out against us, not without appearing to be against the best interests of the community …”
“So we have them across a barrel,” Clifton said.
“That is perceptive enough,” Brother Jack said.
The others agreed.
“You see,” Brother Jack said with a grin, “we’ve always avoided these leaders, but the moment we start to advance on a broad front, sectarianism becomes a burden to be cast off. Any other suggestions?” He looked around.
“Brother,” I said, remembering now, “when I first came to Harlem one of the first things that impressed me was a man making a speech from a ladder. He spoke very violently and with an accent, but he had an enthusiastic audience … Why can’t we carry our program to the street in the same way?”
“So you
have
met him,” he said, suddenly grinning. “Well, Ras the Exhorter has had a monopoly in Harlem. But now that we are larger we might give it a try. What the committee wants is results!”
So
that
was Ras the Exhorter, I thought.
“We’ll have trouble with the Extortor—I mean the Ex
horter
,” a big woman said. “His hoodlums would attack and denounce the white meat of a roasted chicken.”
We laughed.
“He goes wild when he sees black people and white people together,” she said to me.
“We’ll take care of that,” Brother Clifton said, touching his cheek.
“Very well, but no violence,” Brother Jack said. “The Brotherhood is against violence and terror and provocation of any kind—aggressive, that is. Understand, Brother Clifton?”
“I understand,” he said.
“We will not countenance any aggressive violence. Understand? Nor attacks upon officials or others who do not attack us. We are against all forms of violence, do you understand?”
“Yes, Brother,” I said.
“Very well, having made this clear I leave you now,” he said. “See what you can accomplish. You’ll have plenty support from other districts and all the guidance you need. Meanwhile, remember that we are all under discipline.”
He left and we divided the labor. I suggested that each work in the area he knew best. Since there was no liaison between the Brotherhood and the community leaders I assigned myself the task of creating one. It was decided that our street meetings begin immediately and that Brother Tod Clifton was to return and go over the details with me.
While the discussion continued I studied their faces. They seemed absorbed with the cause and in complete agreement, blacks and whites. But when I tried to place them as to type I got nowhere. The big woman who looked like a southern “sudsbuster” was in charge of women’s work, and spoke in abstract, ideological terms. The shy-looking man with the liver splotches on his neck spoke with a bold directness and eagerness for action. And this Brother Tod Clifton, the young leader, looked somehow like a hipster, a zoot suiter, a sharpie—except his head of Persian lamb’s wool had never known a straightener. I could place none of them. They seemed familiar but were just as different as Brother Jack and the other whites were from all the white men I had known. They were all transformed, like familiar people seen in a dream. Well, I thought, I’m different too, and they’ll see it when the talk is finished and the action begins. I’ll just have to be careful not to antagonize anyone. As it is, someone might resent my being placed in charge.
But when Brother Tod Clifton came into my office to discuss the street meeting I saw no signs of resentment, but a complete absorption in the strategy of the meeting. With great care he went about instructing me how to deal with hecklers, on what to do if we were attacked, and upon how to recognize our own members from the rest of the crowd. For all his seeming zoot-suiter characteristics his speech was precise and I had no doubt that he knew his business.
“How do you think we’ll do?” I said when he had finished.
“It’ll go big, man,” he said. “It’ll be bigger than anything since Garvey.”
“I wish I could be so sure,” I said. “I never saw Garvey.”
“I didn’t either,” he said, “but I understand that in Harlem he was very big.”
“Well, we’re not Garvey, and he didn’t last.”
“No, but he must have had something,” he said with sudden passion. “He
must
have had something to move all those people! Our people are
hell
to move. He must have had plenty!”
I looked at him. His eyes were turned inward; then he smiled. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We have a scientific plan and you set them off. Things are so bad they’ll listen, and when they
listen
they’ll go along.”
“I hope so,” I said.
“They will. You haven’t been around the movement as I have, for three years now, and I can feel the change. They’re ready to move.”
“I hope your feelings are right,” I said.
“They’re right, all right,” he said. “All we have to do is gather them in.”
T
HE
evening was almost of a winter coldness, the corner well lighted and the all-Negro crowd large and tightly packed. Up on the ladder now I was surrounded by a group of Clifton’s youth division, and I could see, beyond their backs with upturned collars, the faces of the doubtful, the curious and the convinced in the crowd. It was early and I threw my voice hard down against the traffic sounds, feeling the damp coldness of the air upon my cheeks and hands as my voice warmed with my emotion. I had just begun to feel the pulsing set up between myself and the people, hearing them answering in staccato applause and agreement when Tod Clifton caught my eye, pointing. And over the heads of the crowd and down past the dark storefronts and blinking neon signs I saw a bristling band of about twenty men quick-stepping forward. I looked down.
“It’s trouble, keep talking,” Clifton said. “Give the boys the signal.”
“My Brothers, the time has come for action,” I shouted. And now I saw the youth members and some older men move around to the back of the crowd, and up to meet the advancing group. Then something sailed up out of the dark and landed hard against my forehead, and I felt the crowd surge in close, sending the ladder moving backwards, and I was like a man tottering above a crowd on stilts, then dropping backwards into the street and clear, hearing the ladder clatter down. They were milling in a panic now, and I saw Clifton beside me. “It’s Ras the Exhorter,” he yelled. “Can you use your hands?”
“I can use my fists!” I was annoyed.
“Well, all right then. Here’s your chance. Come on, let’s see you duke!”
He moved forward and seemed to dive into the whirling crowd, and I beside him, seeing them scatter into doorways and pound off in the dark.
“There’s Ras, over there,” Clifton cried. And I heard the sound of breaking glass and the street went dark. Someone had knocked out the light, and through the dimness I saw Clifton heading to where a red neon sign glowed in a dark window as something went past my head. Then a man ran up with a length of pipe and I saw Clifton close with him, ducking down and working in close and grabbing the man’s wrist and twisting suddenly like a soldier executing an about-face so that now he faced me, the back of the man’s elbow rigid across his shoulder and the man rising on tiptoe and screaming as Clifton straightened smoothly and levered down on the arm.
I heard a dry popping sound and saw the man sag, and the pipe rang upon the walk; then someone caught me hard in the stomach and suddenly I knew that I was fighting too. I went to my knees and rolled and pulled erect, facing him. “Get up, Uncle Tom,” he said, and I clipped him. He had his hands and I had mine and the match was even but he was not so lucky. He wasn’t down and he wasn’t out, but I caught him two good ones and he decided to fight elsewhere. When he turned I tripped him and moved away.
The fight was moving back into the dark where the street lights had been knocked out clear to the corner, and it was quiet except for the grunting and straining and the sound of footfalls and of blows. It was confusing in the dark and I couldn’t tell ours from theirs and moved cautiously, trying to see. Someone up the street in the dark yelled, “Break it up! Break it up!” and I thought, Cops, and looked around for Clifton. The neon sign glowed mysteriously and there was a lot of running and cursing, and now I saw him working skillfully in a store lobby before a red
CHECKS CASHED HERE
sign and I hurried over, hearing objects sailing past my head and the crash of glass. Clifton’s arms were moving in short, accurate jabs against the head and stomach of Ras the Exhorter, punching swiftly and scientifically, careful not to knock him into the window or strike the glass with his fists, working Ras between rights and lefts jabbed so fast that he rocked like a drunken bull, from side to side. And as I came up Ras tried to bull his way out and I saw Clifton drive him back and down into a squat, his hands upon the dark floor of the lobby, his heels back against the door like a runner against starting blocks. And now, shooting forward, he caught Clifton coming in, butting him, and I heard the burst of breath and Clifton was on his back and something flashed in Ras’s hand and he came forward, a short, heavy figure as wide as the lobby now with the knife, moving deliberately. I spun, looking for the length of pipe, diving for it and crawling on hands and knees and here, here—and coming up to see Ras reach down, getting one hand into Clifton’s collar, the knife in the other, looking down at Clifton and panting, bull-angry. I froze, seeing him draw back the knife and stop it in mid-air; draw back and stop, cursing; then draw back and stop again, all very quickly, beginning to cry now and talking rapidly at the same time; and me easing slowly forward.