Strivers Row (73 page)

STEAMED
SEAMS
: Nice clothes.

STUMBLE
AND
FALL
: Screw up; get caught by the police, and/or sent to jail.

TEA
: Marijuana.

TENDERLOIN
: The old name for the area of Manhattan from Fifth Avenue to Seventh Avenue, and 24th Street to 42nd Street. The City's most raucous entertainment district soon after the Civil War, it was crowded with bars, brothels, clip joints, dance halls, and gambling dens, and thus fat, easy pickings, or “tenderloin,” for corrupt police officers seeking protection money. The Tenderloin was another stop on the long, black exodus up Manhattan, between their sojourn in the West Village and that at San Juan, or Columbus Hill.

THE
TRACK
: The Savoy Ballroom.

THURSDAY
GIRLS
: Domestics, who usually had their one day off on Friday, and thus would go out dancing and partying on Thursday night.

TOGGED
TO
THE
BRICKS
: All dressed up.

TRULY
THERE
: Really beautiful, or stylish.

UNCLE
: In general Harlem parlance, Uncle Sam. In W. D. Fard's terminology, the Lost-Found Shabazz tribe of Original People, in the United States.

“
WHAT
YOU
LAYIN
'
DOWN
?”: “What are you saying?” or “What are you trying to pull?”

WHISTLE
: A brand of soda.

WILD
AS
A
TENOR
SIDEMAN
HUNTING
A
ROACH
: The marijuana kind, that is. Out of control.

“
YOU
MIGHT
CALL
THE
COPS
,
IF
THE
LIGHTS
TURN
BLUE
”: A come-on.

YOUNG
LANE
: Young man.

PERMISSIONS

“If I Didn't Care,” (World), words and music by Jack Lawrence. Copyright 1939 by CHAPPELL & CO. World rights. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

“If I Didn't Care,” (United States), words by Jack Lawrence. Copyright 1939 by Range Road Music, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

“I'm Yours,” from the Paramount Picture short
Leave It to Lester
. Words by E.Y. Harburg, music by Johnny Green. Copyright 1930 (renewed 1957) by Famous Music Corporation. International copyright secured. All rights reserved.

“In the Still of the Night,” words and music by Cole Porter. Copyright 1937 (renewed) by CHAPPELL & CO. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

“I've Got a Gal in Kalamazoo,” words by Mack Gordon, music by Harry Warren. Copyright 1942 (renewed) by WB MUSIC CORP. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

“Knockin' Myself Out,” words and music by Lillian Green. Copyright 1941 by Duchess Music Corp. All rights administered by Songs of Universal, Inc. / BMI. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

“Mood Indigo,” words and music by Duke Ellington, Irving Mills, and Albany Bigard. Copyright 1931 (renewed) by EMI MILLS MUSIC, INC., FAMOUS MUSIC CORPORATION, and INDIGO MOOD MUSIC in the U.S.A. All rights outside the U.S.A controlled by EMI MILLS MUSIC, INC. (publishing) and ALFRED PUBLISHING CO., INC. (print). International copyright secured. All rights reserved.

“Mood Indigo,” by Duke Ellington, Barney Bigard, and Irving Mills. Copyright 1931. Renewed Indigo Mood Music and EMI Mills, Inc. Permission secure. All rights reserved.

“Mood Indigo,” words and music by Duke Ellington, Irving Mills, and Albany Bigard. Copyright 1931 (renewed 1958) and assigned to Famous Music Corporation, EMI Mills Music, Inc., and Indigo Mood Music c/o The Songwriters Guild of America in the U.S.A. Controlled by EMI Mills Music, Inc. (publishing) and Warner Bros. Publications U.S. Inc. (print). International copyright secured. All rights reserved.

“More Than You Know,” words by William Rose and Edward Eliscu, music by Vincent Youmans. Copyright 1929 (renewed) by MILLER MUSIC CORP. & VINCENT YOUMANS, INC. Rights for the extended renewal term in the U.S.A. controlled by WB MUSIC CORP., CHAPPELL & CO., and LSQ MUSIC CO. All rights outside the U.S.A. administered by EMI CATALOG INC. (publishing) and ALFRED PUBLISHING CO., INC. (print). All rights reserved. Used by permission.

“Precious Lord (Take my Hand),” words and music by Thomas A. Dorsey. Copyright 1938 (renewed) by WARNER-TAMERLANE PUBLISHING CORP. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

“Salty Papa Blues,” words and music by Leonard Feather. Lyrics reproduced by kind permission of Air Edel Associates, Limited. Copyright Leonard Feather.

“Why Don't You Do Right (Get Me Some Money, Too!)?” Words and music by Joe McCoy. Copyright 1941, 1942, by EDWIN H. MORRIS & COMPANY, a division of MPL Music Publishing, Inc. Copyright © renewed 1969, 1970 by MORELY MUSIC CO. All rights reserved.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, AND A NOTE ON SOURCES

The first questions on most readers' minds will no doubt concern those parts of
Strivers Row
that involve Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad, Wallace D. Fard, and the history of the Nation of Islam. There is now and probably always will be a great deal of room for speculation on these matters, but what I have written is based closely upon the actual, documentary evidence.

My starting point for the remarkable story of the man who was born Malcolm Little was, unsurprisingly,
The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
This is, of course, a great American document, a story of transformation and redemption that was—like Malcolm himself, and as much as he would resent the identification—inextricably American.

There can also be no doubt that parts of the
Autobiography
are not strictly factual, or even wholesale inventions. I do not mean this as a criticism. No autobiography can be relied upon for the full truth. Malcolm X's was published after his death, and it was written with a collaborator, Alex Haley, whose adherence to the factual record has been challenged on other occasions. Moreover, the
Autobiography
is not simply Malcolm's life story, but also a political document, a book intended to rally support for a cause that Malcolm himself had not yet fully formulated, and that he was refining even as he dictated his words to Haley.

The most minimal research quickly reveals that Malcolm X was intent not only on recounting the wrongs done to him by a white supremacist America, which are manifest and undeniable, but also that he was making a case for himself as the leader of a new, as yet inchoate movement for black empowerment. Thus, he has exaggerated the extent of his youthful criminality and bad conduct in some instances, and excised it altogether in others. He makes the classic convert's argument, the claim that by having been the greatest sinner, he has also found the greatest redemption. He has known the depths of black existence in America, thus he can know its pain as well as any other.

Other episodes, which he may have considered too shameful or tawdry, or that otherwise strayed from the image he wanted to present of himself, apparently never made it into Malcolm's
Autobiography
at all. Such is every man's right. Suffice it to say that nearly every incident from Malcolm's life as a child in Michigan, in Boston, on the train, and in Harlem, has been drawn either from the
Autobiography,
or from other, reputable sources. Nothing that Malcolm's character does in this novel is inconsistent with the tenor of his thoughts or actions, even as he presented them himself. These scenes have, furthermore, been drawn with great sympathy for their subject, a man who really did pull himself up from the abyss, whose views on race in America, while sometimes ugly, were always candid; who, ultimately, always proved willing to face the truth, and who was in the midst of transforming himself yet again when he was tragically murdered, before his fortieth birthday.

Once I had read over the
Autobiography
several times, I turned to Bruce Perry's superb biography,
Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America.
This is an assiduously researched, remarkably honest, and revealing book, one that sheds a great deal of light particularly on Malcolm's childhood. It actually bedeviled me with a surfeit of material. Peter Goldman's
The Death and Life of Malcolm X
was also an invaluable source. First published in 1973 by a journalist who interviewed Malcolm extensively, it is a groundbreaking meditation not only on Malcolm's life, but also its broader meaning both for African Americans and for America in general.

Many readers will have found the most outlandish passages of
Strivers Row
to be those concerning Malcolm's encounters with Wallace D. Fard, Elijah Muhammad, and the Nation of Islam. Could Malcolm X have seen visions of Elijah Muhammad before they met?
He
claimed, in the
Autobiography
, that he did
.
Or rather, Malcolm claimed that one night in his cell, in the Norfolk Prison Colony in Massachusetts, he was visited by a “light-brown-skinned” man with “an Asiatic cast of countenance” and “oily black hair,” who was suddenly “sitting beside me in my chair.”

Malcolm would imply for years that this spectral visitor was Elijah Muhammad. Later, after his break with Elijah, he would claim his visitor was really Fard, the founder of the Nation of Islam, who appeared in a “pre-visit.” Malcolm would never meet Fard, and how does one have a “pre-visit” when there is no visit? In the same vein, Bruce Perry notes that Malcolm described the man in his visitation as brown-skinned, while Fard “looked white,” according to all surviving descriptions and photographs of the man. Malcolm was also corresponding with Elijah on a regular basis while in prison. Whatever the case, I have only moved his claimed vision up by a few years, and had it occur in a context that augurs his coming conversion, rather than following it.

The whole remarkable story of Fard, Elijah Muhammad, and the Nation of Islam would take up a book in itself. Fortunately, two splendid ones have already been written. Karl Evanzz's
The Messenger: The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad,
is a first-rate work of biography, including a meticulous investigation of Fard's cloudy and incredible past, and the stranger-than-fiction efforts of a couple of Japanese agents to turn American blacks into a pro-Japanese fifth column. Claude Andrew Clegg III's
An Original Man: The Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad,
is an equally outstanding work, one that concentrates more on Elijah's early struggles and on the theology of the Nation of Islam.

Doubtless many will find this theology to be a collection of crackpot theories and mystical nonsense. Yet it is actually no more difficult to swallow than any number of other religious texts; as James Baldwin points out in
The Fire Next Time,
the Biblical curse on Ham was long used in this country to justify slavery and white supremacy. The appeal of the Nation of Islam's creed, like that of almost any religion's, is its metaphorical truth; its story of a people robbed of their homeland, their ancient heritage, their language, culture, and self-respect, in the brutality of the Atlantic slave trade.

The Nation of Islam's history obviously lends itself to other unresolved controversies. To address the primary one head on: I make no claim that W. D. Fard was in fact done away with by Elijah Muhammad. I am only echoing here the accusations made by Elijah's enemies within the Nation at the time—accusations that forced him to flee Detroit in fear for his life. No one actually seems to know what really happened to Fard. Karl Evanzz makes a strong case that he returned to California, and perhaps his native New Zealand, and as late as the 1970s, Elijah Muhammad and his son both claimed that he was still alive, and in touch with them. Here again, it is unlikely that we will ever know the whole truth.

Strivers Row
is the third and final book of my New York,
City of Fire
trilogy, and faithful readers will remember the introduction of the Dove family in
Paradise Alley.
Jonah Dove, the protagonist here, is an amalgam of Harlem ministers, past and present, but certain parts of his past, including his proclivity (and that of his sister) to “pass” as white, were based on actual incidents in the life of Harlem's most famous minister, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. For these— as well as for my depiction of the historical Powell in the novel—I am indebted to two more fine biographies, Wil Haygood's
King of the Cats: The Life and Times of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.,
and
Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.: The Political Biography of an American Dilemma,
by my old seminar professor at Columbia, Charles V. Hamilton. Professor Hamilton will be astonished, I am sure, to discover that I was actually listening.

For descriptions of the glory, and the agony, that was Harlem, I have relied on many sources, most of which were gathered at one of the unsung treasures of New York, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a research center of the New York Public Library, located at West 135th Street and Malcolm X Boulevard, a.k.a., Lenox Avenue. Begun by the black Puerto Rican bibliophile, Arturo Schomburg, the center was an invaluable resource, and I recommend it highly to anyone interested in researching anything about Harlem, or the African-American experience.

While on the subject of libraries, I must also express my profound gratitude here for the help provided by the New York Public Library's main research library, at 42nd Street; its branch facilities, especially in my neighborhood, the Bloomingdale branch on West 100th Street; and the Columbia University and Barnard College libraries. Many is the happy hour that I have spent at all these facilities— so much so that it is a wonder I ever completed these books.

To name just some of the volumes that were of the most use to me on
Strivers Row,
I will start with the collection
A Renaissance in Harlem: Lost Voices of an American Community,
edited by Lionel C. Bascom, which extends beyond the chronological years of the Harlem Renaissance, and which includes everything from essays by Dorothy West to descriptions of a Garvey rally to the wonderful street songs that Harlem vendors used to improvise. Another collection,
Visual Journal: Harlem and Washington, D.C. in the Thirties and Forties,
edited by Deborah Wills and Jane Lusaka, put a photographic “face” on the place and time.

Just as valuable to me in getting a sense of the now-vanished Harlem before the war, was Cheryl Lynn Greenberg's
Or Does It Explode?: Black Harlem in the Great Depression;
Nat Brandt's
Harlem at War: The Black Experience in World War II;
Jervis Anderson's
This Was Harlem;
Gilbert Osofsky's
Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto, Negro New York, 1890–1930;
and Jim Haskins's
The Cotton Club.
The Roi Ottley and William J. Weatherby collection,
The Negro in New York: An Informal Social History,
remains even now an unrivaled guide to the history of the black experience in Manhattan.

Of course, no research into Harlem of the 1940s would be complete without consulting the writings of James Baldwin. His still-dazzling novel,
Go Tell It on the Mountain;
and the Toni Morrison-edited,
James Baldwin: Collected Essays,
as well as the above-mentioned
The Fire Next Time,
were all a great help. I owe a large debt as well to the many other great African-American fiction writers and journalists to emerge in Harlem and elsewhere during the tremendous intellectual ferment between the wars. These would include first and foremost, but are hardly limited to, Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, Dorothy West, and Zora Neale Hurston. Informing all my understanding of the African-American experience is the work of that formidable intellect and spirit, W. E. B. Du Bois.

Finally, nothing was as valuable to me in uncovering Harlem's past as the morgue of its now-venerable weekly newspaper, the
Amsterdam News
(then the
Amsterdam Star-News
). I spent hours combing through its wartime editions at the Schomburg, and was always enthralled. The
News
provided vital guides to Harlem's political battles, bars and cabarets, street life, cultural activities, church programs, and lingo, and was a courageous voice in protesting atrocities and injustices perpetrated against African-Americans around the country.

Lawrence Otis Graham's candid study,
Our Kind of People: Inside America's Black Upper Class,
was very helpful to me in learning some of the grim rituals of passing, the history of black fraternal organizations, and some of the social life at Oak Bluffs.

The first volume of Taylor Branch's incomparable history of the modern civil rights movement / biography of Martin Luther King, Jr., provided me with the popular names of African-American sermons, and a few tricks of the trade. The Schomburg also contains an almost inexhaustible collection of books on black church doctrines, denominations, rituals, sermons, hymns, and the like. Some of the ones I found most informative included: Professor Hamilton's
The Black Preacher in America; Images of the Black Preacher: The Man Nobody Knows,
by H. Beecher Hicks, Jr.;
The Soul of the Black Preacher,
by Joseph A. Johnson, Jr.;
Flames of Fire: Black Religious Leadership from the Slave Community to the Million Man March,
edited by Felton O. Best;
African American Religion: Varieties of Protest and Accommodation,
by Hans A. Baer and Merrill Singer;
Best Black Sermons,
edited by William M. Philpot;
A Fire in the Bones: Reflections on African-American Religious History,
by Albert J. Raboteau; and
The Black Church in the African-American Experience,
by C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya. Deborah Burns was kind enough, at my request, to send me her work
Mothers of Pearls, Mothers of Zion,
which gave me much insight into the role of the church mother.

More general descriptions of New York in this period were informed in good part by two lyrically descriptive, impressionistic books. One of them was Jan Morris's valentine to the vanished city,
Manhattan '45;
the other, my old friend Jeff Kisseloff 's
You Must Remember This: An Oral History of Manhattan from the 1890s to World War II—
from whence came, among things, important information on Café Society. Jeff, I finally got to use your work. Stuart Nicholson's biography,
Billie Holiday,
was also very informative about both the singer and the cabarets and halls she played in New York. Kenneth T. Jackson's
The Encyclopedia of New York City
was once again my boon companion on this book, as it has been on the whole
City of Fire
trilogy, and numerous shorter pieces. My copy is so battered by now that I will soon have the happy obligation of updating to the latest edition.