Black Power

by Richard Wright

  Strangely, he now yearns to build a land like France or England or America. Only such a deed will assuage his feelings of shame and betrayal. He too can be like they are. That’s the way to square the moral outrage done to his feelings. Whether America or France or England have built societies to the liking of his heart no longer concerns him; he must prove his worth in terms that they have taught him.

  But when he arrives in his tropical homeland, he is dismayed to find that he’s almost alone. The only people who are solidly against the imperialists are precisely those whose words and manner of living had evoked in him that sense of shame that made him want to disown his native customs. They want national freedom, but, unlike him, they do not want to “prove” anything. Moreover, they don’t know how to organize. They are willing to join him in attempting to drive out the invaders; they are willing, nay, anxious, on the oaths of their ancestors, to die and liberate their homeland. But they don’t want to hear any talk of ideas beyond that….

  So, the young man who spurned the fetish religion of his people returns and finds that that religion is the only thing that he has to work with; it’s muck, but he must use it…. So, not believing in the customs of his people, he rolls up his sleeves and begins to organize that which he loathes…. Feeling himself an outsider in his native land, watching the whites take the gold and the diamonds and the timber and the bauxite and the manganese, seeing his fellow blacks who were educated abroad siding with the whites, seeing his culture shattered and rendered abhorrent, seeing the tribes turned into pawns that float about the harbor towns, stealing, begging, killing—seeing that the black life is detribalized and left to rot, he finally lifts his voice in an agonized cry of nationalism, black nationalism!

  He’s the same man whom the missionaries educated; he’s acting on the impulses that they evoked in him; his motives are really deeply moral, but pitched on a plane and in a guise that the missionaries would not recognize…. And almost the only ones who answer his cry of nationalism-at-any-price, nationalism as a religion, are the tribes who are sick of the corrupt chiefs, the few who share his emotional state, the flotsam and jetsam of the social order! But, things being as they are, there’s no other road for him; and he resolves: “So be it….”

  The strange soil of the Western world, composed as it is of individualism, hunger for a personal destiny, a romantic sense of self-redemption, gives birth to fantastic human plants that it is ashamed of!

  PART III

  The Brooding Ashanti

  Not only might human development have never overstepped the pre-scientific stage and been doomed never to overstep it so that the physical world might indeed retain its truth whilst we should know nothing about it; the physical world might have been other than it is with systems of law other than those actually prevailing. It is also conceivable that our intuitable world should be the last, and “beyond” it no physical world at all…

  IDEAS, BY EDMUND HUSSERL

  Thirty

  At last I’ve got from the Gold Coast Information Service an itinerary that will take me up into the high rain forest, to Kumasi, Kumawu, Bibiani, etc. The British were, in the end, kind enough to allow me the use of the few government resthouses which were dotted here and there in the jungle area. I had a long list of personalities to see: doctors, lawyers, chiefs, and politicians…. The Britisher who gave me the itinerary cleared his throat and said casually:

  “I say, old chap, it’d be better to stick to the itinerary, you know.”

  I assured him that I would, that I had no desire to wander at random in the jungle.

  I bought a half-gallon thermos jug for water, about £30 of tinned food, a bottle of germicide to put into the water before using it for washing, a big box of DDT, cigarettes, and a five-yard length of colored cloth to use as a sheet at night when I’d be bunking in out-of-the-way places. I examined my budget and decided that I’d go as far as a shilling a mile would take me. I’d no notion that I was to find the jungle the most expensive place on earth!

  On the morning of August 4, with Battling Kojo behind the wheel, I took off. Ahead of me, across the flat plains of Accra, I could see the bluish-green escarpment rising towards a misty sky. Half an hour later we began to climb the escarpment itself on a red laterite road that mounted and wound amidst palm and coconut trees. Gradually the sky began to darken a little and the vegetation became a deeper and more prolific green. Suddenly the sky seemed to lower itself to the tops of the tall trees and the air became clogged with humidity. As we lifted still higher, I could feel the temperature dropping sharply. I turned my head and stared out of the rear window of the car and saw the coastal plain drenched in sunlight, with here and there, gleaming balefully, a mud village or two—and I knew it was sizzling hot down there….

  The vegetation turned a still darker green and I could sense the jungle beginning, becoming dense. The car churned up steep hills and to either side of the road loomed walls of dark green from which, now and then, appeared black faces of men, women, and children, half nude, carrying vast burdens of plantains, bananas, or wood upon their heads. Their faces were stolid, set, humorless; once or twice I saw a startled expression leap into someone’s eyes as he glimpsed my face staring at him. Some waved at me and I waved back, wriggling the palm of my hand in that salute which is so native and which, by now, I had come to feel was normal.

  As we crawled still higher, the trees became taller: the wawa, mahogany, palm, and cocoa trees flanked both sides of the road with leafy curtains of brooding green. Jutting skyward were a few gigantic white cottonwood trees. Thick creeping vines, three and four inches in diameter, entwined themselves amid the branches and leaves of the trees, giving the impression of some hovering mystery, some lurking and nameless danger. What was down those narrow paths leading into the jungle—paths so shaded and black and wild…?

  Past Mampong we still mounted; the road was good, the earth was red, and the vegetation denser still. The people had a quieter look than those of the Accra plains. We sped past villages of mud huts; men and women were sitting and staring calmly into space. Yams were piled before doorways. Africa was a dark place, not black but somber, not depressing but slightly haunting—moody, with a kind of dreaminess floating over it. We were in the thick jungle now and moisture clung to the car windows.

  This is, it is said, the home of the true Negro—whatever that means. Speaking a poetic language which, ironically, they feel describes reality, the Negroes themselves claim that they came out of holes in the ground; the white anthropologists contend that they came from farther north, Timbuktu or above the Sahara. Who knows? So much prejudice has entered into these calculations that perhaps nobody will ever know what the truth is. One thing, however, is true: an astounding religion, complicated and abounding in taboos, came to birth here and no one has ever really fully traced its growth or origin. It is not definitely known if the Akan religion influenced the Egyptian religion or if the Egyptian religion influenced the Akan religion. Briffault feels that the Egyptians got the moon-worshiping phase of their religion from the Negroes; some authorities feel that the Negroes never produced anything original but borrowed everything they’ve got. Other authorities contend that they can find traces of Ethiopian religious practices among the Ashanti. Yet the manner in which the Akan wears his native toga is exactly the way in which the ancient Romans wore theirs. How is that possible? Did the Romans penetrate this far before the days of Christ? Or did Negroes get as far as Rome? Or did the two peoples evolve the same kind of dress independently, without coming in contact with each other? No one really knows. It might well be that people in ancient times had much more social intercourse than we now suspect, that they were much less conscious of “race” than we are….

  At last we came into Koforidua, a small, clean-looking town of about 25,000 people. It has paved streets and the inevitable open sewer drains at each side of the road. Trees are everywhere and a relaxed atmosphere pervades the town. Koforidua is the center of a once rich cocoa-
producing region and, under the auspices of the United Africa Company, many agents from many European countries are stationed here to buy cocoa from the African farmers. The Gold Coast produces more cocoa than any other country in the world and its sale abroad makes the Gold Coast the single largest dollar-earning area in all of Africa.

  I put up in the modern home of Mr. R. A. O. Eccles, the district manager of the United Africa Company. Mr. Eccles was not at home, but word had been left to feed me…. While at lunch the sound of bells and drums came from the green and hazy distance. I asked the inevitably barefooted, white-jacketed steward boy what was happening and he told me:

  “Somebody dead, Massa. So drums beat.”

  A young Englishman, a friend of Mr. Eccles, called; he was a buyer of cocoa in an area about sixty miles square.

  “How do you go about buying this cocoa?” I asked him.

  “Well, we have subagents. They get the stuff from other agents who, in turn, buy directly from the farmers.”

  “What local business group gets the cocoa in the end?” I asked.

  “It works like this,” he explained. “The Gold Coast Government has created a Cocoa Marketing Board to buy up the cocoa crops from the agents and then this Cocoa Marketing Board sells the cocoa on the world markets at prices advantageous to the farmers, always keeping a pool of money in reserve, so that if there is a break in the cocoa market, the farmers will have some money to fall back upon.”

  “How, in a concrete way, does one of these agents buy cocoa?”

  “At the beginning of the cocoa season—and we’re getting into it right now—an agent looks over a crop of cocoa, estimates the yield and by that the value the crop will have when it ripens. He then advances cash against the crop. Generally, when the time comes to harvest the crop, the farmer’s money has been spent. Hence, most of the cocoa farmers are about a year in debt, even though the Cocoa Marketing Board helps them in many ways. This is an area rich in money, though the appearance of the streets and houses and stores would not indicate that such is true,” the young man went on.

  “But what do they do with all the money they get from selling the cocoa?”

  “Well, it’s funny, you know,” the young man said, twisting his mouth into a wry smile. “What happens to the money earned by an enterprising African cocoa farmer is something that economists have never been able to grasp. In this town you’ll see no huge, rich-looking houses, no green lawns, little attempt at conspicuous consumption, etc. In fact, the town is, as you can see, rather shabby. Well, this is the way it works…. When an African earns a pile of money, it is not his alone. He belongs to a tribe and a family. That money, under tribal law, is as much his sister’s children’s as it is his own. In fact, his first duty is toward his sister’s children. Now, let’s suppose such a man got a thousand pounds. At once, before he can derive any personal benefit from it, his relatives descend upon him, making demands which, under the family system in Africa, he cannot refuse. They cling to him like leeches, demanding bicycles, sewing machines, radios, clothes, phonographs, etc. The man is soon broke. But he does not worry. The system of native African communism saves him from want, for all he has to do is go to another relative and sponge on him. Individual initiative is not very popular in Africa. Why amass a lot of money? You’ll have to give it away anyhow….”

  “Has there been any attempt to change this right of the relative to take a share of the wealth of another relative?” I asked.

  “It’s hard,” he explained. “Religion is law in Africa. How can you change religious beliefs?”

  “And what do you think of those beliefs?”

  He looked at me, then raised his forefinger and shook it in my face.

  “There’s more to it than meets the eye,” he said solemnly. “I’ve heard things that cannot be sneered at.”

  “Like what, for example?” I asked him. “Really, all of this juju stuff has a simple, psychological explanation. Now, tell me something that has no such explanation.”

  “Well,” he began gently, cocking his head. “I’ve an educated young African working for me. He speaks English as well as I do; he speaks French too. Now, he told me the following story…”

  I sat hunched, trying to suppress a smile. It was impossible for the English to live side by side with the Africans without becoming infected with the African’s religious beliefs. The African had projected an invisible world out of himself and he was living in and reacting to that world, and the English found themselves, in the end, obliged to give a certain kind of assent to that nonexistent world….

  “One day this young African and his wife went to a nearby town to do some shopping. Now, the husband had to return home before the wife and he waited for her. The wife was supposed to return around six o’clock and when she didn’t put in her appearance, the husband began to worry.

  “Well, late that night the wife came in, looking deeply disturbed. The husband upbraided her and demanded to be told what had happened. Now, the wife told the following story…

  “It seems that while on the bus en route home, the wife had been in the center of a violent argument. A woman’s purse had been stolen on the bus and there had been a hue and cry about it. Finally, the driver of the bus declared that every passenger on the bus had to go to the police station. This was done and the police questioned everybody and could arrive at no solution.

  “The people were dissatisfied with the work of the police and then somebody suggested that only a fetish priest could find out who the culprit was. They argued pro and con and, in the end, the whole crowd went to the house of the local fetish priest. This priest made the entire crowd sit in a circle on the ground and he placed a bowl of water in the center. He then placed a reed in the water, making it stand up—”

  “No!” I exclaimed.

  “That’s what my friend told me and I believe it,” the young Englishman swore. “Now, I don’t know how that priest managed to make that reed stand up; but he did…. My African friend wouldn’t lie to me. Now, the fetish priest had an old knife that had been owned by an ancestor. He told the crowd that each person must hold the knife over the standing reed and when the guilty man’s turn came, the reed would fall….

  “That knife was passed from hand to hand and it was held over the standing reed. The reed still stood. Finally, when one man took hold of the knife, the reed promptly fell…. The man got excited and declared that it was all a mistake, that he had not stolen the woman’s purse….

  “Three times the knife was passed around, and each time the guilty man took the knife and held it over the standing reed, the reed fell. The crowd was so angry that it wanted to lynch that man. But the fetish priest calmed them down, took the trembling young man into a room and asked him to give up the woman’s purse or he’d turn him over to the police. The man produced the purse—”

  “Where had he been hiding the purse all the time?” I asked. “Why didn’t the police find it in the first place?”

  “I don’t know,” the suave, clean-shaven, intelligent, well-dressed young Englishman told me. Then he concluded: “This is a true story. What do you say to that?”

  “Did you ever personally see anything like that?”

  “No.”

  “You’re telling me, no doubt, exactly what the young African told you,” I said. “But I doubt the whole thing. The only trouble with these wonderful tales is that you can never check them. I’m convinced that the story has a psychological explanation. The guilty man believed in the power of the priest. By the way, where is this young African? I’d like to talk to him.”

  “Unfortunately, he’s on leave,” he said.

  “And the man’s wife?”

  “She’s gone too,” he said. “But there’s something to this juju.”

  Yes; this nonsense had caught him too. I decided to haul the conversation down to a practical level.

  “Look, if these Africans have some powerful, wonderful, deep secrets, why in hell did they wait so long to kick the Br
itish out? Why didn’t they use their knowledge to defend themselves? They had to wait until a man trained in Western thought came to lead them before they could even dream of fighting for their freedom. Is that not so?”

  He grinned at me, shook his head, then stared at the floor.

  “That’s true,” he admitted.

  That afternoon I had Kojo drive me about the town; the sky was gray and a fine drizzle of rain was falling. Ringing the town was a chain of green hills and the clouds were so low that their edges were entangled in the treetops. I could feel a somber mood of mystery lurking up there in those high, dim hills.

  “Massa wanna see the chief?” Kojo asked me.

  “Exactly,” I told him. “Drive me there. Do you know where it is?”

  “Yasa. Chief’s house biggest house in town; it passes ’em all, sar,” Kojo said.

  The house of the chief was a huge yellow structure built in a strange style of architecture, half Western and half Oriental. Timidly, I walked up the long, wooden steps, hoping that Kojo would follow me, but he did not. And I did not want to betray my nervousness by asking him to…. I had heard those funeral drums beating and I hoped that no African of importance had died. I’d been told that the sacrifice of a stranger to accompany the dead was looked upon with particular favor by the ancestors…. I walked into a vast rotunda that reminded me of the pictures I’d seen of early Roman buildings. Under a high dome to the left was a dais upon which—I was later informed—witnesses stood when the chief was conducting court with the aid of his elders.

  “Hello! Hello!” I called.

  A young boy, dirty and badly dressed, came up to me.

  “Is the chief in?”