by Alice Walker
“As I stood looking at these signs in a museum now, but once very real barriers to the colored peoples of Turkmenia, I remembered parks I had seen in my own America where I could not enter—public parks in cities like Charleston and Memphis and Dallas. Even today after a great world war for democracy such parks still exist in our United States. They are gone in the Soviet Union.”
It was not only the liberation from racism that delighted him. Langston found that the Soviet Union was the only country in the world where he could have his teeth filled without charge (and he was constantly plagued with tooth troubles and had toothache all over the world); and it pleased him that women, who in Asiatic Russia had been used for their husbands’ pleasure in harems, had thrown off their veils and were going to school, and could not be bought and sold as they had been before the Revolution.
From his writings it was obvious that he preferred the free medicine, free parks, and free women in the Soviet Union to people calling him “boy” at home. So, Berry writes: “As a result of the McCarthy hearings, for several years, Hughes’ name was on a list of ‘un-American’ authors whose books were banned from U.S.I.A. libraries throughout the world. His books were also banned from the schools and libraries of certain states that passed anti-Communist laws. An influential lecture bureau, which long had scheduled his speaking engagements, canceled his contract. His public appearances often were met with pickets carrying signs with the words ‘traitor,’ ‘red,’ and ‘Communist sympathizer.’”
And so, this sensitive man, who made his living from writing, surprised Saunders Redding at the All-African Writers Conference in Africa in 1962, because, although hundreds of representatives from African countries were eager to hear his revolutionary poems against colonialism and imperialism, Langston would not read them. He “stuck instead to his conventional verses on conventional themes.”
Some of Langston’s best poems are in this collection, and they point to his basic impatience for Revolution, an impatience that was only partly racial.
GOD TO HUNGRY CHILD
Hungry child,
I didn’t make this world for you.
You didn’t buy any stock in my railroad.
You didn’t invest in my corporation.
Where are your shares in standard oil?
I made the world for the rich
And the will-be-rich
And the have-always-been-rich,
Not for you,
Hungry child.
TIRED
I am so tired of waiting,
Aren’t you,
For the world to become good
And beautiful and kind?
Let us take a knife
And cut the world in two—
And see what worms are eating
At the rind.
Berry’s finely edited book restores Langston’s political thought to its proper context, which is to say to his autobiography, The Big Sea and I Wonder as I Wander, and should be read along with these volumes as a part Langston left out. However, I am left wondering if Langston's silence on his revolutionary writing was attributable solely to the reluctance of his publishers to publish it or to the attacks he endured during the McCarthy era. The behavior of a man as complex as Langston Hughes is never easily understood. I think it is possible that while his enthusiasm for revolution did not change, his enthusiasm for the Soviet Union did. Several people he knew in Russia were purged or imprisoned or killed. This experience was bound to have an impact on a man who, since childhood, was incapable of violence: it made him physically sick.
Langston Hughes was also a man with an exquisite sense of justice and an extraordinary degree of tolerance toward individuals, qualities more hardened revolutionaries—those who understand they must shoot people and so go right ahead—scarcely have time to cultivate. He was also committed to his own personal and artistic freedom. Or perhaps he reached that point all serious revolutionary writers reach, where the knowledge that children starve to death in a world of plenty seems to demand a gun across the barricades, not a speech across the podium, not a pen across a page. Writing or speaking about actions that he was not prepared, himself, to take may have seemed to make a mockery of his integrity. But even if these things are true—and I offer them merely as considerations a great artist may have had—they do not negate the fact that Langston saw the coming of revolution in America as a good, long-overdue event and was generally impressed with what he saw of revolutions in other countries.
When he was in China in 1949 Langston saw small children sold on the streets for sex and sold to factories for labor, their parents too poor to feed them. They say this is no longer true, in China. Good Morning, Revolution.
1976
MAKING THE MOVES AND THE MOVIES WE WANT
THE SCENE IS a fictional West African village. Women are being dragged from their homes and shoved to the ground by African soldiers pointing rifles. Their homes are torched and blaze against the sky. The women huddle together as the soldiers shoot over their heads, mocking their helplessness and fear. Eventually, after the village has been destroyed, the soldiers are signaled back to their Jeep by their commander, a European mercenary.
Then one of the women rises, places her basket of plantains on her head, hoists her baby more firmly against her back, and walks off quietly through the woods. Her shortcut takes her to the side of the main road just as the soldiers come roaring by. They shout jauntily at her. She waves at them. But as they pass in a cloud of dust, she raises a submachine gun she had kept hidden in the brush, and kills them all. Then she picks up her basket, puts it back on her head (her baby still resting comfortably against her back), and walks away.
Though the remainder of Countdown at Kusini is not as strong as this serious, unequivocal opening, it is a production to be happy about, to learn from, and—with its irrepressible music and nonstop action—to enjoy.
It is the first major motion picture ever produced by an organization of black women, Delta Sigma Theta. With a history of political activism that includes participation in the feminist and suffragist demonstrations of 1913, the eighty-five thousand members of American-based Delta Sigma Theta, the largest black sorority in the world, decided they would no longer accept the degraded images of black people—and especially black women—being foisted on them from the movie screen. Instead they would raise the money themselves, from among themselves, to make the kind of movie they wanted: one that reflected contemporary values and concerns of black people, and the ungilded magnificence and political activism of black women. Countdown at Kusini, from a script by Ossie Davis (who also directed), Ladi Ladebo, and Al Freeman, Jr., and based on a story by John Storm Roberts, is the result.
Kusini explores the themes of revolution, guerrilla warfare, and the relation of Afro-Americans to the African struggle against foreign domination. Afro-American musician Red Salter (Greg Morris) is touring in Africa when he gets involved in revolution. Foreign corporations are attempting to destroy the local anticolonialist struggle by assassinating Motapo (Ossie Davis), a revered guerrilla freedom fighter. Salter is enticed by revolutionary Leah Matazima (Ruby Dee) into running guns and transporting Motapo between hiding places.
The movie is often painful: ideals are betrayed, friends of the revolution are murdered. But it is basically an upbeat, joyous film, with incredible vistas of Africa (filming was done entirely in Nigeria; many of the actors are African), and African ceremonies, music, and customs. One leaves the theater ready to join the next revolutionary battle, not in dejection over how much there is to be done, but in awe of the possibilities for change once an oppressed people decides to rise.
Nearly all the flaws in Kusini are both obvious and instructive: Ossie Davis, as Motapo (a composite of Patrice Lamumba, Amilcar Cabral, and Martin Luther King), is essentially detached from the character. He plays Motapo as patronizing, too aware of his role as “liberator” of his people. He does not project a depth of feeling, and certainly not enough of it to get through a
revolution. Ruby Dee’s Leah, Motapo’s tough, beautiful corevolutionist, is often distractingly overdressed for her role in a poor, embattled country. Otherwise she is superb, so real as a woman determined to get oppressors off her back that one is moved to reach out and take her hand.
The film’s major flaw is the casting of Greg Morris (who in his plasticity is reminiscent of Richard Nixon) as the Afro-American musician turned gunrunner for the cause. Morris—Barney Collier in the TV series “Mission: Impossible!”—is so awkward and jerky as the macho lover of Leah (who is obviously more woman that he will ever be able to understand, much less dominate) that the audience, both times I saw the film, chuckled at his efforts.
Another flaw is the obligatory put-down of “the ugly honky woman” (mindlessly pursuing the plastic black hero) in favor of the black woman, Leah, who does not need this sort of cheap build-up.
Countdown at Kusini is an impressive beginning in moviemaking by the black women of Delta Sigma Theta. I hope they will give us, from now on, at least one such meaningful movie a year.
1976
LULLS
ATLANTA, GEORGIA, JANUARY 15, 1976
My cousin is driving me through the city. She is slender and brown, an aggressive, vocal driver, at ease with the idiosyncrasies of other drivers, calm at high speed. After a snowy morning in New York, the sunny weather in Atlanta is like spring. “What brings you to Atlanta?” she asks, driving down a hill that affords a sweeping view of the “New Atlanta,” from “the world’s tallest hotel” (recently completed) to bright murals that cover the walls of several of the city’s lower buildings. It is the murals I like; the hotel building—as straight and round as a black finger pointed at the sky—seems imitative in its height, and redundant.
My cousin’s name is Faye.* I have not seen her in ten years. Standing on an Atlanta street corner, resting after a mile-long march from Ebeneezer Baptist Church in support of the right of every American to have a job and also in commemoration of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s forty-seventh birthday, I had, while listening to the mellow voice of Atlanta’s black mayor, Maynard Jackson, felt a gentle tug on my arm. “Are you my cousin Alice Walker?” she had asked. For an answer I gave her a hug. We stood smiling at each other for the duration of the rally. Then she whisked me away in her car.
“I had been thinking about how unemployment is killing what remains of the quality of black and/or poor life,” I said. “Then I heard about the March for Jobs in Atlanta. I couldn’t resist. I also wanted to visit places like Atlanta, Mississippi, and Boston to see what black people are thinking and doing in what appears to be a lull in political protest.”
“I almost didn’t come today,” she said. “Marching is such a drag once you realize that every time you’re out here ruining your feet, your President and congressmen are off skiing somewhere. The last thing they’re thinking about is poor folks pounding the street begging—not for food, not for a handout—but for work. Still, it’s a good occasion to bump into relatives and friends, and better than doing nothing. What did you think of it?”
Through much of the march I had thought of the FBI and the CIA. I had focused on J. Edgar Hoover and imagined him—an evil geni spread fumelike over the sky—grinning down on all our former marches, planning ways to make even the greatest of them come to nothing. I had thought of Martin Luther King, Jr., so maligned by so many, fearing—during his last “Mountain Top” days—that he could not remain with us through our final marches, through our arrival (wherever we might arrive), because once black people heard the tapes the FBI threatened to play for us about his sexual “escapades” we would no longer want or believe in him. I had thought how wrong such a fear would have been. Black people had heard rumors about King’s sexual “appetite” for years, had read stories that had him making love to strange women “Super-fly” style in bathtubs, yet the majority of us had understood perfectly the character assassination being attempted, and had wished him only joy in whatever part of his life he had left to himself, any modicum of pleasure. At least I had felt that way.
“I felt silly, marching,” I said. “The songs stuck in my throat. When someone started singing ‘We Shall Overcome’ I actually choked. But then I found myself singing anyway, because if black people still want to sing, if they can still dig up the heart, who am I not to sing with them?”
The only stanza of the former black movement anthem nobody could get past their lips was the “black and white together” one. It was quickly replaced by “Full Employment Now.” I was struck by that. That, and the fact that the person singing near our group who had the purest voice, the sweetest voice, was a young man, barely in his twenties, who was obviously a junkie. At the sudden high force of this young man’s voice people in my line of marchers halted, as if an angel from the Movement’s past had come to join them. As one person we turned to welcome him, the only singer, it seemed, still capable of infusing the old, righteous energy into our songs. He had reeled under the euphoria of his drug, even as he marched.
What does this mean, I’d wondered, clutching my handbag tightly, annoyed at this reflex action even as I gazed with sorrow at his sensitive, though lost, dark face; aware it might not be long before I knew.
Faye has been a student of French literature at Brown University since we last saw each other. “It was a disaster,” she says. “I thought I’d go crazy. I wanted to study French-speaking Haitian poets, and of course all I ever got was Proust.”
After Brown there was a year in Lyon “studying and loafing.” She has been married—briefly and badly—divorced, and is now studying in an Atlanta seminary to become a minister. She already has a church in her hometown, and this coming Sunday she will preach. “God and I are on excellent terms,” she says cheerfully, as if it explains the way she drives. She also runs a day-care center, and as she speeds past the brightly decorated buildings she points out the kind of art, the lively colors, she wants for her children’s walls.
I am amazed that a young, under-thirty, woman like Faye would want to be a minister.
“But, Alice” she explains, “in the black community, the church has more power than any other institution. We no longer have our schools. We never did have ‘town hall.’ All we ever really had was the black church, and thank God it hasn’t been integrated out of existence. It is my church that sponsors the day-care center I run. There was no other black institution that could take the responsibility.
“My mother can’t understand why her daughter wants to be a minister, either. She keeps trying to marry me off again. I believe she thinks if I’m not interested in the men she digs up for me, it must mean I’m gay. Black folks with unmarried daughters are running scared, in this age of women’s liberation.” She laughs. “I like men; I just don’t have time for them right now. But from the way my mother carries on, you’d think she never heard of a woman wanting to be independent.”
I am disappointed at this news of my aunt. When I was a child, my aunts (including Faye’s mother) were the most independent people I knew. They were nine strong girls who grew up in the second decade of this century on my grandfather’s farm. With the help of their three brothers, they had run it. At family reunions they would reminisce about the old days when each of them had been able to fish and hunt and trap, to shoot “straight as a man,” and to defend themselves with their own fists. After telling of a typical day’s work on the farm, during which she had done everything from rounding up cattle on horseback to helping slaughter pigs, my favorite aunt would add: “And then I’d come in the house, bathe, put on my red dress, put a little red rouge on my lips, put a dusting of talcum down my bosom, do up my hair, and wait for my ‘fella’ to come calling.”
My aunts had liked to brag about their healthy bodies, their strong muscles, the amount they could cook and eat and work, and their refusal ever to back down from an equal fight out of fear. Unlike many women who were told throughout their adolescence they must marry, I was never told by my mother or any one of her sister
s it was something I need even think about. It is because of them that I know women can do anything, and that one’s sexuality is not affected by one’s work.
“Well,” says Faye, “they haven’t done anything independent for thirty years. They wanted to sit down in fine houses like white women in the movies. They wanted husbands around to ‘’protect’ them. (Though ‘protecting’ them has driven most of their husbands, including my daddy, nuts.) Now they just want grandchildren, like everybody else.”
I say nothing. I am thinking of the aunts I wished to be like: I still see them standing in overgrown fields shooting hawks, killing snakes, not knowing what it meant to be afraid of mice.
Joe Harris
Faye has stopped the car in a quiet suburban neighborhood. We walk up the driveway to the door of a modest brick house surrounded by trees. A large German shepherd greets Faye by bounding forward and attempting to lick her face. This is the home of Joe Harris, a very old and close friend, whom I have not seen for two years. I am eager to talk to him about his return from Boston to live in the South, since living in the South is something he once swore never to do. Joe comes to the door and lets us in, restraining the dog, Uhuru, by holding his collar. “Sit, Uhuru!” he says sharply, pulling out kitchen chairs for us. His wife, Mabel, is at the stove, cooking something that does not smell ethnic—when I am with relatives or old friends I become hungry for specific kinds of food: fried chicken, pork chops, chitterlings, greens, cornbread—I am disappointed that none of these seems to be cooking.
Joe is nearly six feet tall and his muscular body is showing signs of flab. He has nut-brown skin, an aquiline nose, and straightened black hair that curls over his shoulders in the manner of Errol Flynn.
“I hated Boston,” he tells me. “Black people in Boston have so little unity they won’t even get together for a riot.”