The Nigger Factory

by Gil Scott-Heron

‘I wanned to s’prize Thomas.’

  ‘It’ll s’prize a lotta folks,’ Cotton remarked.

  King, Baker, and Cotton enjoyed another good laugh. Jonesy simply frowned and Abul Menka, as usual, did nothing.

  ‘What if Thomas don’ dig bein’ out the driver’s seat?’ Cotton asked, getting serious.

  ‘Either secon’ or nothin’,’ Baker said setting his jaw. ‘From now on we runnin’ shit!’

  Baker continued to go over the afternoon in his mind. The four o’clock prompting for the MJUMBE team had set the stage for the four-thirty rally with the students. The five of MJUMBE had left the meeting room together. They had strode across the Sutton Oval that was set in the middle of the campus to the Student Union Building. They crushed the dead grass beneath their feet and quickly scaled the thirteen steps that led to a balcony overlooking the crowd of students that had already begun to gather. All five were dressed in black dashikis. All except Abul Menka were heavily muscled athletes who had shaved their heads when the coach complained about bushy heads not allowing helmets to fit tightly enough. All five were intent and stern-faced, silhouetted by a fading red disc that had darkened their bodies during an early-autumn heat wave. All bad. All Black.

  The student response to Baker’s demands had been greater than even he expected. He had thought there might be some question as to his authority. Nobody had even mentioned Earl Thomas. The students seemed very unconcerned as to who actually became the leader for the change the campus needed so badly. All they wanted was action.

  Baker had been in his world. He bathed in the light of the handclapping, whistling, and shouted support heaped upon him and his comrades. It seemed that with the reading of each demand the support grew. He had said everything he could think of about Ogden Calhoun, the Head Nigger, and the members of the administration. When he finished, the five men marched through the crowd that still stood chattering like monkeys. All Baker could hear was:

  ‘Do it, Brother!’ and ‘Right on with power!’

  There was little they could do now but wait. Wait and think. Baker knew that the support had been good, but he also knew that Ogden Calhoun had a reputation as a destroyer of student dissent. The Sutton president had been asked recently how Sutton had escaped the student disruptions that had rocked other Black campuses. Calhoun had replied to the interviewer: ‘I have a saying for students on my campus. It says: “My way or the highway!” In other words: “If we can’ git along, you goin’ home!”‘

  So the lines were drawn. Calhoun had no room in his plans for student disruption. MJUMBE had no plans for going home.

  Baker’s mind drifted. After the afternoon meeting his plan had started to become shaky. Just at the point when his name was on the lips of every Sutton student, he was knifing himself in the back by having Earl Thomas notified. He hated to think of turning the least credit over to a man he considered an enemy, but there was really no way out of it. While running for Student Government president he had preached Black collectivity; all political factions putting their heads together. And there was no denying that Earl Thomas was a smart politician. The election had proven that. Then too, if Earl endorsed Baker, another bloc of students would fall easily into line.

  In late August when Jonesy had arrived for summer football training Baker had started talk about MJUMBE. ‘If you ain’ out fo’ nuthin’ but revenge on Thomas fo’ beatin’ you,’ Jonesy had said, ‘forget it.’

  ‘I ain’ lookin’ fo’ nothin’ but progress,’ Baker had sworn. ‘I think MJUMBE can serve a two-way purpose. First, Thomas gon’ move if he know somebody lookin’ over his shoulder. Second, all the athletes would be down to back Thomas up if we wuz organized an’ spoke fo’ him.’

  The possibility that MJUMBE might give Earl its backing was what had sold Jonesy. And now that the time had come Jonesy had not objected to any of Baker’s arguments about why MJUMBE should cast the first stone. But Baker knew well enough that Jonesy would pull out if he felt as though the group spokesman had lied about his intentions. Earl had been called.

  That’s when things started fuckin’ up, Baker thought.

  Earl’s line had been busy. Baker decided on a second’s notice that since Earl couldn’t be reached MJUMBE would deliver its own mail.

  ‘It’s six thutty,’ he said when King notified him of the busy line. ‘Calhoun was s’pose to git home ’bout six. He prob’bly got wind a the deman’s already. We can’ give ’im too much time to pull no fas’ stuff on us.’

  They had started out. Five men in black dashikis crunching through the dead leaves across the quadrangle behind the fraternity house, across the football field to the big white house Sutton students called ‘the Plantation.’ Calhoun wasn’t home.

  Calhoun’s absence implied several things to Baker. It indicated that Calhoun knew nothing of the demands. God knew he would have been setting up some counterattack had he heard. It also meant that MJUMBE might have peaked too soon.

  As a football player Baker knew a lot about peaking. A team is built up by a good coach to reach its emotional and competitive peak just before the charge down the shadowed runway; when the only sound to be heard is the thunderous clacking of forty pairs of cleats grating against the rough-grained concrete. The team tears down the ramp ready to tackle a moving van. Every inch of your body would be choking with the smell of forty men, practice jerseys, wintergreen, urine, and the sweaty jocks that lay in a corner hamper. Your heart strait-jacketed in your chest, climbing up bony columns of your throat, tightening you into a gigantic ball.

  Baker had been a bad coach. He knew now that he should have called the Plantation before he and his cohorts started out. There had been an emotional letdown when there was no one at the Calhoun residence to accept their papers. They had stood on the threshold with hearts the size of a football, ready to slap all authoritative danger in the face. The silly old maid seemed to mock them, though she knew nothing. The air had been let out of them.

  Now they sat. Thinking and waiting.

  ‘Thomas will be here in twenny minnits,’ King said barging through the partially open door.

  ‘Good,’ Baker said without conviction. He took a look at his watch. In twenty minutes it would be seven thirty. It was getting late.

  The MJUMBE spokesman reread the sheet he had handwritten and practically memorized. He would take everyone through their parts again before Thomas arrived.

  He looked at his comrades closely; looking for signs of panic or fear; looking for things that he might feel if they were indicated anywhere in the room.

  Baker started with the man he knew best. He had grown up in nearby Shelton Township, Virginia, with Fred Jones. Jonesy was a plodder, a man of few words who checked things out very carefully before getting involved. Since their elementary school days Baker had always been the outspoken, active leader and Jonesy the quiet, steady henchman who did his leg work and faithfully stuck by him. Everything about the smaller man signified concentration and determination. Baker knew that as long as he, Baker, kept his word there would be no problems.

  Baker had met Speedy Cotton during their freshman year at Sutton. Speedy was a coal-black, West Virginia miner’s son who had been a second-string high school All-American at halfback. They had spent quite a few nights together going over football plays in Baker’s room when they started playing football together and had become even faster friends when they pledged for the fraternity. College was not really of primary interest to Cotton. He wanted to play football and perhaps go on to play professionally. Baker supposed that his political involvement was based solely on their friendship, but the wiry six-foot-two speedster wasn’t afraid of anything and Baker knew that he wouldn’t back down.

  The MJUMBE spokesman shifted his attention to Ben King. When it came to courage there were few legends that he could recall that did Ben justice. During their junior year at halftime in the last game Ben had come limping off the field. Pain had been chiseled into the deep creases around the young giant’s mouth an
d eyes. Baker had watched King conscientiously avoid Coach Mallory and the trainer as he grimaced in the corner of the locker room during the intermission speech. Twice he asked King if someone shouldn’t be notified, but was put off with a frown. Only after the game did the huge tackle permit himself to collapse from the pain. X rays taken that night showed that King’s right ankle had been fractured, but somehow he had played on, had virtually held up the left side of the Sutton line, and insured the hard-fought victory.

  The question in Baker’s mind was whether or not Ben could or would keep his mouth shut. The big tackle had a notoriously bad temper and had been expelled from the track team for tearing up the training room during a fit of rage. It had been all Baker could do to avoid a fight between King and Thomas when Thomas, speaking the day before the election, said that ‘certain bullies would not be able to threaten anyone into voting against their wishes.’

  Baker knew that there was also a great deal of hatred and animosity between King and the university president. Calhoun had been the one to put King on the carpet after the training-room explosion. Baker nodded thoughtfully, thinking that he would have to watch King as closely as he watched Thomas.

  In the dim light of the meeting room a flare ignited in the darkest corner where Abul Menka lit still another cigarette and attracted Baker’s attention. If ever there was a man who puzzled the MJUMBE leader, Abul was that man.

  When Baker arrived at the first pledgee meeting of Omega Psi Phi during the spring of his freshman year, the only man present he did not know was introduced by the Dean of Pledgees as Jonathan Wise. Baker had seen Jonathan Wise (who later began calling himself Abul Menka) driving around campus in a new Thunderbird with women hanging all over him, and he could not have imagined the man as fraternity material because the style-conscious New Yorker from the Bronx already had everything. And the perplexing thing was that during the two-month pledge period Abul had done nothing to indicate why he was there. Even during ‘Hell Week,’ the last week of the indoctrination schedule, when their line, ‘The Jive Five Plus One’ was not allowed to sleep, Abul never complained, never reacted even in private to the paddlings they were receiving or confided in the others during their restless nights in the ‘Dog House’ when they waited nervously for Big Brothers to come in and deal with them.

  Baker had asked Abul to join MJUMBE as a matter of course because of their common interest in the fraternity, but he had been a little surprised when he accepted. Baker had seen him frequently in the frat lounge with a Black history book or reading material relating to the Black struggle, but the man had never expressed an inkling of political consciousness in the way he spoke. But there was little question of Abul’s dedication to the organization. He was on time for every meeting and faithfully carried out every duty assigned to him.

  ‘He ain’ got a nerve in his body,’ Baker decided. ‘He’ll go with us all the way.’

  The roundup had given Baker a little more confidence in his co-workers, but his personal confidence was slipping. The thought of working with Earl Thomas did not appeal to him. Even if everything looked good. He compared himself to Thomas critically. Earl was six-two, perhaps one hundred and eighty pounds. He had a broad chest and wide shouders like a boxer. Next to him Baker looked like a powerful Black barrel. Football had developed Baker’s arms, neck, and chest until he resembled a tree trunk. Baker’s eyes were deep set and his nose was African flat. Earl was a bushy-browed Indian-looking man with a wide mouth and two inches of kinky hair. The MJUMBE leader rubbed his bald head thoughtfully. When football ended he would grow it again.

  Sitting in the half-light of the MJUMBE meeting room, the massive strategist was slowly turning new facts over in his mind. He had been so let down by Calhoun’s disappearance that some aspects of MJUMBE’s move had slipped by unseen. Now, with time to think, new evidence was focusing on his mental screen.

  First of all, Earl Thomas was going to be his pawn. He felt very good about the position the SGA president was in. It didn’t matter if the students saw Earl puttering around in connection with MJUMBE demands. They knew who the real leader was. But second and best, Calhoun didn’t know who was in charge. He would identify Earl as the leader of the detested militant faction on campus because Earl would present the demands. Earl couldn’t do anything to stop MJUMBE. The students would construe any negative move as jealousy. The deposed SGA leader would be a Mjumbe for MJUMBE. Pleasure at his own play on words almost capsized the chair in which Baker sat, back-tilted.

  Gone was the animosity he had felt the previous April when told that some skinny, ostrich-looking nigger from Georgia had defeated him for the SGA post. Gone was the bitter gall he tasted when told forty minutes before: ‘Mr and Mrs Calhoun returned from Norfolk, but they are attending the theater this evening. They are expected to return about ten o’clock.’ The small, wigged maid who delivered those lines had stood in the Calhoun door-way like a reject from a Steppin’ Fetchit movie wiping her greasy hands on a napkin and trying to sound like a fancy British bitch.

  Baker laughed out loud. He could imagine Thomas sitting helplessly in front of him like a jackass with an Afro.

  ‘Did’joo, did’joo hear that bitch?’ Baker asked when he realized everyone was watching him. ‘Did’joo hear that funky-ass maid callin’ the Sutton moviehouse wit’ wall-to-wall rats a thee-ate-uh?’ He told them that because he knew what Jonesy would say if he told them why he was really laughing.

  Evidently everyone had heard because a faint smile choked through their clamped mouths. They smiled because they needed to. No one really thought that it was very funny. The crooked grins bounced off the dimly pulsating light bulb and skipped nervously out through the window. The room then returned to its tomblike silence.

  Baker felt grimy. Sweat had stuck his underwear to his crotch.

  Jonesy was visibly worried.

  Speedy Cotton and Ben King were tired and nervous. They sat directly beneath the bald, waxy wattage that illuminated itself and little else. They tried to convince themselves that the tightness in their groins came from too much beer, too much football, and too little sleep. Their eyes wandered about the room but they saw very little.

  Abul Menka remained cool. It was impossible to conclude exactly what was on the man’s mind. Baker called him ‘Captain Cool.’ He sat in the corner, feet propped, smoking a cigarette. In truth, Abul Menka was very seriously thinking about cutting out. He would have been gone had he not known that his motives would be misinterpreted. The MJUMBE men would have thought he was leaving because he was afraid of Calhoun.

  ‘Fuck Calhoun,’ he thought sullenly. Abul did not care if Sutton’s Head Nigger had eight strokes and ten heart attacks, outdoing all of the other university presidents who were cracking up as a result of student demands. No, Calhoun was no problem. But Abul Menka was not anxious to see Earl Thomas.

  3

  Earl

  There were only three tenants at Mrs Gilliam’s boarding house on Pine Street. The three men lived on the second floor of the white three-story structure. It was not for lack of applicants that the third floor was empty, but because Mrs Gilliam was very particular about her roomers.

  Earl had always considered himself highly fortunate when he thought about how quickly Mrs Gilliam had taken him in. At the end of the previous school year he had decided not to leave Sutton, but to take a job as a mechanic at the nearby computer factory. All at once the dormitories were closing for the summer and he was without a place to stay. It was then that he remembered Zeke, the Black handyman, who had often mentioned his room at Mrs Gilliam’s, where he also took his meals. With three days remaining before school closed Earl had gone to see her. The two of them had hit it off immediately.

  Mrs Gilliam was sixty years old. A short, gray-haired, thickly built matron of a woman who had lived in Sutton for thirty years. Her husband had been a conductor on the ICC railroad, making runs from Miami to Chicago on the Seminole, when she met him. She was a waitress at a coffee shop in
Kankakee, Illinois, and after having seen the big, raw-boned Black man twice a week over a six-month period, they married. The railroad rerouted Charles Gilliam soon after, and his route carried him through Sutton and other parts of southern Appomattox County in Virginia. He bought an impressive three-story frame home on Pine Street and started his family. He had been working for the line nearly twenty-six years when he died of a heart attack.

  His wife, Dora, thrived on company. She was a cornerstone at Mt. Moriah A.M.E. Church and the head of her sewing circle. Soon after her husband’s death she began to take in tenants, mostly for the companionship it provided.

  Earl had made Mrs Gilliam break one of her cardinal rules. She had vowed never to rent rooms to college students. For the most part she considered them to be impolite, disrespectful young men with no idea of the meaning of the word responsibility. Earl was somewhat different. In the first place he was working his way through school and intended to add his summer’s earnings to a partial scholarship. Secondly, he was as polite and mannerly a young man as Mrs Gilliam had ever met. And he had looked so let down when she told him, quite gruffly, that she didn’t rent to college students, that she had had no choice but to invite him in for a cup of coffee to better explain her position. Somehow over coffee the word ‘college’ came to mean more to her than it had meant before. It took on the meaning of her dead husband’s unfulfilled dreams. She found it very easy to overlook the fact that Earl was a student. She even rationalized her decision by pointing out the fact that he wouldn’t be a student during the summer, but when September rolled around there was no mention of Earl moving out.

  As Earl combed his head of thick hair his mind ran through the maze of emotions that gripped him, identifying first one and then the other. Jealousy? Fear? Anger? Anger was the most predominant. He felt as though he had been betrayed. Not betrayed by friends, but by that insidious ‘Brother’ term. MJUMBE subjugated the entire campus into one giant malignancy and classified all constituents under the heading of ‘Brother.’ The word seemed to have less meaning every day. Long ago he had decided that he would not be a part of the group that criticized the hypocrisy without an alternative. Who was sure how it felt to be Black? Maybe running your tongue over the word ‘Brother’ a thousand times a day was a step in the right direction.