American Hunger

  They did not place me on trial because they did not know how to give names to what they feared in me. I had not fought them as Ross had; I had not challenged a single policy of theirs. It was my way of thinking and feeling that they feared. The conditions under which I had to work were what baffled them. Writing had to be done in loneliness and Communism had declared war upon human loneliness. Alone, they said, a man was weak; united with others, he was strong. Therefore they habitually feared a man who stood alone. Communism spelt the unity of human life, and when a Communist, newly risen from his oppressed isolation and feeling strange and lonely because of it, saw another man seeking seclusion, he became afraid of him. The Communism I looked upon was impatient of extended processes, of results that could not be obtained overnight, of an act that could not be performed within a day. This was how America had embraced Communism; this was America’s first green fruit of materialistic rebellion.

  The moment came for Ross to defend himself. I had been told that he had arranged for friends of his to testify in his behalf, but he called upon no one. He stood, trembling; he tried to talk and his words would not come. The hall was as still as death. Guilt was written in every pore of his black skin. His hands shook. He held onto the edge of the table to keep on his feet. His personality, his sense of himself, had been obliterated. Yet he could not have been so humbled unless he had shared and accepted the vision that had crushed him, the common vision that bound us all together.

  “Comrades,” he said in a low, charged voice, “I’m guilty of all the charges, all of them …”

  His voice broke in a sob. No one prodded him. No one tortured him. No one threatened him. He was free to go out of the hall and never see another Communist. But he did not want to. He could not. The vision of a communal world had sunk down into his soul and it would never leave him until life left him. He talked on, outlining how he had erred, how he would reform.

  I knew, as I sat there, that there were many people who thought they knew life who had been skeptical of the Moscow trials. But they could not have been skeptical had they witnessed this astonishing trial. Ross had not been doped; he had been awakened. It was not a fear of the Communist party that had made him confess, but a fear of the punishment that he would exact of himself that made him tell of his wrongdoings. The Communists had talked to him until they had given him new eyes with which to see his own crime. And then they sat back and listened to him tell how he had erred. He was one with all the members there, regardless of race or color; his heart was theirs and their hearts were his; and when a man reaches that state of kinship with others, that degree of oneness, or when a trial has made him kin after he has been sundered from them by wrongdoing, then he must rise and say, out of a sense of the deepest morality in the world:

  “I’m guilty. Forgive me.”

  This, to me, was a spectacle of glory; and yet, because it had condemned me, because it was blind and ignorant, I felt that it was a spectacle of horror. The blindness of their limited lives—lives truncated and impoverished by the oppression they had suffered long before they had ever heard of Communism—made them think that I was with their enemies. American life had so corrupted their consciousness that they were unable to recognize their friends when they saw them. I knew that if they had held state power I would have been declared guilty of treason and my execution would have followed. And I knew that they felt, with all the strength of their black blindness, that they were right.

  I could not stay until the end. I was anxious to get out of the hall and into the streets and shake free from the gigantic tension that had hold of me. I rose and went to the door; a comrade shook his head, warning me that I could not leave until the trial had ended.

  “You can’t leave now,” he said.

  “I’m going out of here,” I said, my anger making my voice sound louder than I intended.

  We glared at each other. Another comrade came running up. I stepped forward. The comrade who had rushed up gave the signal for me to be allowed to leave. They did not want violence, and neither did I. They stepped aside.

  I went into the dark Chicago streets and walked home through the cold, filled with a sense of sadness. Once again I told myself that I must learn to stand alone. I did not feel so wounded by their rejection of me that I wanted to spend my days bleating about what they had done. Perhaps what I had already learned to feel in my childhood saved me from that futile path. I lay in bed that night and said to myself: I’ll be for them, even though they are not for me.

  The next morning a Negro Communist came to my house before I was out of bed. He sat and would not look at me.

  “What do you want, Harold?” I asked.

  “I don’t know how to say what I want to say,” he said.

  “Say it anyhow. I can stand anything now.”

  “Gee, I’m sorrier than I’ve ever been in all my life,” he cried. “I didn’t know what they were going to do …”

  “Do you mean that?” I asked.

  “God, yes!”

  “Thanks. I’m no enemy of the party.”

  “It was horrible,” he said.

  “There was a glimpse of glory in it, too,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  He left. He was the only Communist who had enough courage to speak to me.

  Chapter VI

  FROM the Federal Experimental Theater I was transferred to the Federal Writers’ Project, and I tried to earn my bread by writing guidebooks. Many of the writers on the project were members of the Communist party and they kept their revolutionary vows that restrained them from speaking to “traitors of the working class.” I sat beside them in the office, ate next to them in restaurants, and rode up and down in the elevators with them, but they always looked straight ahead, wordlessly.

  After working on the project for a few months, I was made acting supervisor of essays and straightway I ran into political difficulties. One morning the administrator of the project called me into his office.

  “Wright, who are your friends on this project?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Why?”

  “Well, you ought to find out soon,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Some people are asking for your removal on the grounds that you are incompetent,” he said.

  “Who are they?”

  He named several of my erstwhile comrades. Yes, it had come to that. They were trying to take the bread out of my mouth, and I agreed with them too much to want to fight back.

  “What do you propose to do about their complaints?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” he said, laughing. “I think I understand what’s happening here. I’m not going to let them drive you off this job.”

  I thanked him and rose to go to the door. Something in his words had not sounded right. I turned and faced him.

  “This job?” I repeated. “What do you mean?”

  “You mean to say that you don’t know?” he asked.

  “Know what? What are you talking about?”

  “Why did you leave the Federal Negro Theater?”

  “I had trouble there. They drove me off the job, the Negroes did.”

  “And you don’t think that they had any encouragement?” he asked me ironically.

  I sat again. This was deadly. I gaped at him.

  “You needn’t fear here,” he said. “You work, write …”

  “It’s hard to believe that,” I murmured.

  “Forget it,” he said.

  I returned to my desk and stared at the Communists who sat near me. I was not angry. I was sorry. How far can they go acting like this? I wondered. I knew that if they had succeeded in getting me fired they would have considered it a triumph of proletarian tactics. Why could they not forget me? I was opposing no policy of theirs. I was not speaking or writing against them. But the worst was yet to come.

  One day at noon I closed my desk and went down in the elevator. When I reached the first flo
or of the building, I saw a picket line moving to and fro in the streets. Many of the men and women carrying placards were old friends of mine, and they were chanting for higher wages for Works Progress Administration artists and writers. It was not the kind of picket line that one was not supposed to cross, and as I started away from the door I heard my name shouted:

  “There’s Wright, that goddamn Trotskyite!”

  “That sonofabitch Wright is with ‘em, too!”

  “We know you, you bastard!”

  “Wright’s a traitor, too!”

  For a moment it seemed that I ceased to live. I had now reached that point where I was cursed aloud in the busy streets of America’s second largest city. It shook me as nothing else had.

  I decided upon a bold, open, and friendly move. I had to put a stop to this hounding of me. I would go directly to the head of the local Communist party and have it out with him, talk to him, explain things. I implored a friend of mine to use what influence he had to obtain an appointment for me with the secretary of the party.

  Weeks passed and finally word came that I had an appointment, not with the secretary, but with the secretary’s secretary, a girl, Alma Zetkin. I sighed and accepted it.

  When I walked into the headquarters of the Communist party, I was ushered into Alma Zetkin’s presence. She was plump, blonde, blue-eyed, with big braids of hair circling her head. She was shuffling a pile of papers in her hand. She did not look up.

  “I’ve an appointment to see you,” I said. “But I’d like to see Bernard, the party secretary.”

  “What do you want with him?” she asked, not lifting her head, her eyes glued to the papers in her hand.

  “I want to discuss my party affiliation with him,” I said.

  “He cannot see you about such matters,” she said.

  “With whom can I talk?”

  “I can listen to what you have to say,” she said.

  She was cold, distant; I knew that she had already made up her mind, that a decision had already been made about me.

  “There’re a lot of misunderstandings that I’d like to clear up,” I said, forcing the words out of me, for I knew now that my errand was futile.

  “What are they?” she asked, still not looking at me.

  Quietly I outlined the story, sticking to bare facts, feeling that I was talking to a stone wall. When I had finished, she said:

  “We can’t help you with that problem.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If you can’t get along with your comrades on the South Side, what do you expect us to do about it?” she snapped, her eyes flashing blue and cold and hard.

  “They’re not people with whom one can talk,” I said. “I’m called a Trotskyite. WHY?”

  “Are you a Trotskyite?” she asked, looking at me full now.

  “No, and why would you think I was one?” I asked.

  She laughed silently and turned to her papers again.

  “Well, what have you to say?” I asked.

  “There’s nothing we can do for you here,” she said.

  I stood silent for a moment. I had had my answer. Yet the answer did not seem sensible, intelligible. I had not solved anything. I looked at her; she was still intent upon the papers.

  “Good-bye,” I said, turning and walking toward the door.

  She did not answer. I paused at the door and stared at her again; she was still gazing at the papers. I went out.

  That night I tossed sleepless, trying to imagine what had been in Alma Zetkin’s mind, what she had been told, what were her motives. And my mind could find nothing but improbable answers. Had she been warned that I must under no circumstances be given encouragement? If so, why? Even Ross, who had actively fought the party within the ranks of the party, was still a member in good standing. But I, whom they had officially accused of nothing, was an open enemy in their eyes.

  Nothing that I could think of could explain the reality I saw. My mind was like an ulcer whenever it touched upon what had happened to my relations with the party. I asked myself why a million times, and there were no answers.

  Days passed. I continued on my job, where I functioned as the shop chairman of the union which I had helped to organize, though my election as shop chairman had been bitterly opposed by the party. In their efforts to nullify my influence in the union, my old comrades were willing to kill the union itself.

  As May Day of 1936 approached, it was voted by the union membership that we should march in the public procession. On the morning of May Day I received printed instructions as to the time and place where our union contingent would assemble to join the parade. At noon I hurried to the spot and found that the parade was already in progress. In vain I searched for the banners of my union local. Where were they? I went up and down the streets, asking for the location of my local.

  “Oh, that local’s gone fifteen minutes ago,” a Negro told me. “If you’re going to march, you’d better fall in somewhere.”

  I thanked him and walked through the milling crowds. Suddenly I heard my name called. I turned. To my left was the Communist party’s South Side section, lined up and ready to march.

  “Come here!” an old party friend called me. I walked over to him.

  “Aren’t you marching today?” he asked me.

  “I missed my union local,” I told him.

  “What the hell,” he said. “March with us.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, remembering my last visit to the headquarters of the party, and my status as an “enemy.”

  “This is May Day,” he said. “Get into the ranks.”

  “You know the trouble I’ve had,” I said.

  “That’s nothing,” he said. “Everybody’s marching today.”

  “I don’t think I’d better,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Goddamn, are you scared?” he asked. “This is May Day.”

  He caught my right arm and pulled me into line beside him. I stood talking to him, asking him about his work, about common friends.

  “Get out of our ranks!” a voice barked in my ears.

  I turned. A white Communist, a leader of the district of the Communist party, Cy Perry, a slender, close-cropped fellow, stood glaring at me.

  “I … It’s May Day and I want to march,” I said.

  “Get out!” he shouted.

  “I was invited here,” I said.

  I turned to the Negro Communist who had invited me into the ranks. I did not want public violence. I looked at my friend. He turned his eyes away. He was afraid. I did not know what to do.

  “You asked me to march here,” I said to him.

  He did not answer.

  “Tell him that you did invite me,” I said, pulling his sleeve. “I’m asking you for the last time to get out of our ranks!” Cy Perry shouted.

  I did not move. I had intended to, but I was beset by so many impulses that I could not act. Another white Communist came to assist Perry. Perry caught hold of my collar and pulled at me. I resisted. They held me fast. I struggled to free myself.

  “Turn me loose!” I said.

  Hands lifted me bodily from the sidewalk; I felt myself being pitched headlong through the air. I saved myself from landing on my head by clutching a curbstone with my hands. Slowly I rose and stood. Perry and his assistant were glaring at me. The rows of white and black Communists were looking at me with cold eyes of nonrecognition. I could not quite believe what had happened, even though my hands were smarting and bleeding. I had suffered a public, physical assault by two white Communists with black Communists looking on. I could not move from the spot. I was empty of any idea about what to do. But I did not feel belligerent. I had outgrown my childhood. I did not know how much time elapsed as I stood there, numb, astonished; but, suddenly, the vast ranks of the Communist party began to move. Scarlet banners with the hammer and sickle emblem of world revolution were lifted, and they fluttered in the May breeze. Drums beat. Voices were chanting. The tramp of many feet shook the earth
. A long line of set-faced men and women, white and black, flowed past me.

  I followed the procession to the Loop and went into Grant Park Plaza and sat upon a bench. I was not thinking; I could not think. But an objectivity of vision was being born within me. A surging sweep of many odds and ends came together and formed an attitude, a perspective. They’re blind, I said to myself. Their enemies have blinded them with too much oppression. I lit a cigarette and I heard a song floating out over the sunlit air.

  Arise, you pris ‘ners of starvation!

  I remembered the stories I had written, the stories in which I had assigned a role of honor and glory to the Communist party and I was glad that they were down in black and white, were finished. For I knew in my heart that I would never be able to write that way again, would never be able to feel with that simple sharpness about life, would never again express such passionate hope, would never again make so total a commitment of faith.

  Arise, you wretched of the earth …

  The days of my past, of my youth, were receding from me like a rolling tide, leaving me alone upon high, dry ground, leaving me with a quieter and deeper consciousness.

  For justice thunders condemnation …

  My thoughts seemed to be coming from somewhere within me, as by a power of their own: It’s going to take a long and bloody time, a lot of stumbling and a lot of falling, before they find the right road.

  They will have to grope about blindly in the sunshine, butting their heads against every mistake, bruising their bodies against every illusion, making a million futile errors and suffering for them, bleeding for them, until they learn how to live, I thought.

  Somehow man had been sundered from man and, in his search for a new unity, for a new wholeness, for oneness again, he would have to blunder into a million walls to find merely that he could not go in certain directions. No one could tell him. He would have to learn by marching down history’s bloody road. He would have to purchase his wisdom of life with sacred death. He would have to pay dearly to learn just a little.