Black Boy

by Richard Wright

In the black Protestant church I entered a new world; prim, brown, puritanical girls who taught in the public schools; black college students who tried to conceal their plantation origin; black boys and girls emerging self-consciously from adolescence; wobbly-bosomed black and yellow church matrons; black janitors and porters who sang proudly in the choir; subdued redcaps and carpenters who served as deacons; meek, blank-eyed black and yellow washerwomen who shouted and moaned and danced when hymns were sung; jovial, pot-bellied black bishops; skinny old maids who were constantly giving rallies to raise money; snobbery, clannishness, gossip, intrigue, petty class rivalry, and conspicuous displays of cheap clothing…I liked it and I did not like it; I longed to be among them, yet when with them I looked at them as if I were a million miles away. I had been kept out of their world too long ever to be able to become a real part of it.

We young men had been trapped by the community, the tribe in which we lived and of which we were a part. The tribe, for its own safety, was asking us to be at one with it.

“Mama, I don’t feel a thing,” I told her truthfully. “Don’t you worry; you’ll grow into feeling it,” she assured me. And when I confessed to the other boys that I felt nothing, they too admitted that they felt nothing. “But the main thing is to be a member of the church,” they said.

But what had I learned so far that would help me to make a living? Nothing. I could be a porter like my father before me, but what else? And the problem of living as a Negro was cold and hard. What was it that made the hate of whites for blacks so steady, seemingly so woven into the texture of things? What kind of life was possible under that hate? How had this hate come to be? Nothing about the problems of Negroes was ever taught in the classrooms at school; and whenever I would raise these questions with the boys, they would either remain silent or turn the subject into a joke. They were vocal about the petty individual wrongs they suffered, but they possessed no desire for a knowledge of the picture as a whole. Then why was I worried about it?

Was I really as bad as my uncles and aunts and Granny repeatedly said? Why was it considered wrong to ask questions? Was I right when I resisted punishment? It was inconceivable to me that one should surrender to what seemed wrong, and most of the people I had met seemed wrong. Ought one to surrender to authority even if one believed that that authority was wrong? If the answer was yes, then I knew that I would always be wrong, because I could never do it. Then how could one live in a world in which one’s mind and perceptions meant nothing and authority and tradition meant everything? There were no answers.

“Where’s my story?” I asked. “It’s in galleys,” he said. “What’s that?” I asked; I did not know what galleys were. “It’s set up in type,” he said. “We’re publishing it.” “How much money will I get?” I asked, excited. “We can’t pay for manuscript,” he said. “But you sell your papers for money,” I said with logic. “Yes, but we’re young in business,” he explained. “But you’re asking me to give you my story, but you don’t give your papers away,” I said. He laughed. “Look, you’re just starting. This story will put your name before our readers. Now, that’s something,” he said. “But if the story is good enough to sell to your readers, then you ought to give me some of the money you get from it,” I insisted. He laughed again and I sensed that I was amusing him.

Had I been conscious of the full extent to which I was pushing against the current of my environment, I would have been frightened altogether out of my attempts at writing.

I dreamed of going north and writing books, novels. The North symbolized to me all that I had not felt and seen; it had no relation whatever to what actually existed.

I was building up in me a dream which the entire educational system of the South had been rigged to stifle. I was feeling the very thing that the state of Mississippi had spent millions of dollars to make sure that I would never feel; I was becoming aware of the thing that the Jim Crow laws had been drafted and passed to keep out of my consciousness; I was acting on impulses that southern senators in the nation’s capital had striven to keep out of Negro life; I was beginning to dream the dreams that the state had said were wrong, that the schools had said were taboo.

“Hello, Ned. What’s new?” I asked. “You’ve heard, haven’t you?” he asked. “About what?” “My brother, Bob?” “No, what happened?” Ned began to weep softly. “They killed him,” he managed to say. “The white folks?” I asked in a whisper, guessing. He sobbed his answer. Bob was dead; I had met him only a few times, but I felt that I had known him through his brother. “What happened?” “Th-they t-took him in a c-car…Out on a c-country road…Th-they shot h-him,” Ned whimpered. I had heard that Bob was working at one of the hotels in town. “Why?” “Th-they said he was fooling with a white prostitute there in the hotel,” Ned said.

What I had heard altered the look of the world, induced in me a temporary paralysis of will and impulse. The penalty of death awaited me if I made a false move and I wondered if it was worth-while to make any move at all. The things that influenced my conduct as a Negro did not have to happen to me directly; I needed but to hear of them to feel their full effects in the deepest layers of my consciousness. Indeed, the white brutality that I had not seen was a more effective control of my behavior than that which I knew.

He was tempting me, baiting me; this was the technique that snared black young minds into supporting the southern way of life.

I went home, hurt but determined. I had been talking to a “bought” man and he had tried to “buy” me. I felt that I had been dealing with something unclean.

I was learning rapidly how to watch white people, to observe their every move, every fleeting expression, how to interpret what was said and what left unsaid.

Late one Saturday night I made some deliveries in a white neighborhood. I was pedaling my bicycle back to the store as fast as I could when a police car, swerving toward me, jammed me into the curbing. “Get down, nigger, and put up your hands!” they ordered. I did. They climbed out of the car, guns drawn, faces set, and advanced slowly. “Keep still!” they ordered. I reached my hands higher. They searched my pockets and packages. They seemed dissatisfied when they could find nothing incriminating. Finally, one of them said: “Boy, tell your boss not to send you out in white neighborhoods at this time of night.”

He clapped me on the shoulder; his face was full of fear, hate, concern for me. “Do you want to get killed?” he asked me. “Hell, no!” “Then, for God’s sake, learn how to live in the South!” “What do you mean?” I demanded. “Let white people tell me that. Why should you?” “See?” he said triumphantly, pointing his finger at me. “There it is, now! It’s in your face. You won’t let people tell you things. You rush too much. I’m trying to help you and you won’t let me.” He paused and looked about; the streets were filled with white people. He spoke to me in a low, full tone. “Dick, look, you’re black, black, black, see? Can’t you understand that?” “Sure. I understand it,” I said. “You don’t act a damn bit like it,” he spat.

“How did you know that?” I asked. “White people make it their business to watch niggers,” he explained. “And they pass the word around. Now, my boss is a Yankee and he tells me things. You’re marked already.”

“You act around white people as if you didn’t know that they were white. And they see it.” “Oh, Christ, I can’t be a slave,” I said hopelessly. “But you’ve got to eat,” he said. “Yes, I got to eat.” “Then start acting like it,” he hammered at me, pounding his fist in his palm. “When you’re in front of white people, think before you act, think before you speak. Your way of doing things is all right among our people, but not for white people. They won’t stand for it.”

guess you’re right,” I said at last. “I’ve got to watch myself, break myself…” “No,” he said quickly, feeling guilty now. Someone—a white man—went into the store and we paused in our talk. “You know, Dick, you may think I’m an Uncle Tom, but I’m not. I hate these white people, hate ’em with all my heart. But I can’t show it; if I did, they’d kill me.”

“What are you trying to do, get smart, nigger?” he asked me. “No, sir,” I said. I was baffled. Perhaps he just did not want to help me. I went to Pease, reminding him that the boss had said that I was to be given a chance to learn the trade. “Nigger, you think you’re white, don’t you?” “No, sir.” “You’re acting mighty like it,” he said. “I was only doing what the boss told me to do,” I said. Pease shook his fist in my face. “This is a white man’s work around here,” he said. From then on they changed toward me; they said good morning no more. When I was just a bit slow in performing some duty, I was called a lazy black sonofabitch. I kept silent, striving to offer no excuse for worsening of relations.

“Go ahead,” Mr. Crane said. “Tell me what happened.” Then again I could not speak. What could I accomplish by telling him? I was black; I lived in the South. I would never learn to operate those machines as long as those two white men in there stood by them. Anger and fear welled in me as I felt what I had missed; I leaned forward and clapped my hands to my face.

I had begun coping with the white world too late. I could not make subservience an automatic part of my behavior. I had to feel and think out each tiny item of racial experience in the light of the whole race problem, and to each item I brought the whole of my life. While standing before a white man I had to figure out how to perform each act and how to say each word. I could not help it. I could not grin. In the past I had always said too much, now I found that it was difficult to say anything at all. I could not react as the world in which I lived expected me to; that world was too baffling, too uncertain.

I began to marvel at how smoothly the black boys acted out the roles that the white race had mapped out for them. Most of them were not conscious of living a special, separate, stunted way of life. Yet I knew that in some period of their growing up—a period that they had no doubt forgotten—there had been developed in them a delicate, sensitive controlling mechanism that shut off their minds and emotions from all that the white race had said was taboo. Although they lived in an America where in theory there existed equality of opportunity, they knew unerringly what to aspire to and what not to aspire to. Had a black boy announced that he aspired to be a writer, he would have been unhesitatingly called crazy by his pals. Or had a black boy spoken of yearning to get a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, his friends—in the boy’s own interest—would have reported his odd ambition to the white boss.

No Negroes in my environment had ever thought of organizing, no matter in how orderly a fashion, and petitioning their white employers for higher wages. The very thought would have been terrifying to them, and they knew that the whites would have retaliated with swift brutality. So, pretending to conform to the laws of the whites, grinning, bowing, they let their fingers stick to what they could touch. And the whites seemed to like it.

The southern whites would rather have had Negroes who stole, work for them than Negroes who knew, however dimly, the worth of their own humanity. Hence, whites placed a premium upon black deceit; they encouraged irresponsibility; and their rewards were bestowed upon us blacks in the degree that we could make them feel safe and superior.

While waiting for my chance to grab and run, I grew used to seeing the white prostitutes naked upon their beds, sitting nude about their rooms, and I learned new modes of behavior, new rules in how to live the Jim Crow life. It was presumed that we black boys took their nakedness for granted, that it startled us no more than a blue vase or a red rug. Our presence awoke in them no sense of shame whatever, for we blacks were not considered human anyway. If they were alone, I would steal sidelong glances at them. But if they were receiving men, not a flicker of my eyelids would show.

“You ain’t never been in jail, is you?” he asked me. “Not yet,” I answered.

I gave him a pledge of my honesty, feeling absolutely no qualms about what I intended to do. He was white, and I could never do to him what he and his kind had done to me. Therefore, I reasoned, stealing was not a violation of my ethics, but of his; I felt that things were rigged in his favor and any action I took to circumvent his scheme of life was justified. Yet I had not convinced myself.

I did not answer. I knew that if I were caught I would go to the chain gang. But was not my life already a kind of chain gang? What, really, did I have to lose?

“Mama, I’m going away,” I whispered. “Oh, no,” she protested. “I’ve got to, mama. I can’t live this way.” “You’re not running away from something you’ve done?” “I’ll send for you, mama. I’ll be all right.” “Take care of yourself. And send for me quickly. I’m not happy here,” she said. “I’m sorry for all these long years, mama. But I could not have helped it.” I kissed her and she cried.

“Don’t be afraid of me,” he went on. “I just want to ask you one question.” “Yes, sir,” I said in a waiting, neutral tone. “Tell me, boy, are you hungry?” he asked seriously. I stared at him. He had spoken one word that touched the very soul of me, but I could not talk to him, could not let him know that I was starving myself to save money to go north. I did not trust him. But my face did not change its expression. “Oh, no, sir,” I said, managing a smile. I was hungry and he knew it; but he was a white man and I felt that if I told him I was hungry I would have been revealing something shameful.

“Boy, how’s it going?” he asked. “Oh, fine, sir!” I answered with false heartiness, falling quickly into that nigger-being-a-good-natured-boy-in-the-presence-of-a-white-man pattern, a pattern into which I could now slide easily; although I was wondering if he had any criticism to make of my work.

“Say, Richard, do you believe that I’m your friend?” he asked me. The question was so loaded with danger that I could not reply at once. I scarcely knew Mr. Olin. My relationship to him had been the typical relationship of Negroes to southern whites. He gave me orders and I said, “Yes, sir,” and obeyed them. Now, without warning, he was asking me if I thought that he was my friend; and I knew that all southern white men fancied themselves as friends of niggers. While fishing for an answer that would say nothing, I smiled.

I felt how close I had come to being slashed. Had I come suddenly upon Harrison, he would have thought I was trying to kill him and he would have stabbed me, perhaps killed me. And what did it matter if one nigger killed another? “Look here,” I said. “Don’t believe what Mr. Olin says.” “I see now,” Harrison said. “He’s playing a dirty trick on us.” “He’s trying to make us kill each other for nothing.” “How come he wanna do that?” Harrison asked. I shook my head. Harrison sat, but still played with the open knife. I began to doubt. Was he really angry with me? Was he waiting until I turned my back to stab me? I was in torture. “I suppose it’s fun for white men to see niggers fight,” I said, forcing a laugh. “But you might’ve killed me,” Harrison said. “To white men we’re like dogs or cocks,” I said. “I don’t want to cut you,” Harrison said. “And I don’t want to cut you,” I said.

“Did they ask you to fight me with gloves?” Harrison asked. “Yes,” I told him. “But I didn’t agree.” Harrison’s face became eager. “They want us to fight four rounds for five dollars apiece,” he said. “Man, if I had five dollars, I could pay down on a suit. Five dollars is almost half a week’s wages for me.” “I don’t want to,” I said. “We won’t hurt each other,” he said. “But why do a thing like that for white men?” “To get that five dollars.” “I don’t need five dollars that much.” “Aw, you’re a fool,” he said. Then he smiled quickly. “Now, look here,” I said. “Maybe you are angry with me…” “Naw, I’m not.” He shook his head vigorously. “I don’t want to fight for white men. I’m no dog or rooster.”

“I wanna make a payment on a suit of clothes with that five dollars,” Harrison said. “But those white men will be looking at us, laughing at us,” I said. “What the hell,” Harrison said. “They look at you and laugh at you every day, nigger.”

That night in my rented room, while letting the hot water run over my can of pork and beans in the sink, I opened A Book of Prefaces and began to read. I was jarred and shocked by the style, the clear, clean, sweeping sentences. Why did he write like that? And how did one write like that? I pictured the man as a raging demon, slashing with his pen, consumed with hate, denouncing everything American, extolling everything European or German, laughing at the weaknesses of people, mocking God, authority. What was this? I stood up, trying to realize what reality lay behind the meaning of the words…Yes, this man was fighting, fighting with words. He was using words as a weapon, using them as one would use a club. Could words be weapons? Well, yes, for here they were. Then, maybe, perhaps, I could use them as a weapon? No. It frightened me. I read on and what amazed me was not what he said, but how on earth anybody had the courage to say it.

concluded the book with the conviction that I had somehow overlooked something terribly important in life. I had once tried to write, had once reveled in feeling, had let my crude imagination roam, but the impulse to dream had been slowly beaten out of me by experience. Now it surged up again and I hungered for books, new ways of looking and seeing. It was not a matter of believing or disbelieving what I read, but of feeling something new, of being affected by something that made the look of the world different. As dawn broke I ate my pork and beans, feeling dopey, sleepy. I went to work, but the mood of the book would not die; it lingered, coloring everything I saw, heard, did. I now felt that I knew what the white men were feeling. Merely because I had read a book that had spoken of how they lived and thought, I identified myself with that book. I felt vaguely guilty. Would I, filled with bookish notions, act in a manner that would make the whites dislike me?

My reading had created a vast sense of distance between me and the world in which I lived and tried to make a living, and that sense of distance was increasing each day.

This was the culture from which I sprang. This was the terror from which I fled.

“There’ll be a revolution if this keeps up.” “Hell, naw. Americans are too dumb to make a revolution.”

When I began working at the institute, I recalled my adolescent dream of wanting to be a medical research worker. Daily I saw young Jewish boys and girls receiving instruction in chemistry and medicine that the average black boy or girl could never receive. When I was alone, I wandered and poked my fingers into strange chemicals, watched intricate machines trace red and black lines upon ruled paper. At times I paused and stared at the walls of the rooms, at the floors, at the wide desks at which the white doctors sat; and I realized—with a feeling that I could never quite get used to—that I was looking at the world of another race.

Although they were working daily in a building where scientific history was being made, the light of curiosity was never in their eyes. They were conditioned to their racial “place,” had learned to see only a part of the whites and the white world; and the whites, too, had learned to see only a part of the lives of the blacks and their world.

I felt that Communists could not possibly have a sincere interest in Negroes. I was cynical and I would rather have heard a white man say that he hated Negroes, which I could have readily believed, than to have heard him say that he respected Negroes, which would have made me doubt him. I did not think that there existed many whites who, through intellectual effort, could lift themselves out of the traditions of their times and see the Negro objectively.

In the end I had to admit that they were glad to have me with them. But I still doubted their motives. Were they trying to get my head bashed in a picket line so that they could capitalize on the publicity? Or did the discipline of the club demand that they be friendly with me? If that was true, then those who did not want a Negro in the club could resign. But no one made a move to resign. How had these people, denying profit and home and God, made that hurdle that even the churches of America had not been able to make?

Later I learned what had happened: the writers of the club had decided to “use” me to oust the painters, who were party members, from the leadership of the club. Without my knowledge and consent, they confronted the members of the party with a Negro, knowing that it would be difficult for Communists to refuse to vote for a man representing the largest single racial minority in the nation, inasmuch as Negro equality was one of the main tenets of Communism.

Stalin’s book showed how diverse minorities could be welded into unity, and I regarded it as a most politically sensitive volume that revealed a new way of looking upon lost and beaten peoples. Of all the developments in the Soviet Union, the method by which scores of backward peoples had been led to unity on a national scale was what had enthralled me.

“But I’m not your enemy,” I said. “We want to save you,” they said. “Save me from what?” I asked. “I’m not lost.” “We have your welfare at heart,” they said.

I was for these people. Being a Negro, I could not help it. They did not hate Negroes. They had no racial prejudices. Many of the white men in the hall were married to Negro women, and many of the Negro men were married to white women. Jews, Germans, Russians, Spaniards, all races and nationalities were represented without any distinctions whatever. Racial hate had been the bane of my life, and here before my eyes was concrete proof that it could be abolished. Yet a new hate had come to take the place of the rankling racial hate. It was irrational that Communists should hate what they called “intellectuals,” or anybody who tried to think for himself. I had fled men who did not like the color of my skin, and now I was among men who did not like the tone of my thoughts.