Manchild in the Promised Land (54 page)

“They got to be going to a white fish market, that's gon be gypping them. They got to go to the white butcher, who's gon be selling them some old dried-up mother-fucking neck bones and pig tails and pig feet. They wouldn't even think about selling that shit in any white neighborhood. They don't even sell it for dogmeat in white neighborhoods. You go to the movies, the movies are owned by the white people. Everything here is white.

“If you're not mad, I feel sorry for you, Sonny, because you're crazy, and you're lost, man. So there, black man, you've got to be mad, brother.”

“Alley, man, you can get mad about this shit, but if you can't do anything about it, it's gon fuck with your mind, you know? Unless you stop being mad because you realize you have to stop, for your own good.”

“How the hell are you gon stop bein' mad when you've got a foot up in your ass?”

I said, “Look, man, if you're going to live, you got to try and take the foot out of your ass. There's some things, man, that anger doesn't mean a damn thing to. You can get mad if you want to, but why bother if nobody's going to pay any attention to you? Alley, the way I feel about it is that we—you, me, the cats we came up with, probably all the cats that were in jail with you—we were angry all our lives. That's what that shit was all about. We were having our revolution. The revolution that you're talking about, Alley, I've had it. I've had that revolution since I was six years old. And I fought it every day—in the streets of Harlem, in the streets of Brooklyn, in the streets of the Bronx and Lower Manhattan, all over—when I was there stealing, raising hell out there, playing hookey. I rebelled against school because the teachers were white. And I went downtown and robbed the stores
because the store owners were white. I ran through the subways because the cats in the change booths were white.

“I was rebelling every time I went to someplace like the Children's Center, like the Youth House, like Wiltwyck, like Warwick. I was rebelling, man. And all I met in there were other young, rebellious cats who couldn't take it either.

“But nobody was winning. That revolution was hopeless. The cats who had something on the ball and they could dig it in time, they stopped. They stopped. They didn't stop being angry. They just stopped cutting their own throats, you know ? That kind of revolution was impossible. It was doomed to fail, right from the word go.

“Now, look at it realistically, Alley. How the hell are you gonna come in here and say, ‘Look, white man, we're living in your world, but I want you to let us have a revolution'? This is what it would amount to, because the black man's just in no position to revolt against anything here. You know what that's all about, Alley. You've been around; you've heard of this before. People have always been talking that shit, but nobody's gotten up and started any revolution. In the old days, in the slave uprisings, these people were ready to die.”

Alley said, “Wait a minute! Wait a minute, Sonny, I'm ready to die too, man. Shit, I don't feel as though I've got any more now than the folks in slavery had. I don't feel that their pain is any more than mine. Shit, why shouldn't I be ready to die?”

“Look, Alley, if you just want to die, why bother to go out there and do it in the name of freedom?”

He said, “Man, because I want everybody to know that they're not free. I want you to know; I want my sisters to know; I want my brothers to know; I want the whole generation to know that we're not free.”

“Alley, man, didn't you find out anything when you were in jail? Didn't you find out anything about the rebellion or the revolution and why we were losing all that time? Why all those cats in there lost?”

He said, “Yeah, I found out why. I found out why, because half of those mother-fuckers in there was goin' to church on Sunday, praying to a white god.”

“Listen, Alley, the rebellion has gone along the wrong lines.”

“Yeah, it's goin' along the wrong line, Sonny, because it's still going along that white line. Those mother-fuckers don't even know what they're fighting in there. Half of those cats in jail, they were out
here stealing from colored people. Now, ain't that a fuckin' shame? They were out in the street stealin' from black people. You know, you've got niggers up there who've hit black men in the head and taken their wallets. You know why? It's because all other Negroes see the way that the white man is treating the black man. He's just got to try and treat them the same way too. Everybody's down on Negroes because of what the white man has made this society think of Negroes.…

“I'm damn surprised at you, Sonny. Man, all the way up, since the time I met you, you were a real hell raiser. As a matter of fact, the last time I got back to Harlem, I was looking for you, and I was hoping that you had gotten the message from Muhammad … because I knew you'd be good in this thing. But now, man, I don't know. If anybody had ever told me that Claude Brown was talking that peaceful shit and he's not angry, I would have said they were lying. I think one day, it's gon come out, brother … the same shit. It's gon come out in you too, and I think it's gon come out so strong I'm gon be afraid to be around you. I think that stuff is gonna come out … that violent stuff in you, like that riot that you started up at Warwick.”

I said, “Man, I told everybody I never started all that stuff.”

He said, “Yeah, but you didn't have to tell me. When they told me it was a riot between the Puerto Ricans and the colored cats, I just knew you had to be behind it, you know. That's the way you arc, Sonny, and I think when you get the message from Muhammad, Harlem's gon move, brother. We gon have fire on the streets, man.”

“I've already got the message, Alley. And it's not from Muhammad. As a matter of fact, I'm hoping I can give it to you, but I think I'll have to wait until you become a little disenchanted with Muhammad.”

He said, “Look, brother, I've got to go. I'm going to see you. I want you to stay out of these bars and stop giving that white devil our money.”

“Yeah, Bashi, I just might think about that. All I've got to do is find me a good colored-owned bar.”

Alley said, “Salaam aleichem.”

“Salaam aleichem, Bashi.”

It seemed as though over the next few years, say from 1955 through 1959, just about everybody who came out of jail came out a Muslim.
By 1959, I had come to the conclusion that few Negroes could go to any of the city prisons in New York and not come out a Muslim.

There was one common thing that I noticed about all the cats in the Muslim movement. They seemed to be the cats who were very uncertain about where they were, who they were, or what they were going to do, the cats who had never been able to find their groove. The guys who went to jail, they just knew they were criminals, and that's all there was to it. They were never going to do anything to be good. They weren't going to do anything halfway good. Nobody could tell them anything. They were guys who were messing up because they just didn't know of any other way to let off steam. So the Muslim faith seems to have been just the thing for them.

But the real cold criminals, none of those guys came out Muslims. After a while, this was a way you could tell cold hoods. If a guy was a real stickup artist, he was a real stickup artist. He didn't mess with drugs; he didn't mess with the Muslim faith; he didn't mess with anything but crime.

In a way, it was a good thing that the Muslim faith was gaining ground in Harlem, because it gave something to the junkies and to the prostitutes. When a junkie came out of jail or when he came back from getting a cure, it was the rule to just come back on the streets and do the same things that he had been doing all along. Now it was different.

All the time before, the junkie never had anyplace to go when he came out of jail or out of the hospital. Now the junkies had a place to go, those who could accept the teachings of the Muslims. It wasn't hard to accept, not for most of the junkies. Junkies weren't cold criminals at heart, not Harlem junkies. Maybe this was why they became junkies—because they couldn't see going into the crime life. I've seen very few real criminals that ever dabbled in drugs. If a guy was criminally inclined and started messing with drugs, he usually became a junkie and no longer a criminal. There was a difference. The junkie was a junkie first and above all other things. His criminal activities were merely means to an end.

The Muslim movement was cleaning them up, giving them a lot of food for thought, feeding them with a philosophy—if you could call it that—that provided some type of moral fortitude. Now they had a place to go. They went to 125th Street and Seventh Avenue, started
preaching the word and saying “Salaam aleichem” to everybody, and growing beards.

It was a new thing, and it was a strong thing too. It was something, I suppose, that most cats in Harlem could accept, because it was an angry thing. I guess any angry organization would have more appeal to male Harlemites than any other kind of organization.

Then, there was this thing in the new name. It was always fascinating to everybody. It was fascinating to the new recruits. It gave them a sense of being somebody, a sense of importance. All the time before they became Muslims, I suppose there was a feeling of insignificance that led them into self-destruction in one form or another. It was just not being anybody. Now they were somebody, a part of something. I suppose that's all they needed.

All the Muslims now felt as though 125th Street was theirs. It used to belong to the hustlers and the slicksters. They're still there, but Seventh Avenue belongs to the Muslims. I think everybody knows this now. This group just came down and claimed it. They started setting up their stands and giving speeches. People started listening, and it just became known that if you wanted to hear a good antiwhite sermon on Saturday night, all you had to do was go to 125th Street and Seventh Avenue.

It made everybody feel as though they had something. I suppose there were many people who had been mistreated by the white boss during the day. They could come out on Seventh Avenue and hear something that would be consoling … hear some of the “Buy Black” slogans and “hate the white devils” speeches.

The Muslims would try to embarrass people who weren't buying black or boycotting the white people. They weren't gaining too much ground as far as getting the people to stop buying from white store owners, but they got them to start believing this thing about buying from colored, giving the money to colored, and that colored people should stick together.

I recall one evening I had come uptown to see my folks. I had heard on the news and seen in the evening paper something about a riot down at the United Nations earlier that day.

This was about the time that Patrice Lumumba had been killed. Lumumba had come to Harlem the summer before. The Muslims had gotten him to speak on 125th Street. Everybody in Harlem was pretty fond of Lumumba, especially the Black Muslims.

The incident at the United Nations started off as a peaceful demonstration and turned into a riot. It was led by a young light-skinned fellow who—
The New York Times
said—had features more Arabic than Negroid, and since he was garbed in some royal Arabic attire, the paper speculated that he was most likely a prince or the son of some Arabian prince.

When I got to my parents' house that evening, Dad started telling me that he'd seen “that crazy boy who use to come around here.”

I said, “Dad, which crazy boy is this?” because I knew he was always calling somebody crazy. He thought, at one time, that just about all my friends were crazy.

He said, “You know, that crazy light-skin boy who was up at Wiltwyck with you and use to come here and have a party with Suzy Q. He use to kiss the dog all the time, that sort of thing.”

“Oh! You mean Alley. I haven't seen him in a little while. He's down on 125th Street most of the time.”

He said, “Oh, yeah. Well, I saw him on TV just a little while ago. He was down there at the UN, with some old funny-lookin' clothes on, making some trouble about that man dying down there in Africa, that man Lumumba.”

I said, “Oh! So that was Alley who started all that trouble down there at the UN? I wish I'd seen it.”

Dad said, “The news will be back on at six-thirty, and they'll probably show it again. So why don't you hang around. You can see it. He was there. I know it was him, because I saw him, as big as day.”

When the news came on, there was Alley looking very solemn. I knew he was very fond of Patrice Lumumba, as were all the Muslims who had met him when he was in New York. But I didn't think Alley would go down to the United Nations and start a riot or anything like that. But evidently he did.

He came back to Harlem a hero. The next day,
The New York Times
ran an article about Alley probably being the son of some Arabian prince. The Harlemites who knew him had a good laugh.

It was a good thing for Alley, I suppose, because he was heard. He made the goddamn white man know that he was angry.

The thing that I noticed about the Muslim faith that seemed to stand out over that of the Coptic was that people didn't leave as soon. I would see guys being members of the Muslim faith for years. It just
kept expanding; it was more and more. If I stayed away from Harlem for a few months, when I came back, there were many more people who hadn't been Muslims when I left who were now Muslims, women and men. It was a thing that just seemed to keep expanding, and it also seemed to hold people.

Then the Muslims started getting places in Harlem. They opened up dry cleaners with lower prices than other places. They opened up their restaurants. They had good food—fried chicken, pies, anything but pork. It was always delicious, because it was home cooking, but without the pork. The prices were very reasonable. As a matter of fact, they were more reasonable than just about any of the places in Harlem except the fish-and-chips joints. I supposed that eventually the Muslims would open up a fish-and-chips joint.